The evolution of the mechanism of social development: An attempt at a four-factor analysis

In the author’s 2018 papers, an attempt was made to describe the mechanism of the evolution of Western countries from the 14th to the 20th centuries as the interaction of four groups of factors: technological progress, civic culture, institutions, and welfare. The focus was on the ascending branch of the evolution of Western countries. In this paper the results obtained are clarified, and a hypothesis is proposed that the potential of this mechanism has been exhausted, giving rise to a crisis in the economic and political systems of these countries, as well as in the system of international relations. It is shown that this crisis has resulted from a number of trends: a slowdown in technological progress and the spread of distorted innovations, a decline in economic growth, a decay of civic culture associated with the effect of destructive altruism, and the degradation of institutions of competition caused by the “dirty hands problem”. Trump’s policies, largely driven by the imperial syndrome characteristic of the US ruling elite, are incapable of reversing these trends and are leading to the destruction of the world order. The paper also discusses the hypothesis that a possible way out of the crisis may lie in the formation of institutions of cooperation through the combined efforts of the European Union and Russia.