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This article revisits the prediction, made in 2010, that the 2010–2020 decade would likely be a period of growing instability in the United States and Western Europe Turchin P. 2018. This prediction was based on a computational model that quantified in the USA such structural-demographic forces for instability as popular immiseration, intraelite competition, and state weakness prior to 2010. Using these trends as inputs, the model calculated and projected forward in time the Political Stress Indicator, which in the past was strongly correlated with socio-political instability. Ortmans et al. Turchin P. 2010 conducted a similar structural-demographic study for the United Kingdom. Here we use the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive for the US, UK, and several major Western European countries to assess these structural-demographic predictions. We find that such measures of socio-political instability as anti-government demonstrations and riots increased dramatically during the 2010–2020 decade in all of these countries.

The stability of socio-political systems and the risks of destabilisation in the process of political transformation are among the most important issues of social development; the transition to democracy may pose a serious threat to the stability of a respective socio-political system. This article studies the issue of democratisation. It highlights the high economic and social costs of a rapid transition to democracy for countries unprepared for it—democracy resulting from revolutions or similar large-scale events. The authors believe that in a number of cases authoritarian regimes turn out to be more effective in economic and social terms than emerging democracies, especially those of a revolutionary type, which are often incapable of ensuring social order and may have a swing to authoritarianism. Effective authoritarian regimes can also be a suitable form of transition to an efficient and stable democracy. Using historical and contemporary examples, particularly the recent events in Egypt, the article investigates various correlations between revolutionary events and the possibility of establishing democracy in a society.

Issues of sociopolitical systems' stability and risks of their destabilization in process of political transformations belong to the most important ones as regards the social development perspectives, as has been shown again by the recent events in Ukraine. In this respect it appears necessary to note that the transition to democracy may pose a serious threat to the stability of respective sociopolitical systems. This article studies the issue of democratization of countries within globalization context, it points to the unreasonably high economic and social costs of a rapid transition to democracy as a result of revolutions or of similar large-scale events for the countries unprepared for it. The authors believe that in a number of cases the authoritarian regimes turn out to be more effective in economic and social terms in comparison with emerging democracies especially of the revolutionary type, which are often incapable to insure social order and may have a swing to authoritarianism. Effective authoritarian regimes can also be a suitable form of a transition to efficient and stable democracy. The article investigates various correlations between revolutionary events and possibilities of establishing democracy in a society on the basis of the historical and contemporary examples as well as the recent events in Egypt. The authors demonstrate that one should take into account a country's degree of sociopolitical and cultural preparedness for democratic institutions. In case of favorable background, revolutions can proceed smoothly ("velvet revolutions") with efficient outcomes. On the contrary, democracy is established with much difficulty, throwbacks, return to totalitarianism, and with outbreaks of violence and military takeovers in the countries with high illiteracy rate and rural population share, with low female status, with widespread religious fundamental ideology, where a substantial part of the population hardly ever hears of democracy while the liberal intellectuals idealize this form, where the opposing parties are not willing to respect the rules of democratic game when defeated at elections.

The article studies the issue of the democratization of countries within the globalization context, it points to the unreasonably high economic and social costs of a rapid transition to the democracy as a result of revolutions or of similar large-scale events for those countries that are unprepared for this. The authors believe that in a number of cases the authoritarian regimes turn out to be more effective in economic and social term in comparison with emerging democracies, especially of the revolutionary type which are often incapable to ensure a social order and may have a swing to authoritarianism. Effective authoritarian regimes can also be a suitable form of a transition to an efficient and stable democracy

The formation of the Afroeurasian world-system was one of the crucial points of social evolution, starting from which the social evolution rate and effectiveness increased dramatically. In the present article we analyze processes and scales of global integration in historical perspective, starting with the Agrarian Revolution. We connect the main phases of historical globalization with the processes of the development of the Afroeurasian world-system. In the framework of the Afroeurasian world-system the integration began a few thousand years BCE. In this world-system the continental and supracontinental links became rather developed long before the Great Geographic Discoveries and thus, they could quite be denoted as global (albeit in a somehow limited sense). As some researchers are still inclined to underestimate the scale of those links in the pre-Industrial era, it appears necessary to provide additional empirical support for our statement. It also turns necessary to apply a special methodology (which necessitated the use of the world-system approach). We analyze some versions of periodization of globalization history. We also propose our own periodization of globalization history using as its basis the growing scale of intersocietal links as an indicator of the level of globalization development.

