Emmanuel Todd

French demographer and historian who predicted the fall of the Soviet Union in 1976 (La Chute finale) based on infant mortality data — and who developed a theory that family structures (nuclear family, stem family, communal family) determine political ideologies — explaining why communism took hold in Russia and China but not in England.

Demonstrates that political ideology is determined by pre-existing family structures — Todd's key insight is that different regions have historically different family types (nuclear egalitarian in England, communal in Russia and China, stem in Germany and Japan) and these structures generate corresponding political ideologies (liberalism, communism, fascism) — making political ideology the superstructure of anthropological base.