Cycle No. 08 · Narrative
Are we in the Fourth Turning?
Strauss-Howe · Does it hold up?
Not testable on the record that exists — and that is the finding, not a dodge.
This page draws one period of a wave around the peak year this site uses for Strauss-Howe's cycle. It is not a forecast, and not evidence for or against the cycle.
The paired record (US Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem)) runs 236 years: 2.8 of the 3.0 full periods this site requires before it will run a test on an 84-year claim. Roughly 16 more years of that measurement would reach the floor.
This is not a verdict about this theory in particular: 0 of the 9 paired constructions on this site clear that floor. Long-cycle claims are hard to test because the records are short, not because the theorists are careless.
84-year sinusoid V-Dem libdem index: the record the verdict counts, drawn below on its own scale. A shape that looks alike is not a test.
~80–90 year saeculum - about one long human life - in four ~21-year turnings driven by generational replacement: high → awakening → unraveling → crisis (the 4th turning)
- Period
- 84 years
- Reference peak
- 1955
- Paired data
- V-Dem libdem index
Peak calibration
Move the peak yourself: calibrate this cycle →
Anchored to the post-WWII American High (~1955), the most recent completed First Turning peak in Strauss-Howe's saeculum. With period 84, the one period this site draws runs from a trough at 1913 to a trough at 1997 (1955 ± 42). The predicted Fourth-Turning Crisis climax (~2020) falls after it, so nothing is drawn there; a wave repeated past 1997 would put ~2020 on a rising arm, neither a trough nor a peak. The framework actually has two cultural highs per saeculum (the 1T High and the 2T Awakening), so reducing it to a single sinusoid is a forced choice; we use the structural High. With this site's 1955 anchor and 84-year period, ~2020 is neither a peak nor a trough.
CaveatGenerational theory is contested in academic history. The single-sinusoid representation is a forced reduction of a four-turnings model. Treat skeptically.
Confidence classification: Narrative — an interpretive reading of history — no statistical fitting behind the period. It grades the theorist's own evidence for the period; a paired data series is a separate comparison this site added. Every cycle on this site is drawn as at most one period of a pure sinusoid, cut at today where that period has not ended yet, built from one documented period and one documented reference peak, each taken from the theory or, where it gives none, chosen by this site — a deliberately naïve construction, so that disagreement between theories rather than parameter fitting is what you see. See about for why this site draws each cycle once, not as a repeating wave.
Where this curve plots its extrema
Computed from period 84 and reference peak 1955, over the one period this site draws (1913–1997). These are positions of this construction, not dates claimed by the theorist.
- Peaks
- 1955
- Troughs
- 1913 · 1997
Paired data series
US Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem)
index 0–1V-Dem liberal-democracy index for the US, 1789–2025, scale 0–1
Why this pairingGenerational-cycle theory predicts crisis lows that line up with stress on liberal-democratic institutions. V-Dem's recent US drop is the kind of movement that prediction points to, which is why it is paired here. It is an exploratory proxy: a fall in one index cannot show whether a 'Fourth Turning' is underway.
- Source
- V-Dem Institute, Country-Year Dataset v16, March 2026 (retrieved via Our World in Data)
- License
- CC BY-SA 4.0
Spectral verdict
Insufficient data — no test possible · 2.8 of 3.0 required periods
The US Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem) record spans 236 years — 2.8 of the 3.0 full periods this site requires before testing a 84-year claim. No test was run and no p-value exists: the honest verdict is that the record is too short to test the claim at all.
“Insufficient data” is an eligibility outcome under the site's pre-registered 3.0-period rule - the test is declined, not failed - and is not evidence for or against the theory.
This pairing has no p-value. Separately, this site's secondary cross-grid panel borrows a theory's period and sets it against a record that theory is not paired with, so none of its re-pairings is this theory's own claim. This page's record, US Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem), was set against 6 other theories' periods: Schlesinger Jr.'s 30 years, Turchin's 50 years, Kondratiev wave's 54 years, Carlota Perez's 55 years, Huntington's 60 years and Ray Dalio's 75 years (lowest p 0.094). None of these 6 reached p < 0.05 under either noise model. All 19 re-pairings, cell by cell →
Target period 84 years · Insufficient data — no test possible · 2.8 of 3.0 required periods
Swipe sideways for the whole figure
Wider than this window: use the arrows at its edges to see the rest, or click it to open it full size
No test was run: this record covers 2.8 of the 3.0 full periods the pre-registered test requires, so the spectrum in the figure is descriptive only. Had the record qualified, the test would be a harmonic regression at the exact stated period against an AR(1) red-noise null (99,999 bootstrap draws). Read the protocol under spectral testing on the methods page, or fetch the machine-readable verdicts.json.
Reuse this
Kooi, D. (2026). Sinusoidal History: Strauss-Howe — saeculum. https://sinusoidalhistory.com/cycles/strauss-howe · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21998618. Paired data series: US Liberal Democracy Index (V-Dem) (V-Dem Institute, Country-Year Dataset v16, March 2026 (retrieved via Our World in Data)), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Our code and the original chart files are MIT-licensed as our own work. The plotted data stay under their upstream terms, listed above: CC BY series carry their attribution requirement with them, and a series with no explicit license is shown here without any grant we can pass on. Reuse our figures and code with attribution; honour the data terms for the plotted series.
Open this cycle in the interactive chart to calibrate its peak and period against the data, or compare it with the other nine on one axis.