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 s uccessive cohort generations are analyzed. Their generational cycles a re 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 c haracterizations in a format consistent with long-wave relationships o f polity and economy. The effect is to enrich and generalize both gene rational and long-wave theory.