The present yearbook (which is the fourth in the series) is subtitled Trends & Cycles. It is devoted to cyclical and trend dynamics in society and nature; special attention is paid to economic and demographic aspects, in particular to the mathematical modeling of the Malthusian and post-Malthusian traps' dynamics. An increasingly important role is played by new directions in historical research that study long-term dynamic processes and quantitative changes. This kind of history can hardly develop without the application of mathematical methods. There is a tendency to study history as a system of various processes, within which one can detect waves and cycles of different lengths – from a few years to several centuries, or even millennia. The contributions to this yearbook present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global historical, political, economic and demographic processes, as well as their mathematical models. This issue of the yearbook consists of three main sections: (I) Long-Term Trends in Nature and Society; (II) Cyclical Processes in Pre-industrial Societies; (III) Contemporary History and Processes. We hope that this issue of the yearbook will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences.

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The fact that up to the 1960s world population growth had been characterized by a hyperbolic trend was discovered quite some time ago. A number of mathematical models describing this trend have already been proposed. Some of these models are rather compact but do not account for the mechanisms of this trend; others account for this trend in a very convincing way, but are rather complex. In fact, the general shape of world population growth dynamics could be accounted for with strikingly simple models like the one which we would like to propose ourselves: dN/dt = a (bK – N) N (1); dK/dt = cNK (2), where N is the world population, K is the level of technology/knowledge, bKcorresponds to the number of people (N), which the earth can support with the given level of technology (K). Empirical tests performed by us suggest that the proposed set of two differential equations account for 96.2– 99.78% of all the variation in demographicmacrodynamics of the world in the last 12,000 years. We believe that the patterns observed in pre-modern world population growth are not coincidental at all. In fact, they reflect population dynamics of quite a real entity, the world system. Note that the presence of a more or less well integrated world system comprising most of the world population is a necessary precondition, without which the correlation between the world population numbers generated by hyperbolic growth models and the observed ones would not be especially high. In fact, our findings could be regarded as a striking illustration of the fact well known in complexity studies — that chaotic dynamics at the microlevel can generate a highly deterministic macrolevel behavior. Against this background it is hardly surprising to find that the simplest regularities accounting for extremely high proportions of all the macrovariation can be found just for the largest possible social system — the world system.

The role of China in the world economy is constantly growing. In particular we observe that it plays more and more important role in the support of theworld economic growth (as well as high prices of certain very important commodities). In the meantime the perspectives of the Chinese economy (as well as possible fates of the Chinese society) remain unclear, whereas respective forecasts look rather contradictory. That is why the search for new aspects and modes of analysis of possible development of China turns out to be rather important for the forecasting of global futures. This article employs a combination of scientific methods that imply (a) the analysis at the level of Chinese economic model; (b) the analysis at regional level (at this level the Chinese economic model is compared with the regional East Asian model); (c) the analysis at the global level that relies on the modified world-system approach that allows to answer the question whether China will replace the USA as the global leader. It is important that the analysis is conducted simultaneously in economic, social, demographic, and political dimensions. As regards the analysis of specific features of the Chinese model as an especial type of the East Asian model (that is based on the export orientation, capital & technology importation, as well as cheap labor force), we note as organic features of the Chinese model the totalitarian power of the Communist Party and the immenseness of resources. As regards special features of the Chinese model, we note (in addition to "cheap ecology" and cheap labor force) and emphasize that China has a multilevel (in a way unique) system of growth driving forces, where, as opposed to developed states, the dominant role belongs not to native private capital, but to state corporations, local authorities and foreign business. This explains the peculiarities of the Chinese investment (or rather overinvestment), which determines high growth rate up to a very significant degree. A unique feature of the Chinese model is ...

