[T]his is structural-demographic theory, and it posits several forces that drive social instability and political violence. ...I'll focus on two main ones. ...First ...mass mobilization potential ...based on popular immiseration resulting from the decreased living standards for the majority of the population... This is a fairly obvious effect of growing inequality... Since the days of Malthus this... force has been much in discussion.
Peter Turchin Connected to the Carolinas
Source
5:27
- work
- Human environment across time (2023)
- year
- 2023
Cite this record
“[T]his is structural-demographic theory, and it posits sever…” Peter Turchin. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-B584C4A9DA. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/b584c4a9da
More from Peter Turchin
[T]he theory has been applied to two contemporary societies. The first... is a structural-demographic model for the... USA... the basis for the 2010 prediction. The details... were published [by] Turchin and later expanded into a book-length treatment.
Let me go back to 2010 when Nature, the journal... asked a number of scientists to make some forecasts for the next decade... (2010-2020) and that's when I published the forecast that.., the growing political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade. ...10 years later ...together with my coauthor, Andrey Korotayev, we have revisited this forecast to see whether it had anything to do with reality, and... this is one of the graphs... We looked at several measures of instability, one was anti-government demonstrations. A very similar picture shows up when you look at violent riots. And so we submitted this paper in early 2020 saying that this forecast was actually right... [A]s the paper was [under] review, the summer of 2020, the riots following the death of George Floyd have exploded and... in January of 2021 we had the shocking event... known as the Storming of the Capitol.
The SDT is not merely a theory for understanding why internal violence outbreaks develop and spike. By providing... understanding of the deep structural causes of socio-political instability and societal breakdown, SDT... gives us tools for adopting... reforms and policy interventions that can reverse these drivers of instability.