Social cycle theory

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Social cycle theories are among the earliest

P.R. Sarkar
, an explicit accounting is made of social progress.

Historical forerunners

Interpretation of

historiosophy (a branch of historiography) and is a concept that falls under the category of sociology. However, Polybius, Ibn Khaldun (see Asabiyyah), and Giambattista Vico can be seen as precursors of this analysis. The saeculum
was identified in Roman times. In recent times, P. R. Sarkar in his social cycle theory has used this idea to elaborate his interpretation of history.

Plato

Further information:
Plato's five regimes

five forms of government: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny, and writes that governments devolve respectively in this order from aristocracy into tyranny. Plato's cycle of governments is linked with his anthropology of the rulers that come with each form of government. This philosophy is intertwined with the way the cycle of governments plays out.[4] An aristocracy is ruled by aristocratic people whose rule is guided by their rationality. The decline of aristrocracy into timocracy happens when people who are less qualified to rule come to power. Their rule and decision-making is guided by honor. Timocracy devolves into oligarchy as soon as those rulers act in pursuit of wealth; oligarchy devolves into democracy when the rulers act on behalf of freedom; and lastly, democracy devolves into tyranny if rulers mainly seek power. Plato believes that having a philosopher king, and thus having an aristocratic form of government is the most desirable.[5]

Polybius

According to Polybius, who has the most fully developed version of the kyklos, it rotates through the three basic forms of government:

tyranny. Originally society is in ochlocracy but the strongest figure emerges and sets up a monarchy. The monarch's descendants, who lack virtue because of their family's power, become despots and the monarchy degenerates into a tyranny. Because of the excesses of the ruler the tyranny is overthrown by the leading citizens of the state who set up an aristocracy. They too quickly forget about virtue and the state becomes an oligarchy. These oligarchs are overthrown by the people who set up a democracy. Democracy soon becomes corrupt and degenerates into ochlocracy, beginning the cycle anew. Polybius's concept of the cycle of governments is called anacyclosis. Polybius, in contrast to Aristotle, focuses on the idea of mixed government: the idea that the ideal government is one that blends elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Aristotle mentions this notion but pays little attention to it. Polybius saw the Roman Republic as the embodiment of this mixed constitution, and this would explain why the Roman Republic was so powerful and why it would remain stable for a longer amount of time.[6] Polybius' full description can be found in Book VI of his Histories.[7]

Cicero

Cicero describes anacyclosis in his philosophical work De re publica.[8] His version of the anacyclosis is heavily inspired by Polybius' writings. Cicero argues, contrary to Polybius, that the Roman state can prevail and will not succumb to the harmful cycle despite its mixed government, as long as the Roman Republic will return to its ancient virtues (mos maiorum).[9]

Machiavelli

Machiavelli, writing during the Renaissance, appears to have adopted Polybius' version of the cycle. Machiavelli's adoption of anacyclosis can be seen in Book I, Chapter II of his Discourses on Livy.[10] Although Machiavelli adopts the idea of the circular structure in which types of governments alternate, he does not accept Polybius' idea that the cycle naturally devolves through the exact same pattern of governments.[11]

19th and 20th century theories

Nikolai Danilewski in Rossiia i Evropa (1869), differentiated between various smaller civilizations (Egyptian, Chinese, Persian, Greek, Roman, German, and Slav, among others). He wrote that each civilization has a life cycle, and by the end of the 19th century the Roman-German civilization was in decline, while the Slav civilization was approaching its Golden Age. A similar theory was put forward by Oswald Spengler who in his Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918) also argued that the Western civilization
had entered its final phase of development and its decline was inevitable.

The first social cycle theory in sociology was created by

power
constantly passes from the 'foxes' to the 'lions' and vice versa.

Sociological cycle theory was also developed by

technological progress
and prophesied its fall into decadence and the emergence of a new ideational or idealistic era.

Alexandre Deulofeu developed a mathematical model of social cycles that he claimed fit historical facts. He argued that civilizations and empires go through cycles in his book Mathematics of History (in Catalan, published in 1951). He claims that each civilization passes through a minimum of three 1700-year cycles. As part of civilizations, empires have an average lifespan of 550 years. He also stated that by knowing the nature of these cycles, it could be possible to modify the cycles in such a way that change could be peaceful instead of leading to war. Deulofeu believed he had found the origin of Romanesque art, during the 9th century, in an area between Empordà and Roussillon, which he argued was the cradle of the second cycle of western European civilization.

Literary expressions

Much of post-apocalyptic fiction depicts various kinds of cyclical history, with depictions of civilization collapsing and being slowly built up again to collapse again and so on.

