KaiserJeep wrote:Because there is no reason to do so because there is nothing gained by such analysis. The idea is hardly new as you point out, much time has been devoted to the process of drawing parallels, and there is no clearly distinguishable result. Arguing about whether one has learned anything usefull via such analysis is a dead giveaway that such efforts are in fact wasted.
Except that Peter Turchin cites a lot of work by fellow historians on cycles of history in premodern societies. Work that involves various quantitative measures, like counts of incidents of political violence and amounts of coin hoards. Before people stuffed money into their mattresses, they buried it in their backyards.
As to the US, there is a lot of evidence that supports the Schlesinger cycles. Consider party systems.
The first party system, Federalists vs. Democratic-Republicans, emerged during Hamiltonian federalism, a conservative period, though it codified pre-existing divisions. The Federalists were dominant at first, but when Jefferson was elected in 1800, starting a liberal era, the D-R's became dominant.
Andrew Jackson's election in 1828 started another liberal era and the second party system, D-R's/Democrats vs. Whigs.
Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 started another liberal era and the third party system, Democrats vs. Republicans, Democrats in the South and Republicans in he North.
William McKinley's election in 1896 started the fourth party system, a shakeup of the third one where the Republicans were dominant.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's election in 1932 started another liberal era and the fifth party system, a shakeup of the fourth one where the Democrats were dominant at first.
But over the last half-century, the two parties have gradually been realigning, to the point that they are now a mirror image of what they were like a century ago. So a sixth system has been gradually emerging.