End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

Peter Turchin applies scientific methods to historical analysis through cliodynamics, an interdisciplinary approach he co-founded. End Times examines what causes political communities to remain stable and what causes them to collapse, focusing on current turmoil in the United States. In 2010, Turchin predicted to Nature magazine that America would enter a spiral of social disintegration leading to political breakdown around 2020, a prediction he argues has proven increasingly accurate. He identifies a pattern in world history: when the balance between ruling elites and the majority shifts too far toward elites, political instability becomes nearly inevitable. Turchin describes a process he calls the wealth pump, in which income inequality increases and prosperity concentrates among elites while common people suffer. As positions of elite status remain limited, the overproduction of elite aspirants creates frustrated individuals who mobilize popular resentment against the established order. His models indicate that societies in this state enter a self-reinforcing cycle difficult to reverse. Turchin argues that America's wealth pump has operated intensely for two generations, and cliodynamics shows the current cycle of elite overproduction and widespread hardship is advancing toward potential violent political rupture.