An early example is Anatole France's 1908 satirical novel Penguin Island (French: L'Île des Pingouins) which traces the history of Penguinia—a thinly disguised analogue of France—from medieval times to the modern times and into a future of a monstrous super-city—which eventually collapses. This is followed by a renewed Feudalism and agrarian society, and a gradual building up of increasingly advanced civilization—culminating with a new monstrous super-city which would eventually collapse again, and so on.

A later example is

nuclear war, with the Catholic Church
seeking to preserve a remnant of old texts (as it did in the historical Early Middle Ages), and ends with a new civilization, built up over two thousand years, once again destroying itself in a nuclear war—and a new group of Catholic clergy yet again setting out to preserve a remnant of civilized knowledge.

In the future depicted in

astrophysicist Fred Hoyle
, the protagonists fly over where they expected to see the United States, but see no sign of urban civilization. At first assuming they were in the pre-1750 past, they later find it was a future time. Humanity is doomed to go through repeated cycles of industrialization, overpopulation, collapse—followed by rebuilding, and then again industrialization, overpopulation and collapse and so on, over and over again. In the far future, a civilization which is aware of this history no longer wants progress.

Contemporary theories

One of the most important recent findings in the study of the long-term dynamic social processes was the discovery of the political-demographic cycles as a basic feature of the dynamics of complex agrarian systems.

The presence of political-demographic cycles in the pre-modern history of

mathematical models of demographic cycles started to be produced (first of all for Chinese "dynastic cycles") (Usher 1989). At the moment[when?] there are a considerable number of such models (Chu and Lee 1994; Nefedov 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004; S. Malkov, Kovalev, and A. Malkov 2000; S. Malkov and A. Malkov 2000; Malkov and Sergeev 2002, 2004a, 2004b; Malkov et al. 2002; Malkov 2002, 2003, 2004; Turchin 2003, 2005a; Korotayev
et al. 2006).

Long cycle theory

George Modelski, who presented his ideas in the book Long Cycles in World Politics (1987), is the chief architect of long cycle theory. Long cycle theory describes the connection between war cycles, economic supremacy, and the political aspects of world leadership.

Long cycles, or long waves, offer perspectives on global politics by permitting "the careful exploration of the ways in which world wars have recurred, and lead states such as Britain and the United States have succeeded each other in an orderly manner." Not to be confused with

long-cycles, or long-swings, long cycles of global politics are patterns of past world politics.[14]

The long cycle, according to Dr. Dan Cox, is a period of time lasting approximately 70 to 100 years. At the end of that period, "the title of most powerful nation in the world switches hands."[15] Modelski divides the long cycle into four phases. When periods of global war, which could last as much as one-fourth of the total long cycle, are factored in, the cycle can last from 87 to 122 years.[16]

Many traditional theories of international relations, including the other approaches to hegemony, believe that the baseline nature of the international system is anarchy.[17] Modelski's long cycle theory, however, states that war and other destabilizing events are a natural product of the long cycle and larger global system cycle. They are part of the living processes of the global polity and social order. Wars are "systemic decisions" that "punctuate the movement of the system at regular intervals." Because "world politics is not a random process of hit or miss, win or lose, depending on the luck of the draw or the brute strength of the contestants", anarchy does not play a role; long cycles have provided, for the last five centuries, a means for the successive selection and operation of numerous world leaders.[18]

Modelski used to believe that long cycles were a product of the modern period. He suggests that the five long cycles, which have taken place since about 1500, are each a part of a larger global system cycle, or the modern world system.

Under the terms of long cycle theory, five hegemonic long cycles have taken place, each strongly correlating to economic

Kondratieff Waves
(or K-Waves). The first hegemon would have been Portugal during the 16th century, then the Netherlands during the 17th century. Next, Great Britain served twice, first during the 18th century, then during the 19th century. The United States has been serving as hegemon since the end of World War II.

