How Do Societies End “End Times”?

An update on my current research

My research over the past quarter-century has had two overarching themes. The first one is, how can we understand the Great Holocene Transformation—a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of human societies during the Holocene (roughly, the last 10,000 years)? A book presenting an extended answer to this question (based on dynamic models and analysis of the Seshat Databank) will be published in September.

The second big question stems from the observation that complex human societies organized as states, for a while, can experience periods of high internal peace and order, roughly a century long. Eventually—and seemingly inevitably—they then enter periods of high social unrest and political disintegration, “End Times.” Why this happens was, of course, the main question in my most recent popular book. But now I want to understand how societies end such end times, and what we can learn to navigate our own society safely through the shoals of instability and conflict.

One thing we learned from the analysis of historical data is that once a society steps on the road to crisis, it resembles a massive ball rolling down a narrow valley with steep slopes. It’s very difficult to stop or even deflect its rush to an impending disaster. But once the ball arrives at the crisis point, the valley opens up—there are many ways to exit the crisis. Some paths lead to a complete disaster and utter collapse. Other trajectories manage to avoid the bloodshed of a revolution or a civil war.

Trajectories of societies entering into crisis are strongly constrained, like the stem of a gingko leaf. But there are many ways to exit from crisis, from relatively mild to catastrophic.

Most exits from crisis, however, have to pass through a lengthy period of disintegration and disunity—lasting many decades and sometimes longer than a century. An example is the early modern crisis in France, which began in 1562 with the Wars of Religion and ended with the start of Louis XIV’s personal rule in 1661. We can quibble with the precise dating of this disintegrative period, for example, dating its start to the Tumult of Amboise (1560), or dating the end to the end of the Fronde (1653), but either way the duration would be multiple decades.

Not only disintegrative phase durations are highly variable, their outcomes are also highly variable and appear to be unpredictable. It turns out that at the cusp of the crisis the massive ball of the state can be nudged to achieve better outcomes. This insight is of high relevance to us today, seeing that we—again—got ourselves into end times.

How did past societies end their disintegrative periods? A critical step is reversing the root cause of crisis—the perverse wealth pump that takes from the common people and gives to the elites. As described in End Times, good times breed complacency among the governing elites. During integrative phases they become tempted to rejiggle the political economy in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of the workers. As a result, worker wages stagnate and even decline, and the fruits of economic growth go disproportionately to the elites. The operation of this wealth pump results in popular immiseration and discontent, elite overproduction and intraelite conflict, and gradual weakening of the state. As these negative trends build up (which typically takes multiple decades), they eventually drive society into crisis. Exiting the crisis requires reversing these negative trends, which means, first and foremost, shutting down the wealth pump.

But accomplishing this feat is not easy. The problem is that the wealth pump is extremely lucrative for the ruling class. Sociologists refer to this tendency of the ruling elites to use their power for selfish ends as the Iron Law of Oligarchy. In short, power corrupts.

How can the oligarchs be persuaded to give up their selfish advantage in favor of promoting public weal? In most run-ups to past crises, in fact, ruling classes refused the calls to reform, persisting in their intransigence to the very end. And the end, usually, was their violent overthrow by counter-elites channeling popular rage against their regime. Or they weaken the state to the point where it is conquered by external elites, as happened when the Manchus took over Ming Dynasty’s China.

Since an external conquest of the US (or European Union) is unlikely (and thank God for that), my main interest is in how past societies solved their problems by internal means. My working hypothesis is that at the cusp of crisis, the ball of state can be nudged to achieve better outcomes, and that is when individuals can play a significant role. Not sole individuals, but rather groups such as parties, factions, or social movements, as well as their leaders.

Consider a lengthy disintegrative phase, such as the Age of Revolutions in France. Between 1789 and 1870 France experienced Great Revolution, Napoleon’s coup and First Empire, a catastrophic military defeat, Bourbon Restoration, Revolutions of 1830 and of 1848, Second Empire, another catastrophic defeat, and Paris Commune. Repeatedly, one group of elites was overthrown by counterelites, who became ruling elites, and were then, in turn, overthrown by another set of counterelites.

To achieve success in these struggles, a power network needs, first, to seize and hold power. But that’s not enough. If it is unable to resolve the deep structural issues that drove the society into crisis, this power group will be overthrown after some time. Thus, success in the long term requires both the ability to gain and hold power in competition against other power networks and implement a program of reforms that reverse the structural-demographic trends that brought the society into its disintegrative phase.

At this point, this all is just developing the theory and formulating hypotheses. The next and critical step is how do we empirically test these ideas?