1. OHIO UNIVERSITY
HONG KONG PROGRAMME
POLS 340: THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPING AREAS
Instructor: Dr. Giuseppe Mario Saccone
LECTURE 1: Introduction
Explanation of the basic terminology used in the course:
Politics refers to the actions or activities which people use to achieve power in a country,
society or organization, or which ensure that power is used in a particular way;
Political science is the study of the ways in which power is a acquired and used in a country,
especially by those who govern the country. It is a collective term for a series of sub-
disciplines, including political theory, comparative politics, international relations, the
politics of developing areas, etc;
The developing areas, also called the Third World, cover those countries that are less
developed than the industrialized free-marked countries of the West and are concentrated in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Originally, they were called or called themselves the Third
World to be distinguished from Western industrialized nations (the First World), and from
the socialist countries of Eastern Europe belonging to the Soviet block (the Second World).
The early 1970s saw the beginnings of attempts by Third World countries to act together in
confronting the powerful industrialized countries over such matters as the level of prices of
primary products. The nations regarding themselves as a group that had been exploited in
the past by the developed nations and having a right to catch up with them.
Third World countries have relatively undeveloped modern industrial sectors, mainly
producers of primary commodities for the Western industrialized countries, and their
population are poor and chiefly engaged in agriculture. Typically they experience high
population growth and mortality rates; poor educational and health facilities; high level of
underemployment and, in some cases, political instability. The Third World has almost 75%
of the world population but consumes about 20% of its resources.
So far, the expression Third World is still used even though the Soviet Union and its allies
(the Second World) no longer exist. Nevertheless, Third World is being increasingly
substituted by developing areas, sometimes regardless of whether or not this actually refers
to countries that are really developing or are still seemingly hopelessly stuck in
underdevelopment.
In order to avoid confusion, it is important to point out from the beginning of the course that
in Asia Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan are not or no longer are
developing countries because their socio-economical conditions are by now typical or
comparable with the developed states.
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2. The politics of the developing areas: Colonialism and decolonization
(Quotations and summaries from: McMichael, Development and Social Change, pp.3-41)
Colonialism
Colonialism is the subjugation by physical and psychological force of one culture by another
– a colonizing power – through military conquest of territory. It comprises the era of
European expansion (fifteen to twentieth centuries), extending, for example, to Japanese
colonialism in the twentieth century and, more recently, Chinese colonization of Tibet.
Colonialism has two forms: colonies of settlement, which often eliminate indigenous people
(such as the Spanish destruction of the Aztec and Inca civilizations in the Americas), and
colonies of rule, where colonial administrators reorganize existing cultures to facilitate their
exploitation. The outcomes are, first, the cultural genocide or marginalization of indigenous
people; second, the extraction of labour, cultural treasures, and resources to enrich the
colonial power, its private interests, and public museums; third, the elaboration of ideologies
justifying colonial rule, including notions of racism and modernity; and fourth, various
responses by colonial subjects, ranging from death, through submission and internalization
of inferiority, to a variety of resistances – from everyday forms through sporadic uprisings to
mass mobilization.
Of course, not all situations fit the pattern described above. There are cases of areas that have
mostly benefited from colonial rule. In Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are the two most
striking examples of a mutually advantageous relation between colonizers and colonized.
Nevertheless, as it will appear from the next section the fundamental pattern of exploitation
between colonizers and colonized remains true in most cases.
The colonial division of labour
From the sixteenth century, European colonists and traders travelled along African coasts to
the New World and across the Indian Ocean and the China seas seeking fur, precious metals,
slave labour, spices, tobacco, cacao, potatoes, sugar, and cotton. The European colonial
powers – Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and Britain – and their merchant companies
exchanged manufactured good such as cloth, guns, and implements for these products and
for Africans taken into slavery and transported to the Americas. In the process they
reorganized the world.
The basic patter was to establish in the colonies specialized extraction and production of raw
materials and primary products that were unavailable in Europe. In turn, European
manufacturing grew on the basis of these products as they became industrial inputs and
foodstuffs for its industrial labour force. On a world scale, this specialization between
European economies and their colonies came to be termed the colonial, or international,
division of labour.
