As the readers of this blog know, a big chunk of my research focuses on why complex societies go through cycles of alternating internally peaceful, or integrative, phases and turbulent, or disintegrative periods. In all past state-level societies, for which we have decent data, we fin

When I became interested in what eventually became Cliodynamics, initially I thought that I would just play with some mathematical models of historical processes, because I had read many times before that there is very little quantitative data in history. In fact, the opposite is true

Over the past weekend France has been rocked by “the worst urban riot in 50 years” (see reporting by Reuters, DW). Indeed the previous comparable outbreak of political violence in France was in May 1968, almost precisely 50 years ago. (As a reminder, I define “political violence” as i

The last installment in this series (first one here) adopts a more critical stance towards the article by McConnell et al., Lead pollution recorded in Greenland ice indicates European emissions tracked plagues, wars, and imperial expansion during antiquity. As I said in the second pos

When I started 20 years ago on the research direction that eventually became Cliodynamics, I thought that getting data to test theories about historical dynamics would be tough. Within a couple of years I realized that actually it’s not true. There is an enormous amount of quant

On Tuesday I am traveling southwest to visit several universities in Arizona and Southern California. Here’s the schedule of lectures that I will be giving: Wednesday Feb. 15 at 12:00 noon: Colloquium on Evolution of Social Complexity (Arizona State University) Tuesday Feb. 27 a

Last week I wrote about Jack Goldstone’s article, which introduced the most recent issue of Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution celebrating the 25th anniversary of Jack’s book Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. In today’s post I wa

Over the past few years many people, including readers of this blog, asked me to comment on the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory (SHGT). The “notoriety” of this theory has been recently given a boost by reports that it inspired the worldview of Steve Bannon, who was until recently Don

A colleague of mine recently asked me to speculate about the various paths the European Union might follow over the next decade and which one(s) I think are more-or-less likely. I think this makes for a good post topic, especially in light of the very troubling developments in the Cat

Forty years ago this day my family (and I with them) left the Soviet Union on our way to America. Our first stop was in Vienna, where, by a curious coincidence, I am today (visiting at the Complexity Science Hub). From the cliodynamic point of view, four decades is not a lot of time.