The role of China in the world economy is constantly growing. In particular we observe that it plays more and more important role in the support of theworld economic growth (as well as high prices of certain very important commodities). In the meantime the perspectives of the Chinese economy (as well as possible fates of the Chinese society) remain unclear, whereas respective forecasts look rather contradictory. That is why the search for new aspects and modes of analysisof possible development of China turns out to be rather important for the forecasting of globalfutures. This article employs a combination of scientific methods that imply (a) the analysis at the level of Chinese economic model; (b) the analysis at regional level (at this level the Chinese economic model is compared with the regional East Asian model); (c) the analysis at the global level that relies on the modified world-system approach that allows to answer the question whether China will replace the USA as the global leader. It is important that the analysis isconducted simultaneously in economic, social, demographic, and political dimensions. As regards the analysis of specific features of the Chinese model as an especial type of the East Asian model (that is based on the export orientation, capital & technology importation, as well as cheap labor force), we note as organic features of the Chinese model the totalitarian powerof the Communist Party and the immenseness of resources. As regards special features of theChinese model, we note (in addition to "cheap ecology" and cheap labor force) and emphasizethat China has a multilevel (in a way unique) system of growth driving forces, where, as opposed to developed states, the dominant role belongs not to native private capital, but to state corporations, local authorities and foreign business. This explains the peculiarities of the Chinese investment (or rather over investment), which determines high growth rate up to avery significant degree. A unique feature of the Chinese model is the competition of provincesand territories for investments and high growth indicators. As regards perspectives of the global hegemony of China, we intend to demonstrate that, onthe one hand, economic and political positions of China will strengthen in the forthcoming decades, but, on the other hand, China, assuming all possible future success, will be unable totake the USA position in the World System. We believe that in a direct connection with the development of globalization processes the hegemony cycle pattern is likely to come to its end,which will lead to the World System reconfiguration and the emergence of its new structurethat will allow the World System to continue its further development without a hegemon. Finally, the article describes some possible scenarios of the development of China. Wedemonstrate that China could hardly avoid serious difficulties and critical situations (including those connected with demographic problems); however, there could be different scenarios ofhow China will deal with the forthcoming crisis. We also come to the conclusion that it wouldbe better for China to achieve a slowdown to moderate growth rates (that would allow China to go through the forthcoming complex transition period with less losses) than to try to returnat any cost to explosive growth rates attested in the 2000s.

The escape from the 'Malthusian trap' is shown to tend to generate in a rather systematic way quite serious political upheavals. Some demographic structural mechanisms that generate such upheavals have been analyzed, which has made it possible to develop a mathematical model of the respective processes. The forecast of political instability in Sub-Saharan African countries in 2015–2050 produced on the basis of this model is presented.

The chiefdom concept is one of the most productive in social anthropology and
political evolution. It helps to deeply understand the process of complication of
society's structure and the development path from stateless society to early
states. However, even when states spread everywhere, chiefdoms still remained
political and administrative actors. At present one can find some features of
chiefdoms in developing countries (e.g., in some regions of Africa) and in different
kinds of organizations especially in illegal and terrorist ones. Thus, using
chiefdom theories one can clarify a few basics of such kind of organization
as well. Therefore, it makes sense to show how such chiefdom-like structures
preserve and develop the features of ancient polities within them.
Thus, in the modern world, along with states, one can find numerous alternative
social and political organizations, which, to a greater or lesser extent, have
some features that are similar to certain ancient polities. How and why is this
possible? We hope that this paper will shed some light on this question. However,
it requires and deserves further study.