In 1988,

Long Cycle Theory", Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age,[19][page needed
] which offers four examples of the process:

  • The British Empire and the Crimean War (1853–1856): A century after Britain's successful launch of the Industrial Revolution, and following the subsequent British railway boom of 1815–1853, Britain, in the Crimean War, attacked the Russian Empire, which was perceived as a threat to British India and to eastern Mediterranean trade routes to India. The Crimean War highlighted the poor state of the British Army, which were then addressed, and Britain concentrated on colonial expansion and took no further part in European wars until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
  • The
    Versailles (1919) and the establishment of Germany's unstable Weimar Republic (1919–1933), in a prelude to World War II
    .
  • The
    Cuba, 70 miles from the US state of Florida. US President John F. Kennedy blockaded (the term "quarantined" being used because a blockade is an act of war), the island of Cuba and negotiated the Soviet missiles' removal from Cuba (in exchange for the subsequent removal of US missiles from Turkey).[vague
    ]
  • The
    industries. After France, supported financially by the US, had been defeated in Vietnam in 1954 and that country had been temporarily split into North and South Vietnam under the 1954 Geneva Accords; and when war had broken out between the North and South following South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem's refusal to permit all-Vietnam elections in 1956 as stipulated in the Geneva Accords, the ideologically anti-communist United States supported South Vietnam with materiel in a Cold War proxy war and by degrees allowed itself to be drawn into South Vietnam's losing struggle against communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong acting in South Vietnam. Ultimately, following the defeat of South Vietnam and the United States, the US's governing belief that South Vietnam's defeat would result in all of remaining Mainland Southeast Asia "going communist" (as proclaimed by the US's "domino theory"), proved erroneous.[19][page needed
    ]

Kondratiev waves

In

cycles consist of alternating intervals of high sectoral growth and intervals of relatively slow growth.[21]
They are estimated to be roughly between 10.3²x 10 and 10.3² megahertz.

Such theories are dismissed by most economists on the basis of

business cycles to refer to changes in an economy around its trend line, the phrase is considered a misnomer. It is widely agreed that fluctuations in economic activity do not exhibit any kind of predictable repetition over time, and the appearance of cycles is a result of pareidolia.[23][24][25]

Secular cycles theory

Recently the most important contributions to the development of the

mathematical models of long-term ("secular") sociodemographic cycles have been made by Sergey Nefedov, Peter Turchin, Andrey Korotayev, and Sergey Malkov.[26]
What is important is that on the basis of their models Nefedov, Turchin and Malkov have managed to demonstrate that sociodemographic cycles were a basic feature of complex agrarian systems (and not a specifically Chinese or European phenomenon).

The basic logic of these models is as follows:

It has become possible to model these dynamics mathematically in a rather effective way. Note that the modern theories of political-demographic cycles do not deny the presence of trend dynamics and attempt at the study of the interaction between cyclical and trend components of historical dynamics.

The models have two main phases, each with two subphases.[27]

  • Integrative phase
    • Expansion (growth)
    • Stagflation (compression)
  • Disintegrative phase
    • Crisis phase (state breakdown)
    • Depression / intercycle

An intercycle is where a functioning state collapses and takes some time to rebuild.

Characteristic features of structural-demographic phases
Feature Integrative phase Disintegrative phase
Expansion phase (growth) Stagflation phase (compression) Crisis phase (state breakdown) Depression / Intercycle
Population Increases Slow increase Decreases Slow decrease
Elites Low population and consumption Increasing population and competition and consumption High population, conflicts, high inequality Reduction of population, downward mobility, reduced consumption
State strength and collective solidarity Increasing High but decreasing Collapse Attempts at rebuilding
Sociopolitical instability Low Increasing High Decreasing

Disintegrative phases typically do not have continuous disorder, but instead periods of strife alternating with relatively peaceful periods. This alternation typically has a period of about two human generation times (40 – 60 years), and Turchin calls it a "fathers and sons" cycle.

Fourth Turning theory

The

communitarian values are strong. Ultimately, succeeding generational archetypes attack and weaken institutions in the name of autonomy and individualism
, which ultimately creates a tumultuous political environment that ripens conditions for another crisis.

Schlesinger liberal-conservative cycles of United States history

The cyclical theory (United States history)[28][29][30][31] is a theory of US history developed by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. It states that US history alternates between two kinds of phases:

  • Liberal, increasing democracy, public purpose, human rights, concern with the wrongs of the many
  • Conservative, containing democracy, private interest, property rights, concern with the rights of the few

Each kind of phase generates the other. Liberal phases generate conservative phases from activism burnout, and conservative phases generate liberal phases from accumulation of unsolved problems.

Huntington's creedal-passion episodes of United States history

Historian Samuel P. Huntington has proposed that American history has had several bursts of "creedal passion" roughly every 60 years.[32][33][34] These are efforts to bring American government closer to the "American creed" of being "egalitarian, participatory, open, noncoercive, and responsive to the demands of individuals and groups."

United States Party Systems

The United States has had six party systems over its history. Each one is a characteristic platform and set of constituencies of each of the two major parties. A new party system emerges from a burst of reform, and in some cases, the disintegration of a party in the previous system (1st: Federalist, 2nd: Whig).

