Books & Public Writing
Essays & Articles
Selected writing by Peter Turchin in newspapers, magazines, online publications, and other public venues.
À New York, la victoire de Zohran Mamdani et des « précaires diplômés »
Le nouveau maire socialiste de la ville-monde porte aussi la colère des citoyens éduqués frustrés de ne pas accéder à l’élite.
Zohran Mamdani y la revuelta del precariado cualificado
La victoria del candidato socialista en Nueva York se vio impulsada en gran medida por los precarios con titulación: jóvenes con título universitario o superior que ganan lo justo para sobrevivir. La principal noticia política de la semana es la victoria de Zohran Mamdani en las elecciones a la alcaldía de Nueva York.…
Hundreds of societies have been in crises like ours. An expert explains how they got out.
An analysis of historical crises over the past 2,000 years offers lessons for avoiding the end times. Anti-establishment parties and politicians are surging in Western Europe and Japan. In the United States, the MAGA movement, led by President Donald Trump, has seized power.…
Les révolutionnaires ne paient jamais les dettes, par Peter Turchin
Le cycle infernal de l’endettement s’est soldé à deux reprises dans l’Histoire par une révolution et une banqueroute, rappelle le penseur américain.
The deep historical forces that explain Trump’s win
In the days since the sweeping Republican victory in the US election, which gave the party control of the presidency, the Senate and the House, commentators have analysed and dissected the relative merits of the main protagonists – Kamala Harris and Donald Trump – in minute detail.…
Trump and the Triumph of America’s New Elite
A future historian looking back at the social and economic trends of the past decade might be struck by how thoroughly dysfunctional the most powerful nation of Earth has become. Despite extraordinary technological change and respectable economic growth, the well-being of most Americans has been declining.…
Nero-Moments: How Collapse of Social Trust Leads to State Breakdown
Public trust in the US federal government has sunk to a new low. According to Pew Research Center, the proportion of Americans, who said they trusted the government “just about always” or “most of the time,” declined from a peak of 77% in 1964 to just 16% in 2023.1 This negative trend has huge implications, because the collapse of trust in the state’s…
Heading for a fall?
A scientific analysis of history reveals that societies are becoming more resilient to collapse – and shows how to successfully navigate crises, says complexity scientist Peter Turchin. ANCIENT Egypt, the Roman Empire, the Maya, China’s Qing dynasty – these civilisations all shone brightly in their time.…
From Inequality to Instability
Rising income and wealth inequality in OECD countries during recent decades have attracted much discussion, even anxiety. It is a commonly expressed opinion that growing economic inequality is a major factor explaining the rise of populism and political polarisation, as well as, more generally, increasing socio-political instability—what some have called…
America Is Headed Toward Collapse
How has America slid into its current age of discord? Why has our trust in institutions collapsed, and why have our democratic norms unraveled? All human societies experience recurrent waves of political crisis, such as the one we face today.…
The horse bit and bridle kicked off ancient empires – a new giant dataset tracks the societal factors that drove military technology
Starting around 3,000 years ago, a wave of innovation began to sweep through human societies around the globe. For the next millennium the continued emergence of new technologies had a dramatic effect on the course of human history. This era saw the advancement of the ability to control horses with bit and bridle, the spread of iron-working techniques…
We predicted political upheaval in America in the 2020s. This is why it’s here and what we can do to temper it
Almost three decades ago, one of us, Jack Goldstone, published a simple model to determine a country’s vulnerability to political crisis. The model was based on how population changes shifted state, elite and popular behavior.…
I predicted 2020 would be a mess for the U.S. Could that help prevent a second civil war?
Ten years ago, I predicted that 2020 would mark “a new peak of violence” in the United States and Western Europe. It may have seemed like an unusual call, at the time; Western countries had actually been enjoying more stability prior to 2010. But even I didn’t imagine that things could be as bad as they’ve gotten.
Your discipline needs you
To date, Seshat comprises more than 200,000 data points or ‘records’. Soon it will be big enough to support what its founders call “horse races” between theories, but it has already produced some exciting results.…
Social Instability Lies Ahead, Researcher Says
Cliodynamics is a new “transdisciplinary discipline” that treats history as just another science. Ten years ago I started applying its tools to the society I live in: the United States.…
Peter Turchin: Entering the Age of Instability after Trump
From what I have seen so far, it seems unlikely that the Trump administration will succeed in reversing these negative trends. And some of the proposed policies will likely make them worse.…
Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays
Complex human societies, including our own, are fragile. They are held together by an invisible web of mutual trust and social cooperation. This web can fray easily, resulting in a wave of political instability, internal conflict and, sometimes, outright social collapse.…
Deep Historical Roots of European Values, Institutions, and Identities
The grand project of European integration is failing. Signs of dysfunction abound: from Greece’s debt debacle to the immigration crisis and now “Brexit”. A disintegrative trend at the European level is mirrored within constituent states: think of the Scottish and Catalan independence drives, or the inability of Belgium to form a national government for…