Society · Dynamics
StructuralDemographicCycle
Cycles of population growth, elite crowding, state crisis and disorder in agrarian states
Definition
Mechanism
In an agrarian state, a long period of order lets population grow into its MalthusianTrap, which lowers wages and raises rents, enriching landowners and enlarging the elite. Elite numbers and ambitions outgrow the positions and income available, a Capacitylag in which elites compete and split into factions, while the state's revenue falls behind the cost of its army and administration. Fiscal crisis, elite conflict and popular unrest bring a period of disorder in which population and elite numbers fall through war, famine, disease and loss of status, until the conditions for a new period of growth and order return. The duration varies with these interacting dynamics. Crises produced by an outside shock without this build-up, and societies whose population is not near its limit, are not instances.
Invariants
- Population grows during a long period of order toward the limit its land and techniques allow.
- Elite numbers or ambitions grow faster than the positions and income available to them.
- The state's revenue falls behind its costs before the disorder.
- Population and elite numbers fall during the disorder.
Risks
Failure modes
Rhythm forced
a two-to-three-century rhythm is imposed on histories whose crises do not follow it.
One cause
the crisis is attributed to population alone, ignoring elite and fiscal dynamics, or the reverse.
Prediction by analogy
the cycle is projected onto societies far from their population limit, such as industrial ones, without checking its conditions.
Relationships
Builds on
References
Mind
Expectations or demands increase ahead of the capacity available to meet them
Population grows until output per person falls back to where births and deaths balance, so better techniques raise numbers, not living standards
Nothing in this library builds on this pattern yet.