The colonial division of labour had two basic effects: it stimulated European
industrialization, and it forced non-Europeans into primary commodity production. Such
specialization disorganized non-European cultures, undermining local crafts and mixed-
farming systems as well as alienating their lands. Not only did non-Europeans cultures
surrender their own handicraft industries in this exchange, but they also were often forced to
reduce their agriculture to a specialized export monoculture, where local farmers became
producers of a single crop for export.
The destruction of non-European handicraft industries is well known. Perhaps the best-
known subjugation of native crafts occurred through Britain’s conquest of India. Until the
nineteenth century, Indian muslins and calicos were luxury imports into Europe (as were
Chinese silks and satins.) By that time, however, the East India company (which ruled India
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3. for the British crown, until 1858) undermined this Indian craft and, in its own words,
“succeeded in converting India from a manufacturing country into a country exporting raw
produce.” The company had convinced the British government to use tariffs of 70 to 80
percent against Indian finished goods and to permit virtually free entry of raw cotton into
England. In turn, British traders flooded India with cheap cloth manufactured in Manchester.
Industrial technology (textile machinery and steam engine) combined with political power to
impose the colonial division of labour, as British-built railway systems moved Indian raw
cotton to coastal ports for shipment to Liverpool, and returned to the Indian countryside with
machine-made products that undermined a time-honoured craft.
Decolonization
As Europeans were attempting to “civilize” their colonies, colonial subjects across the
Americas, Asia, and Africa explored the paradox of European colonialism – the European
notion of rights and sovereignty juxtaposed against their own subjugation. For instance, in
the French sugar colony of Haiti, the late-eighteenth-century “Black Jacobin” revolt
powerfully exposed the double standard of European civilization. Turning the rhetoric of the
French Revolution successfully against French colonialism, the rebellious slaves of the
Haitian sugar plantations became the first to gain their independence, sending tremors
throughout the slaveholding lands of the New World.
Resistance to colonialism evolved across the next two centuries, from the early-nineteenth-
century independence of the Latin American republics (from Spain and Portugal) to the
dismantling of South African apartheid in the early 1990s. Although decolonization has
continued into the present day, the worldwide decolonization movement peaked as European
colonialism collapsed in the mid-twentieth century, when World War II sapped the power of
the French, Dutch, British, and Belgian states to withstand anti-colonial struggles.
After millions of colonial subjects were deployed in the Allied war effort for self-
determination, the returning colonial soldiers turned this ideal on their colonial masters in
their final bid for independence. Veteran Nigerian anti-colonialist and later president Nnamdi
Azikiwe characterized African independence struggles by quoting Eleanor Roosevelt: “We
are fighting a war today so that individuals all over the world may have freedom. This means
an equal chance for every man to have food and shelter and a minimum of such things as
spell happiness. Otherwise we fight for nothing of real value. Thus freedom was linked to
overcoming the material deprivations of colonialism.
Concluding remarks about colonialism and decolonization: the rise of the development
project.
Our brief examination showed that in most cases colonialism had a profoundly disorganizing
impact on non-European societies through the reorganization of their labour system systems
around specialized export production. It also had a disorganizing social-psychological effect
on these societies. But part of this impact included exposure of non-European intellectuals,
workers, and soldiers to the European liberal discourse on rights. Under these conditions,
anti-colonial movements emerged, espousing political independence as a liberating act.
The political independence of the colonial word gave birth to the development project.
Colonialism was increasingly condemned as individual countries sought their own place in
the sun. Finding that place meant also accepting the terms of the development project. Those
terms included acceptance of the discursive and institutional relationships that defined the
world as an economic hierarchy. Third world states may have become individually
independent, but they also came to be defined collectively as “underdeveloped.”
Third world elites, once in power, had little choice but to industrialize. This was the measure
of independence from the colonial division of labour. It was also the measure of their success
as political elites. The mirrored image of the West was materializing, both in the direction of
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4. third world development and in the collaboration emerging between First and Third World
people comprising an international development community.
