Development

Introduction

• Political development became a subfield of comparative politics in the 1960s, influenced by modernization theory.

• Before the 1960s, comparative politics focused mainly on the forms of government in advanced industrial nations, like Europe and the former Soviet Union.

• The emergence of new states in Asia and Africa following the breakup of European empires and the Cold War conflict led to a shift in comparative politics towards the study of the ‘new’, ‘emerging’, ‘underdeveloped’, or ‘developing’ nations.

• Modernization theory became the dominant paradigm, linking economic development, social change, and democratization.

• In the early 1960s, political modernization became synonymous with political development, emphasizing transitions towards democratic politics, growth of interest groups, development of bureaucracies, political parties, and democratic institutions.

• In the 1970s, the dependency theory, which developed in Latin America, replaced modernization theory as a dominant explanatory framework, focusing on the external constraints imposed by global capitalism on political development.

• However, as several Asian countries and Argentina experienced rapid economic growth, the dependency theory lost credibility as an explanatory theory.

• In the 1980s, Statism emerged as a new perspective for explaining political development.

• The 1980s also witnessed a wave of democratization, weakening and often ending military, authoritarian, and communist regimes.

Modernization Theory and Political Development

• Explicit efforts to theorize political development began in the latter half of the 1950s, shaped by modernization theory.

• Modernization theory was informed by two theories: evolutionary and functional theories.

• Evolutionary theory assumed that social change is unidirectional, progressive, and gradual, moving societies from a primitive stage to an advanced stage, making societies more similar as they evolved.

• Functionalist theory emphasized the interdependence of social institutions, the importance of pattern variables at the cultural level, and the built-in process of change through homeostatic equilibrium.

• Modernization theory shaped ideas about development and change in economics and sociology in the post-World War years.

The Economic Approach

• In the discipline of economics, development became a major focus following Karl Polanyi's work, The Grand Transformation during World War II.

• In the 1950s, Bruce Morris and Everett von Hagen, and in the 1960s, W. W. Rostow and Robert Heilbroner worked on economic development in emerging nations.

• The rich and developed countries (United States and European nations) became the reference points for development.

• It was assumed that less developed countries would follow the same trajectory of development and eventually catch up with advanced countries.

• W.W. Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth illustrated this thinking on development.

• Rostow identified five stages of development that all societies pass through:

  • Traditional societies: Dominance of agricultural production and limited productivity.

  • Preconditions for take-off: Resulting from scientific innovations and surpluses that can be used for investment.

  • Take-off stage: A phase of self-sustained growth, with manufacturing driving development.

  • Drive to maturity: Replacement of original growth sectors by new ones, such as heavy industry.

  • Age of high mass consumption: Emphasis on consumption rather than production.

• Rostow argued that the most politically difficult period in a nation's development was the "preconditions" stage, characterized by social dislocation and psychological insecurities.

• Rostow's stages and his focus on economic factors as the driving force of development shared similarities with classical Marxists.

• Marx emphasized a dialectical process with clear breaks from the past, often violent, whereas Rostow envisioned a smooth and unilinear path of development for all countries.

• Like Rostow, other economists in the 1960s believed development problems were internal and could be solved through external stimulation, development of science and technology, and entrepreneurship.

• They also assumed that political and social development would follow economic growth and industrialization.