Where are we going politically? Part 1:

what cliodynamics has to say

In the wake of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, it was looking increasingly likely that Trump would win a second. With Biden’s withdrawal from the race, the election is in flux, and it will take time to see how things shake out. This two-part series interprets the political moment in the context of the American crisis. Part I is about what cliodynamics has to say. Part II will be my attempt at a political interpretation using Stephen Skowronek’s Political Time model as a framework.

The attempt on Trump’s life is a shocking event, an example of violence that should have no place in politics. People naturally seek some logical political motive to the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate where there probably is none. Investigation of the shooter has revealed that he had made a donation to a Progressive organization, registered to vote as a Republican, and was apparently a gun enthusiast like his father. Fellow students who had attended school with him reported that he was conservative or apolitical, had been bullied or had not been. Investigators have found no evidence for an ideological angle. Search of his phone records revealed searches for the Butler rally, other Trump events, and the Democratic convention dates. He had saved photos of Trump, Biden, Speaker Johnson, House Minority Leader Jeffries, Rudy Guiliani, and GA prosecutor Fani Willis. He seems to me as analogous to Arthur Bremer who had initially planned to shoot President Nixon but was unable to get close enough and ended up shooting George Wallace. Trump might have been a target of opportunity; Biden doesn’t do outdoor rallies, Trump does, and was having one nearby. If Trump didn’t work out, perhaps someone else would.

Today’s unrest is normal for our position in the fifty-year cycle of violence
While abhorrent, political violence is a normal part of politics. Violence is more common during creedal passion periods (CCPs), which are periods when people perceive a gap between the way things are and what they should be, leading to moralistic efforts at reform, or what I call cultural instability events. I see them as stemming from the same social contagion mechanism as Peter Turchin’s fifty-year fathers and sons cycle of sociopolitical instability. I described a combined cycle in the frequency of both sociopolitical and cultural instability events that corresponds to Turchin’s cycle. I fit his social contagion model to this data, and it gave the current CPP dates as 2013-27 and those of the previous one as 1963-77.

Table 1 shows selected political unrest events from the previous and current CPP. The type of events is different. Trump’s assassination attempt is so shocking because this sort of thing is simply less common today. Table 1 shows 8 politically-significant attempted and successful assassinations in the last CPP compared to just two today (I am counting the Congressional baseball shooting as an assassination attempt because the targets were political figures, though it could also be categorized as a mass shooting). The same is true for deadly riots. Six serious riots with double-digit death tolls occurred during the previous CPP compared to just one today. On the other hand, mass shootings are much more common today than in the past, 11.7 compared to 1.5 per year, respectively. As a result, the current CCP has already been more deadly than the prior one with total deaths nearly two-thirds higher, and it’s not even over.

Table 1. Selected events of political instability from the previous and current CPPs.

Table 2 shows sequential 5-year totals for events and deaths from unrest during the present CPP. The 2018-22 period centered on 2020 shows the highest level of events, which is consistent with Turchin’s prediction. Peak deaths were seen over the 2015-19 period, so the two periods overlap over 2018-19. These results are consistent with the 2019-20 peak given by the model. So, it looks like the CPP is on the downtrend with respect to sociopolitical instability. This decline is consistent with reports that the Great Awokening (a label used for the current CPP in terms of cultural instability) is winding down.

Table 2. Five-year running totals for sociopolitical instability

Instability related to secular cycles
The other source of political instability derives from Turchin’s structural demographic theory (SDT) which explains secular cycles. I present a simplified version here. Rising inequality creates elite proliferation and increased competition between elites for prestigious and powerful positions. In politics this competition manifests as rising polarization, which shades into political warfare, which is measured by PSI. Political warfare can lead to the real thing in a showdown between elite factions such as insurrection or civil war. It can also lead to political coup or state breakdown. Events external to politics such as economic crisis or external war can also resolve secular cycle crises.

I disagree with Turchin on the number and timing of secular cycles. He sees two American cycles where I see three. He dates the previous cycle from 1780-1930 while I date them as 1780-1870 and 1870-1942. He has the start of present secular cycle beginning with the Great Depression and argues that the resolution of the causes of high inequality were achieved by the Progressive Era reforms and immigration restrictions over 1921-24. These were coincident with the 1913-27 CCP. Turchin believes that the combined effects of overlapping CPP and secular cycles boost instability above the levels when there is no overlap. Some observers fear violence after this year’s election, which would be an example of this.

His timing reflects his use of a bundle of well-being indicators to locate the previous peak inequality (trough in well-being) around 1910. I have two inequality peaks, one in 1916 and one in 1929 because I use two measures of economic inequality. The 1916 date is based on an economic analysis similar to what Turchin does which gives the same date. The 1929 date is a peak in the top 1% income share. I calculated a PSI that also peaks in 1929. I believe that the final depression/resolution phase of the last cycle did not begin until 1929, and it was only with the onset of WW II that the driver of the secular cycle crisis (high inequality) began to fall, reversing elite proliferation, and permitting a new cycle to begin.