First assignment (due 19/9/2003)
Answer the following questions (400 words each):
In what ways did colonial policies influence political institutions and economic development
in the developing areas?
Does the pursuit of interests produce a more sustainable development path, or does the
pursuit of identity?
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5. LECTURE 2: The debate over an integrated world system
Most starkly put, this is a debate between those who believe that the creation of a single
world economic system has been and remains on balance beneficial to both the core and the
periphery and those who argue that, for a variety of reasons, any international politico-
economic system contrived by a greater power and imposed on the lesser will necessarily
tend to the disadvantage of the latter. Of course, this division is very schematic and often
unsatisfactory because there are overlaps between the positions held by members of one
group and the other. Nevertheless, at least initially, it is a useful conceptual tool to explain
the ideological underpinnings of the policies followed by the leaders of the developing
countries during the second half of the 20th century.
The case for world integration
The common denominator of all supporters of world integration is the belief that since each
society can benefit from what another can offer the best way ahead for human kind is to
proceed towards world integration.
There are various types of supporters of this belief. Among them two influential groups with
different ideas are on the one hand those who argue in favour of unbridled and quick
integration through free trade and free market and, on the other hand, those who advocate a
more politically managed step by step cooperation through various forms of agreements
between certain countries.
The case for world integration: the supporters of free trade
The core of free-trade theory is the belief that both individuals and societies are most
prosperous if they are free to produce and consume without artificial restriction. This in turn
requires an open market for selling and buying. In an ideal world there would, therefore, be
no obstacles to trade or investment and the world would constitute a single system of
production and exchange. Nations should specialize in what they produce best and buy other
things from other countries.
The case in favour of an open international market is to be found in Adam Smith’s The
Wealth of Nations, first published in 1776, summed up in this words: “If a foreign country
can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them
with some part of the produce of our own industry employed in a way in which we have
some advantage.”
However, the success of Smith’s theory has not proved to be universal. Most parts of Black
Africa, South and South-East Asia and China all attempted in varying ways and degrees, to
follow the path of development through specialization and free trade hoping to take
advantage of the cheaper comparative costs of production they could offer to the West. But it
can be argued that in a free-trade environment this specialization on production and
exchange of what any country can most efficiently produce for what it needs to import have
not worked satisfactorily for a majority of the tropical and subtropical countries which have
been linked to the more developed western world since the time of Smith and the other
classical economists.
The case for world integration through a step by step cooperation allowing for
protectionism and preferences
The basic case in favour of protectionism (also called mercantilism) can be summarized by
this simple assertion: Relatively weak economies must protect their producers against their
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6. entrenched rivals overseas by all techniques traditionally available. That is to say, by tariffs,
bounties, shipping controls and physical regulation of trade. Only when and if a country had
caught up with its competitors could these defences be dismantled. For instance, a relatively
weak metropolitan power and its colonies both needed defences against the competition of a
hostile world, and collaboration within a partially closed economic system would benefit all
parties.
However, the problem with mercantilism was that it made a protected imperial or post-
imperial system likely to perpetuate an economic orientation which might be in the best
interests of both metropolis and colony (core and Third World country after decolonization)
at one stage, but was no longer so later on. It was also likely to result in higher prices in both
the core and periphery of the system owing to protection against external competition, and
therefore in reduced ability by both party to compete in the international market. A
complementary system of this kind, particularly when backed up by guaranteed aid and at
least some insurance against international market fluctuations, was likely to be habit-
forming. So long as a developing country could sell all its main commodities under
favourable conditions to the core of the organization, it was less likely either to want to
diversify into other forms of production or to attempt to sell its goods outside the ring. To
those who believe that such countries should not continue to concentrate on cash crops or
mineral exports this is undesirable: it perpetuate dependence on the industrialized West.
