[G]rowing socio-political instability results from multiple interacting factors: economic, political, and cultural. - Peter Turchin

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

[I]nequality... at least in this model, is not a direct driver. It's a proxie for the direct drivers, which is immiseration and elite overproduction.

It became clear... through quantitative historical analysis that [throughout time] complex societies everywhere are affected by recurrent and, to a... degree, predictable waves of political instability, brought about by the same basic set of forces...