page_title: Andrey Korotayev
section_title: Cliodynamics and the study of the Arab Spring
hierarchical_section_title: Andrey Korotayev / Contributions / Mathematical modeling and Cliodynamics / Cliodynamics and the study of the Arab Spring
caption_attribution_description: IMG00064-20110125-1429
context_page_description: Andrey Vitalievich Korotayev is a Russian anthropologist, economic historian, comparative political scientist, demographer and sociologist, with major contributions to world-systems theory, cross-cultural studies, Near Eastern history, Big History, and mathematical modelling of social and economic macrodynamics.
  He is currently the Head of the Laboratory for Monitoring of the Risks of Sociopolitical Destabilization at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and a Senior Research Professor at the Center for Big History and System Forecasting of the Institute of Oriental Studies Институт Востоковедения Российской Академии Наук Институт Востоковедения Российской Академии Наук as well as in the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
  In addition, he is a Senior Research Professor of the International Laboratory on Political Demography and Social Macrodynamics of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, RANEPA - First International Conference on Political Demography and Social Macro-Dynamics as well as a Full Professor of the Faculty of Global Studies of the Moscow State University.
context_section_description: In the field of cliodynamics, Korotayev has developed a number of mathematical models of interaction between the very long-term, "millennial" hyperbolic trend dynamics of social systems and the shorter-term, "secular" (that is, observed at the scale of centuries), cyclical dynamics.
  He has also produced a number of mathematical models describing specifically long-term political-demographic dynamics of Egypt and used them for a demographic structural analysis of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Korotayev was one of the first to predict and assess the June 2013 Egyptian protests. Note also his study of 2013-2014 revolutionary wave  and his interpretation of the Arab Spring events as a trigger of a global "phase transition".
  Of special importance is his study of the hypothesis that population pressure causes increased warfare. This hypothesis has been recently criticised on the empirical grounds. Both studies focusing on specific historical societies and analyses of cross-cultural data have failed to find positive correlation between population density and incidence of warfare. Korotayev, in collaboration with Peter Turchin, has shown that such negative results do not falsify the population-warfare hypothesis. Population and warfare are dynamical variables, and if their interaction causes sustained oscillations, then we do not in general expect to find strong correlation between the two variables measured at the same time (that is, unlagged). Korotayev and Turchin have explored mathematically what the dynamical patterns of interaction between population and warfare (focusing on internal warfare) might be in both stateless and state societies. Next, they have tested the model predictions in several empirical case studies: early modern England, Han and Tang China, and the Roman Empire. Their empirical results have supported the population-warfare theory: Korotayev and Turchin have found that there is a tendency for population numbers and internal warfare intensity to oscillate with the same period but shifted in phase (with warfare peaks following population peaks). Furthermore, they have demonstrated that in the agrarian societies the rates of change of the two variables behave precisely as predicted by the theory: population rate of change is negatively affected by warfare intensity, while warfare rate of change is positively affected by population density. As Kohler and Reed put it, Korotayev and Turchin have demonstrated that "human population movements and sociopolitical strife play the roles of sometimes endogenous, sometimes exogenous, factors that on small spatial scales may seem inexplicable but which on longer temporal and wider spatial scales may have understandable rhythms".
  Thus, Korotayev has demonstrated that the Malthusian trap tends to generate sociopolitical upheavals. On the other hand, he has shown that the escape from the Malthusian trap is accompanied by another "trap" generating new sociopolitical upheavals (what he calls "a trap at the escape from the trap").
caption: The "Day of Revolt" on 25 January 2011 in Cairo
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