On the other hand, there is no reason why continuation of export production should not run
in harness with industrialization. Moreover, since much manufacturing is essentially
uneconomic in limited markets, its costs are largely borne by profits from commodity
exports. However, this does not solve the issue of dependence which remains hotly debated,
especially in those Third World states which were allowed to become associate members of
the EU, and which clearly believed in the principle of regulated cooperation with the more
developed European countries. Whether or not associate membership of the European Union
will ultimately be to the advantage of the developing countries still remains an open
question.
Criticisms against world integration: The moral criticism
There are well established intellectual and moral tradition that, from different standpoints,
challenge the assumption that an integrated economy and European domination were
necessarily or historically beneficial for non-Europeans.
Humanitarian criticism began in the sixteenth century and its main target was Spanish
treatment of Amerindians. There was an important academic debate in Spain over the rights
of Spaniards and Amerindians, led by the Dominican jurist Francisco de Vitoria. But the
most influential and vehement critic if Spanish practices was the Dominican settler turned
missionary Bartolome de las Casas, who published extensively to denounce the abuse of
Indians by settlers. This type of criticism, not anti-imperialist but concerned to ameliorate the
conditions of non-Europeans under colonial rule, continued for the next three centuries. Its
foundations were Christianity and respect for the concept of law. The former imposed the
moral obligation to treat non-Europeans as if they were one’s neighbours, the latter to do so
with due respect to legal principles, both those of the imperial state and the laws of nature.
So Edmund Burke linked the two together in one of his famous speech in 1794: “The law is
the security of every person that is governed. It is the security of the people of India; it is the
security of the people of England. There is but one law in the world, namely, that law which
governs all law – the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity, the law of
nature and of nations.”
This line of thought run continuously from the later eighteenth century to the age of
decolonization, including in the late eighteenth century the whole campaign against the slave
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7. trade and ultimately slavery. In short, there has never been a period when some Europeans
did not challenge the character of domination over other societies on broadly ethical grounds.
Except inferentially, however, such critics were seldom, until the mid-twentieth century,
overtly hostile to the fact of European domination and colonial rule. Nor were they much
concerned with the nature of the economic systems imposed by the imperial powers on the
Third World, unless these could (as in the case of slavery of other form of forces labour) be
shown to be contrary to moral principles. What was lacking in any of these ideas or
movements was a positive economic alternative to free trade or a protectionist imperial
economy of the sort practised by the French as a route to development.
The economic criticism of integration
Until 1914 it had been generally assumed that the integration of less developed countries into
the international economy, under either free trade or protectionist conditions, had greatly
increased their welfare and that this improvement would continue indefinitely. The First
World War severely shook the international trading system on which these belief were
based: the recession of the early 1920s, and still more the slump of the early 1930s, seemed
to demonstrate that this beneficial process had ended – if, indeed, it had ever existed. The
contraction of international demand for Third World commodities led to a serious
deterioration in Third World terms of trade: an African or Asian farmer now had to produce
and export considerably more than before 1914 to buy the same quantity of imported goods.
The Second World War merely intensified these problems. By the early 1940s few remained
confident that a return to the open market would be sufficient to restart the process of growth
and development.
So the starting point of the school of thought, commonly known as development economics,
that evolved from the 1940s and reached its peak in the 1950s and early 1960s was the
evident fact of the intense poverty of much of the non-European world.
The second and more problematic root of the new development economics was what may
broadly be called Keynesian economics. Keynes’s main work was not specifically
concerned with the problems affecting the less developed countries: his concern was with
employment in developed countries. But his work, particularly the General Theory of
Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, suggested among other things a much
more positive governmental role in economic life than the classical economists had wanted
or than most western governments before the 1930s had adopted. Moreover, it suggested as a
general principle that public investment might be necessary, even through deficit financing,
to overcome a low-level equilibrium or liquidity trap.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, economists and nationalists of the Third World,
had a model of a totally planned economy to see and admire: the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R.
was then seen as a country that had pulled itself up from being near-feudal to being a major
industrial society in some two decades, and this had enabled it to withstand the assault by
Germany in and after 1941. Moreover, many later Third World leaders, such as Nehru, along
with western intellectuals, had visited the U.S.S.R. before 1939 and had been deeply
impressed.
