More aspirants of high status than society can sustain
A university graduation ceremony in Ottawa, Canada (2016)
Elite overproduction is a concept developed by Peter Turchin that describes the condition of a society that has an excess supply of potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure.[1][2][3] This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively low socioeconomic status.[1][2][3]
Turchin first described his theory in an article published in 2010.[4] His model cannot foretell precisely how a crisis will unfold; it can only yield probabilities. Turchin likened this to the accumulation of deadwood in a forest over many years, paving the way for a cataclysmic forest fire later on: it is possible to predict a massive conflagration, but not what causes it.[5] The model also does not offer definitive solutions, though it can clarify the trade-offs of various options.[6] For Turchin, history suggests that a non-violent end of elite overproduction is possible, citing the two decades after World War II in the United States, a time of economic redistribution and reversal of upward social mobility.[7][6]
Overview [ edit ]
According to Turchin and Jack Goldstone, periods of political instability have throughout human history been due to the purely self-interested behavior of the elite.[8] When the economy faced an expansion in the workforce, exerting a downward pressure on wages, the elite generally kept much of the wealth generated to themselves, resisting taxation and income redistribution. In the face of intensifying competition, they also sought to restrict upward mobility to preserve their power and status for their descendants.[9] These actions exacerbated inequality, a key driver of sociopolitical turbulence[9] due to the proneness of the relatively well-off to radicalism.[10] In the twenty-first-century Western countries, the popularity of progressive political beliefs among university graduates, for instance, may be due to widespread underemployment rather than from exposure to progressive ideas or experiences during their studies.[11][12] Stagnant wages and housing unaffordability make young professionals more likely to view the status quo as a zero-sum game.[13] Turchin and his colleagues have argued that strife among elites helps explain social disturbances during later years of various Chinese dynasties, the late Roman empire, the Aztec Empire before the Spanish conquest, the French Wars of Religion, and France before the Revolution.[4][14] Turchin correctly predicted in 2010 that this situation would cause social unrest in the United States during the 2020s.[4][15]
Turchin's model also explains why polygamous societies tend to be more unstable than monogamous ones: men of high status in a polygamous society tend to have more children, consequently producing more elites.[16]
In an essay, philosopher Francis Bacon cautioned of the threat of sedition if "more are bred scholars, than preferment can take off."[17] Political economist Joseph Schumpeter asserted that a liberal capitalist society contains the seeds of its own downfall as it breeds a class of intellectuals hostile to both capitalism and liberalism, though without which these intellectuals cannot exist.[18] Before Turchin, political scientist Samuel Huntington had warned that a disconnect between upward social mobility and the ability of the institutions to absorb these new individuals could lead to sociopolitical decay.[19] Historian John Lewis Gaddis observed that while young people have continuously wanted to challenge the norms of society, by investing so much in education, major countries on both sides of the Cold War gave the young the tools to inflict the tumult of the late 1960s to early 1970s upon their homelands.[20] Economist Thomas Sowell noted that many intellectuals are shielded by tenure and the dominant ideologies of their societies and as such may face no consequences for their recommendations, despite wielding great power and influence.[21]
By country [ edit ]
Australia [ edit ]
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