[M]y colleagues and I... focused on cycles of political integration and disintegration, particularly on state formation and state collapse. - Peter Turchin

[W]e should not expand our system of higher education... An excess of young people with advanced degrees has been one of the chief causes of instability...

The theory represents complex human societies as systems with three main compartments (the general population, the elites, and the state) interacting with each other and with socio-political instability via a web of nonlinear feedbacks.

Specific triggers... are difficult, perhaps... impossible to predict. ...[S]tructural pressures build up slowly and more predictably, and are amenable to analysis and forecasting.