Are there five, six or even more different lengths of societal cycles?

Epoch Change

2 Jul

Across history, patterns of rise and fall, peace and war, innovation and decline seem to unfold in rhythms - some as short as a decade, others stretching over a century. Are there five, six, or even more distinct lengths to these societal cycles?

Epoch Change blog series, No. 5

Dr. Tuomo Kuosa

Tuomo is co-founder and Director of Futures Research at Futures Platform. He holds a PhD from the Turku School of Economics and is an Associate Professor (Docent) of Strategic Foresight at the Finnish National Defence University.

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Across the literature on macrohistorical cycles, certain recurring time spans appear repeatedly. Through my review of these, I’ve discovered five cycle lengths that are more or less standard. Each cycle plays a different role in world history, and has its own unique logic or retroaction model. The authors of each theory use their own terminology. To get a more manageable overview of these societal cycle theories, I’ve simplified the language into five key categories according to each cycle's length.

1. Nano Cycles (≈ 12 years): Short-Term Economic Cycles

The shortest of the cycles are Nikolai Kondratieff's Kondratieff cycles, which describe recurring economic patterns of booms, recessions, depressions, and improvements. With a typical length of around 12 years, they reflect the fast-paced oscillations within capitalist economies. (See the second article of this series for more information.)

2. Micro Cycles (15–30 years): Social Generations

Next come the social generations (approximately 15-30 years), which can be called Micro cycles. The role of generational shifts in societal development is discussed, e.g., by Sima Qian, Ibn Khaldun, Peter Turchin, Giuseppe Ferrari, Arnold Toynbee, and Strauss & Howe. (See the third and sixth articles of this series for more information.)

3. Mid Cycles (40–60 years): War–Peace Cycles and Techno-Economic Platforms

Mid cycles span roughly 40-60 years. These fall into three main categories:

First are the war–peace cycles, which describe the recurring patterns of societal violence. Notable thinkers include, e.g., Turcin, Nefedov, and Khaldun, who combine two generation cycles into one larger set of 50-60 years, called fathers-and-sons cycles. The basic principle here is that violent periods are like a fire or an epidemic. The population that has experienced its horrors gets immunised and seeks pacification and stability. This peaceful episode usually lasts for one generation—around 20-30 years. But then, a new generation who doesn’t know the ravages of the war arises, and since the underlying causes that led to the first conflict are still latent, violence breaks out again. Eventually, these episodes recur every two generations, approximately every 40-60 years.

Then, some scholars like Toynbee divide a regular war–peace cycle of 100–120 years into two sub-cycles of 50–60 years, each typically containing a 25–30-year period of peace followed by a 25–30-year war-like period.

The third category relates to technological-economic transformations. These approximately 50-year-long cycles fall under Kondratieff’s theory, which describes how, every approximately 50 years, capitalist systems form a new technological platform that also becomes the foundation for a new business ecosystem.

4. Meta Cycles (70–100 years): World Hegemony Transitions

Spanning 70 to 100 years, Meta cycles capture broader historical arcs. They fall into two categories:

One is the ‘saeculum’: a roughly 80–90-year period made up of four 20-year generations/societal turnings, as theorised by Strauss & Howe. This cycle describes societal renewal as it passes through stages of growth, awakening, crisis, and reconstruction.

The second form of the Meta cycle is the world hegemony transitions. Several theories on this topic have concluded that global politics evolve through approximately 70-100-year recurring cycles, dominated by one hegemonic power at a time.

Out of these, George Modelski's Long Cycle Theory is one of the most prominent ones. It argues that these hegemony cycles are closely tied to maritime and commercial dominance. Each cycle is characterised by a progression from initial dominance to a period of decline, competition and ultimately to a global war, followed by the rise of a new hegemon. Other scholars like Charles Doran and Joshua S. Goldstein have developed their own relatively similar world hegemony transition theories.

5. Macro Cycles (100–130 years): Between Great Wars and Revolutions

Finally, the longest of the standard cycles in literature are the Macro cycles (ca. 100-130 years). All theories that discuss cycles of this length and magnitude appear to focus on extended war-peace cycles or societal transitions between two extensive war periods. Essentially, such macro cycles are typically made up of two consecutive units of 50-60-year cycles.

For example, Toynbee, who has probably developed the most elaborate war-peace macro cycle theory, called regular cycles, creates such double units within the meta cycles. As discussed above, he justifies the combination of two such units, with approximately 50-60-year cycles, by their different roles within a regular cycle. In the first 50-60 years cycle, there is a General Peace period, which is followed by a General War period. Each of these periods lasts about 20-30 years. The second 50-60-year cycle begins with a period of Breathing Space and is followed by the Supplementary Wars period. Following this is a new General Peace period, which marks the beginning of the next regular cycle of 100-120 years.

Alongside Toynbee, Flores-Fernández and Martínez-López provide a list of approximately ten more macrohistorians who have adopted a similar timeframe of 100-130 years, especially when discussing the period between very large wars or transitions. The two earliest of these are the works of authors such as Ibn Khaldun and Giuseppe Ferrari, who both identified a package of three 30-40-year generations between great wars or revolutions.

In the seventh instalment of this Epoch Change blog series, I’ll explore the possibility of an even larger-scale pattern—the Mega cycles, spanning approximately 250 years. They are the largest known cycle entities, and represent a sixth possible cycle length, which I call the Epochs of world history. But before diving into that topic, the next blog will ask a crucial question: Why do the lengths of these cycles vary?

This article is the fifth instalment in Dr. Tuomo Kuosa’s Epoch Change series. You can find the other articles in this series listed below: