The article is a puff piece about Peter Turchin,[1] a historian who takes the long view - sort of similar to Braudel's Annales school. The relevant theses of T

The article is a puff piece about Peter Turchin,[1] a historian who takes the long view - sort of similar to Braudel's Annales school. The relevant theses of Turchin's here are that political unrest goes in cycles of 60-70 years, and the idea of "elite overproduction" -- too many people who think they belong at the top of the heap and not enough prestigious positions for them, which leads to infighting among the political class and increasing irrelevance of politics to the world of ordinary citizens. 1. http://peterturchin.com/ http://peterturchin.com/