Last, but not least, all economists and leaders had to come to terms with the fact that
development requires investment and that inducement to invest is limited by the size of a
market, and savings (as Keynes had argued) were determined by per capita incomes. So a
poor small country had small investment resources and limited demand for investment,
leading to a vicious circle of poverty.
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8. Because of all these reasons, the development economists of the post-1945 period, and down
to the latter 1960s, rejected all traditional formulas for economic development in the Third
World on the grounds that what had once worked for the West had clearly not worked
elsewhere and now could never work. In their place they constructed a complex structure of
ideas which ultimately boiled down to the proposition that such development depended on a
highly artificial system whose basic feature was planning within a partially closed national
economy rather than within the world economic system.
Most starkly put, this general situation gave in turn rise to the various development theories
which we will discuss in the following lectures: Modernization theory; Dependency
theory; World system theory; Globalization project.
Question
Do you believe that the creation of a single world economic system has been and remains on
balance beneficial to both the core and the periphery, or that this system, being contrived by
greater powers and imposed on the lesser ones, will necessarily tend to the disadvantage of
the latter? Motivate your answer.
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9. LECTURE 3: The modernization theory
The modernization theory represents a multidisciplinary effort to examine the prospects for
Third World development.
The first set of assumptions shared by modernization researchers are certain concepts drawn
from European evolutionary theory. According to the evolutionary theory, social change is
unidirectional, progressive, and gradual, irreversibly moving societies from a primitive
stage to an advanced stage, and making societies more like one another as they proceed
along the path of evolution.
Building upon such a premise, modernization researchers have implicitly formulated their
theories with the following traits:
1 Modernization is a phased process. There are different phases of modernization through
which all societies will travel. Societies obviously begin with the primitive, simple,
undifferentiated traditional stage and end with the advanced, complex differentiated modern
stage. In this respect, societies can be compared in terms of the extent to which they have
moved down the road from tradition to modernity.
2 Modernization is a homogenizing process. Modernization produces tendencies toward
convergence among societies. As time goes on they will increasingly resemble one another
because the patterns of modernization are such that the more highly modernized societies
become, the more they resemble one another.
3 Modernization is a Europeanization or Americanization process. In the modernization
literature, there is an attitude of complacency toward Western Europe and the United States.
These nations are viewed as having unmatched economic prosperity and democratic stability.
And since they are the most advanced nations in the world, they have become the models the
latecomers would like to emulate. In this respect, modernization is simply a process of
Europeanization or Americanization, and is often defined as such. For example, since
Western Europe and the United States are highly industrialized and democratic,
industrialization and democracy have become the trademarks of the modernization
perspective.
4 Modernization is an irreversible process. Once started, modernization cannot be
stopped. In other words, once Third Word countries come into contact with the West, they
will not be able to resist the impetus toward modernization. Although the rare of change will
vary from one country to another, the direction of change will not. Thus modernization is a
“universal social solvent” that dissolves the traditional traits of the Third World countries.
5 Modernization is a progressive process. The agonies of modernization are many, but in
the long run modernization is not only inevitable, but desirable. The modernized political
system has a much better capacity to handle the functions of national identity, legitimacy,
penetration, participation, and distribution than the traditional political system.
6 Finally, modernization is a lengthy process. It is an evolutionary change, not a
revolutionary change. It will take generations, or even centuries, to complete, and its
profound impact will be felt only through time.
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10. In addition to sharing evolutionary and functionalist assumptions, members of the
modernization school also adopt a similar methodological approach for their research. First,
modernization researchers tend to anchor their discussions at a highly general and abstract
level. Since their aim is to explain general patterns, universal trends, and common prospects
for Third World development, they do not want to be preoccupied with unique cases and
historically specific events.
In order to draw high-level generalizations, it is the national territorial state that is of critical
theoretical significance to the modernization theorist, even if this does remain largely
implicit. However it may be conceptualized, whether as industrialization or structural
differentiation, each component of the modernization process is viewed as a source of
change operated at the national level. Thus modernization theories are basically theories of
transformation of nation-states.
