Mine historical data to predict societal collapse

Historians are told to explain history ‘as it actually happened.’ However, a profusion of explanations have emerged to detail why things such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 or the Russian Revolution occurred. These competing explanations mean nobody is quite sure how things exactly happened. 

This is where researchers led by Daniel Hoyer come in. Hoyer and his team have developed an approach designed to bring scientific rigour to understanding historical developments and the patterns of history. Whilst, they admit that there is no single equation to determine it all, mathematics does play a huge role in ‘cliodynamics’, named for the Greek Goddess of History, Clio, and dynamics, the study of how and why complex systems change over time.

Hoyer and his team employ a wide range of techniques and a number of different statistical analyses and methods, including simple regression analyses, sometimes plotting measurements of, for example, population or the size of a country over time on a graph. Hoyer states that behind everything he and his team do are deep dives into historical context. They always ensure that documentary evidence informs their numbers.

To get a grasp of how Cliodynamics works, Hoyer and his team examined the role of the German bureaucracy in the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Under the German Empire before World War One, Germany’s bureaucracy was considered to be the defining public service by many, including pioneering sociologist Max Weber. 

In order to properly understand the role the bureaucracy played in the collapse of the Republic, Hoyer and his team would first disaggregate it into its component parts. These include: What are the chains of command? Are there full time bureaucrats? What are their responsibilities? What are the oversight and constraints on their power? Are they paid well enough to ensure they cannot be bribed? Are they pressured by forces outside the government?

The answers to these questions would be coded with a 1, indicating its presence, and a 0, to indicate its absence when comparing the bureaucracies of Weimar and Imperial Germany. The uncertainties and disagreements historians of the era have to offer would also be included.

A fascinating way to assess and quantify change and the breakdown of the bureaucracy, all of which enables wider assessments including the rise of disaffected youth in post WW1 Germany and the rise of violent confrontations within Germany.

This process has also been used by Hoyer and his team to assess 168 countries, and they have found that the causes of societal and political collapse in these countries across history are largely the same. Such causes include elite overproduction (Qing China) and the slowing down of growth (Rome) and as they note, these causes are still present today across the world.