This means I don’t think the last secular cycle crisis resolution coincided with a CPP and I did not expect instability to be much greater for this CPP than it was for the last one. I also note there was relatively little violence over 1929-42, which is when I believe the previous secular cycle was being resolved.  Thus, were we to go through a financial-crisis mediated resolution like last time, which seems not unlikely, then we could be out of the woods, violence-wise.

The larger threat: secular cycle instability
That said, the majority of past Anglo-American secular cycle resolutions were settled with violence. According to Turchin’s SDT, rising inequality produces a growing number of aspirants to elite positions, leading to intense competition fueling political conflict between elite factions and their supporters among the public. It starts with political polarization (indicating rising competition) and intensifies into political warfare, as measured by PSI. An early example of polarization might be the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about an affair under oath.

Examples of political warfare would be this escalating serious of events: Republicans refuse to vote on the Democratic nominee after Republican Justice Scalia died 8 months before the 2016 election because it was too close to the election, but then rushed to replace Democratic Justice Ginsburg when she died two months before the 2020 election. Democrats retaliated by impeaching Trump twice. Political warfare intensified with President Trump’s illegal attempts to change the outcome of the 2020 election and the Jan 6 Capitol riot to try to force Trump to be declared the winner.

Democrats fired back: Trump was indicted four times and convicted on one of them for the crime of falsifying business records about hush money paid to cover up an affair with a porn actress. Republicans countered with the Supreme Court declaring the president immune for all crimes committed in the course of his official duties and presumptive immunity for other acts. What exactly this means is yet to be determined, but the ruling delays any trial for a second indictment until after the election, so if Trump wins his indictment for trying to overturn the election will be withdrawn. In addition, a Trump-appointed judge has dismissed another indictment about mishandling of secret government documents, leaving only one case that can still go to trial.

Further escalation could involve political coup, or internal violence such civil war or revolutionary insurgency, or external war if a rival nation tries to take advantage of the political instability. This is what happened in the Glorious Revolution (1688) when Dutch forces landed (with the assent of Parliament), deposed king James II and replaced him with Dutch stadtholder William of Orange and James’ daughter Mary as co-monarchs.

Resolution is achieved when one side emerges victorious and deprives the losers of their elite status. An illustrative example is William the Conqueror’s actions following English king Edward the Confessor’s death in January 1066 with no official heir. Earl Harold Godwinson, the most powerful English noble, claimed the throne with the support of the Witan (council of nobles who advised the king). William was the first cousin once removed of the previous king and claimed he had been promised the throne by Edward. William invaded England to enforce his claim and defeated Harold’s forces, killing him at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066. William then engaged in a series of military campaigns to put down English elite resistance to his rule. One of these campaigns led to the death of about 6% of the English population. The Domesday survey (1086) reveals most of the English estates were now Norman; William had apparently resolved the crisis by exterminating the English elites. Other examples include the massive elite casualties during the Wars of the Roses that reduced elite competition and the incentive for continued conflict, and the US Civil War and Emancipation which deprived the losers of their slave wealth, removing many from elite status at the national level.

Secular cycle crisis resolutions bring structural changes to the government
Striking structural changes in the state and society are often associated with secular cycle crisis resolutions. Sometimes these are so extensive that the previous state can be said to have collapsed. After the Norman invasion the Witan was disbanded, the language of the elite shifted from English to French, and monasteries began to proliferate at much higher rates that before. Most of these followed the precepts of the pre-eminent Cluny monastery or its offshoot the Cistercians. Both had been established in France and so were French cultural imports.

The English state faced bankruptcy in 1640, Charles I was forced to call Parliament to authorize more taxes. A majority of Parliament was opposed, and no deal could be made. The standoff ended with open war, much as tax disputes between the English government and English colonists in North America would lead to war 135 years later. Charles’s forces were defeated; he was deposed and executed. The monarchy was replaced by a republic which soon developed into a dictatorship. That too did not work out and 20 years after the crisis began, Charles II, son of the first, was back on the throne. The first attempt at crisis resolution was a bust. The second came in 1688 when Charles II’s younger brother was king James II. This proceeded much more cleanly. Charles was driven from his throne with Dutch help as mentioned above. Parliament imported “Dutch finance,” separating state accounts from the monarch’s personal accounts and setting up a central bank to handle state finance in 1694. This bank was modeled after the Bank of Amsterdam established 85 years earlier. Resolution of the crisis had taken more than fifty years; these things can take time.

The structural changes arising out of the American Revolution crisis resolution should be familiar to most American readers. I have previously discussed some of those made in the New Deal crisis resolution. The structural changes made as a result of the Civil War resolution were more subtle, but enough, in my view, to support my contention that the Civil War to WW II period contains a complete secular cycle. And the crisis resolution for this cycle, when it comes, will also feature significant changes in how our government works. Looking at the two sides in our current politics, it seems to me that what many Republicans want is radical: to return to something resembling the late second American republic of the 1920’s. Democrats are more conservative, content with the status quo, trying to implement improvements as they have the opportunity.