Jack Goldstone

Jack A. Goldstone (born September 30, 1953) is an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian, specializing in studies of social movements, revolutions, political demography, and the 'Rise of the West' in world history. He is an author or editor of 13 books and over 150 research articles. He is recognized as one of the leading authorities on the study of revolutions and long-term social change. His work has made foundational contributions to the fields of cliodynamics, economic history and political demography. He was the first scholar to describe in detail and document the long-term cyclical relationship between global population cycles and cycles of political rebellion and revolution. He was also a core member of the "California school" in world history, which replaced the standard view of a dynamic West and stagnant East with a ‘late divergence’ model in which Eastern and Western civilizations underwent similar political and economic cycles until the 18th century, when Europe achieved the technical breakthroughs of industrialization. He is also one of the founding fathers of the emerging field of political demography, studying the impact of local, regional, and global population trends on international security and national politics.

Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Professor of Public Policy and Eminent Scholar in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. In 2016 he was the Elman Family Professor of Public Policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Director of the HKUST Institute for Public Policy. In 2013–2015 he was the founding director of the Research Laboratory in Political Demography and Macrosocial Dynamics at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. He has also worked as a consultant of the US government, for example, serving as chair of the National Research Council's evaluation of USAID Democracy Assistance Programs. He has been a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and is currently a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center.