Skowronek United States Regimes and Presidency Types

Political scientist Stephen Skowronek has proposed that American history has gone through several regimes, with four main types of presidencies.[32][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Each regime has a dominant party and an opposition party. The President involved in starting it is a "reconstructive" one, and that President's successors in the dominant party are "articulating" ones. However, opposition-party Presidents are often elected, "preemptive" ones. A regime ends with having a President or two from its dominant party, a "disjunctive" President.

Klingberg cycles of United States foreign policy

Frank Klingberg has proposed a cyclic theory of US foreign policy.[29][42][43][44][45] It states that the US alternates between extroverted phases, phases involving military adventures, challenging other nations, and annexing territory, and introverted phases, phases with the absence of these activities.

See also

References

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  3. ^ Plato (1969). "VIII, IX". Republic. Translated by Shorey, Paul. Harvard University Press.
  4. ^ G.A. Plauche (2011). The Cycle of Decline of Regimes in Plato's Republic.
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  6. ^ Hermans, M.A. (1991). Polybius' Theory of the Anacyclosis of Constitutions (Masters thesis) – via University of Cape Town.
  7. ^ Polybius (1889). "VI". The Histories. Translated by Shuckburgh, Evelyn. Macmillan.
  8. ^ Cicero (1928). De re publica. Translated by Keyes, C.W.
  9. ^ Beek, Aaron L. (2011). "Cicero Reading Polybius".
  10. ^ Machiavelli (1883). "I:2". Discourses on Livy.
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  14. ^ George Modelski. Long Cycles in World Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987.
  15. ^ Jimmy Myers. "Missouri Western Faculty Discuss Iraq War." St. Joseph News-Press. 2 Mar 2007.
  16. ^ George Modelski. Long Cycles in World Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987, 102
  17. ^ Mark Rupert. "Hegemonic Stability Theory. "Hegemonic Stability Theory". Archived from the original on 2002-12-14. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
  18. ^ George Modelski. Long Cycles in World Politics. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987, 100, 135 and 227.
  19. ^
    Goldstein, Joshua (1988), Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age
    , Yale University Press
  20. ^ The term long wave originated from a poor early translation of long cycle from Russian to German. Freeman, Chris; Louçã, Francisco (2001) pp 70
  21. doi:10.5070/SD941003306
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  22. ^ Rudebusch, Glenn D. (4 February 2016). "Will the Economic Recovery Die of Old Age?". FRBSF Economic Letter. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  23. ^ Drautzburg, Thorsten. "Why Are Recessions So Hard to Predict? Random Shocks and Business Cycles." Economic Insights 4, no. 1 (2019): 1-8.
  24. ^ Slutzky, Eugen. "The summation of random causes as the source of cyclic processes." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1937): 105-146.
  25. ^ Chatterjee, Satyajit. "From cycles to shocks: Progress in business cycle theory." Business Review 3 (2000): 27-37.
  26. ^ "Клиодинамика - математические методы в истории". cliodynamics.ru. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
  27. ISBN 9781400830688. table adapted from First Chapter
    Table 1.1
  28. ^ Schlesinger, Arthur Sr. (1949). Paths to the Present. Macmillan.
  29. ^ a b Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. (1999). The Cycles of American History. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
  30. ^ "CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY". austincc.edu.
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  32. ^
    S2CID 147647668
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  33. ^ Huntington, Samuel P. (1981). American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony. Belknap Press.
  34. ^ Drutman, Lee (2016-01-06). "This 1981 book eerily predicted today's distrustful and angry political mood". Vox. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
  35. ^ "The Presidency in the Political Order". spot.colorado.edu. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
  36. ^ "What Time Is It? Here's What the 2016 Election Tells Us About Obama, Trump, and What Comes Next | The Nation". Archived from the original on 2020-01-06. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  37. ^ "Opinion | The Fight Over How Trump Fits in With the Other 44 Presidents - The New York Times". The New York Times.
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  40. JSTOR 27552023
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  41. ^ Adler, William (2016-12-19). "Donald Trump will follow a failed political transformation, just like Benjamin Harrison". Vox. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
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  43. ^ Holmes, Jack E. (1985). The Mood/Interest Theory of American Foreign Policy. The University Press of Kentucky.
  44. JSTOR 2991801
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  45. ^ "(Page 7 of 56) - Long-Term US Foreign Policy Moods and Involvement in System Wars: Is There Any Way to Reduce the Odds? authored by Lawrence, Colin., Holmes, Jack., Johnson, Lauren. and Aardema, Sara". Archived from the original on 2020-01-23. Retrieved 2019-10-23.

Further reading

External links
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