Policies implications
Modernization theories are not just academic exercises. They were originally formulated in
response to the new world leadership role that the United States took after World War II,
and, as such, they have important policy implications. First, modernization theories help to
provide an implicit justification for the asymmetrical power relationship between traditional
and modern societies. Since the United States is modern and advanced and the Third World
is traditional and backward, the latter should look to the former for guidance.
Second, modernization theories identify the threat of communism in the Third Word as a
modernization problem. If Third World countries are to modernize, they should be moving
along the path that the United States has travelled, and thus should move away from
communism. To help accomplish this goal, modernization theories suggest economic
development, the replacement of traditional values, and the institutionalization of democratic
procedures.
Third, modernization theories help to legitimate the “meliorative foreign aid policy” of the
United States. If what is needed is more exposure to modern values and more productive
investment, then the United States can help by sending advisers, by encouraging American
business to invest abroad, by making loans, and by rendering other kinds of aid to Third
World countries. Although not all modernization theorists are necessarily apologists for
American expansionism, there is little in the modernization literature that would seriously
disturb the White House, Pentagon, or State Department policy makers.
Criticism of the modernization school
Unidirectional development
First, the critics have challenged the evolutionary assumption of unidirectional development.
Why do Third World countries need to move in the direction of Western countries?
According to the critics, this element of modernization theory is simply the result of the fact
that most modernization researchers are American and Europeans. Born and raised in
Western countries, modernization researchers believe that their own cultural values are the
most natural and the best in the world. Thinking that their Western countries represent the
future of the Third World countries, they assume that the Third World countries will move
towards the Western model of development. According to the critics, this belief in Western
superiority is ethnocentric. For example, why are Western countries placed at the higher end
of the evolutionary path and labelled advanced or modern societies? And why are Third
World countries placed near the lower end of the evolutionary path and called primitive or
traditional societies? The critics argue that concepts such as advanced, modern, traditional,
and primitive are merely ideological labels used to justify Western superiority.
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11. Second, the critics assert that belief in unidirectional development has resulted in
modernization researchers’ overlooking alternative path of development for Third World
countries. Since modernization researchers assume that Third World countries must follow
the Western model, they have practically defined away the possibility that these countries
may select different models of development. For example, since the United States has
democratic institutions, modernization researchers assume that democracy is a major
component of modernization. But is democracy necessary for economic development? Do
Third World countries have other choices? For instance, can they follow authoritarian
models of development? Can they create their own models of development?
Third, the critics argue that modernization researchers are overly optimistic. They have
mistakenly assumed that since Western countries have achieved development, Third World
countries can also. Researchers have not fully explored the possibility of non-development.
Many critics assert that the future of Third World development is uncertain, There is a real
possibility of modernization breakdown such as that in Ethiopia, where the people have
faced starvation and the nation has faced extinction. The critics point out that many Third
World countries have in fact gotten worse over the past century. It seems that the
modernization project can be stopped or even reversed, contrary to the claims of the
modernization school.
Responses to the critics: The new modernization theory
The new modernization studies have gone beyond the relatively crude analysis of the
classical modernization studies. After dropping some of the shaky assumptions of the
classical modernization studies – such as characterizing modernization as an irreversible,
progressive, and lengthy Americanization progress, and treating tradition as an obstacle to
modernization – the new modernization studies open up new research agendas and provide a
more sophisticated analysis than the old modernization studies.
Bringing tradition back in
The new modernization studies have taken a much closer look at what tradition is, how it
interacts with Western forces, and what role it has played in the process of modernization.
Although the classical modernization studies focused on the negative role of tradition, the
new modernization studies reveal the intricate relationship between tradition and modernity.
For instance, it has been argued that paternalistic management, nepotism, and a family mode
of ownership have promoted the economic development of Hong Kong, that Japanese
industry takes pains to transmit a traditional work ethic to workers through spiritual
education.
