LEADERSHIP GENERATIONS - A LONG-WAVE MACROHISTORY

The central theses of William Strauss and Neil Howe's book Generations are reviewed and data they present on national leadership shares of successive cohort generations are analyzed. Their generational cycles are shown to repeat with Kuznets cycle/Kondratiev wave rhythmicity, and generational shifts to coincide with long-wave crises. This discovery leads to a reevaluation of their generational typology from the Civil War to the Great Depression and a reformulation of the generational characterizations in a format consistent with long-wave relationships of polity and economy. The effect is to enrich and generalize both generational and long-wave theory.