Bringing history back in
The new modernization studies have also adopted a different methodology. Instead of
typological construction at a highly abstract level, the new modernization studies have
brought history back in the picture, focusing on the unique development of each case study.
Thus instead of adapting cases to illustrate theory, the new modernization studies uses theory
to explain individual case studies. The findings valid in one case study may not be applicable
to another due to different historical factors.
Toward a more sophisticated analysis
The new modernization studies have avoided making simplistic statements or presenting
single-variable analyses. Instead, they pay attention to multi-institutional (social, cultural,
political, and economic) analysis, to multi-lineal paths of development, and the interaction
between internal and external factors.
In the light of these modifications, it seems that the modernization theory has recovered from
its crisis of the late 1960s and it is possible that it may emerge in a new guise with its
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12. attention to the local factors as a correctives to the mainly international oriented focus of the
other theories.
Question
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the modernization theory? Make an overall
assessment of the theory.
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13. LECTURE 4: The dependency theory
Just as the modernization theory can be said to examine development from the point of view
of the United States and other Western countries, the dependency theory can be said to view
development from a Third World perspective. In this respect, the dependency theory can be
characterized as representing “the voices from the periphery” that challenge the intellectual
hegemony of the American modernization school.
Basic assumptions
Like the modernization school, the dependency school is highly heterogeneous. Its members
come from many social sciences disciplines, focus on different countries of the world, and
have different ideological orientations and political commitments. Nevertheless, they all tend
to share the following basic assumptions:
First, dependency is seen as very general process, applicable to all Third World countries.
The aim of the dependency school is to outline the general pattern of dependency in the
Third World throughout the history of capitalism from the sixteenth century to the present.
Thus national variation and historical complexity are downplayed in order to present the
“ideal type” construct of dependency.
Second, dependency is understood to be an external condition, that is imposed from the
outside. The most important obstacle to national development, therefore, is not the lack of
capital, entrepreneurial skills, or democratic institutions; rather, it is to be found outside the
domain of the national economy. The historical heritage of colonialism and the perpetuation
of the unequal international division of labour are the greatest obstructions to the national
development of the Third World countries.
Third, dependency is analyzed mostly as an economic condition. It is seen as a result of the
flow of economic surplus from Third World countries to Western capitalist countries. Thus
Third World countries generally suffer from declining terms of trade with Western countries.
Fourth, dependency is treated as a component of regional polarization of the global
economy. On the one hand, the flow of surplus from Third World countries leads to their
underdevelopment; on the other, the development of Western countries is benefited by this
influx of economic surplus. Thus underdevelopment in the periphery and development in the
core are two aspects of a single process of capital accumulation, leading to regional
polarization in the global economy.
Finally, dependency is seen as incompatible with development. Is development possible in
the periphery? For the dependency school, the answer is generally no. Although minor
development can occur during periods of isolation, such as during a world depression or a
world war, genuine development in the periphery is highly unlikely with the continual flow
of surplus to the core.
Policy implications
Proponents of the dependency theory feel that there is a need to redefine the term
development. It should mean more than just more industry, more output, and rising
productivity. Instead, it should be defined in terms of improving the living standard for all
the people in the periphery. Thus developmental programs should not cater to elites and
urban dwellers, but should attempt to satisfy the human needs of rural peasants, the
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14. unemployed, and the needy. Any developmental program that benefits only a small sector at
the expense of the suffering majority is no good at all.
It appears that the dependency theory implications are exactly opposite to those of the
modernization school. As the modernization school proposes that the periphery should
receive more contacts (more aid, more technology, more modern values) from Western
countries, the dependency school argues that it is harmful for peripheral countries to have
more contact with core countries. In fact, the dependency school asserts that the periphery
has too much harmful core contact already. Since the era of colonialism, the political
economy of the periphery has been totally restructured to suit the needs of the core, thereby
leading to the development of underdevelopment.
Consequently, the dependency school suggests that peripheral countries should sever their
ties with core countries. Instead of relying upon foreign aid and foreign technology,
peripheral countries should adopt a self-reliance model – relying upon their own resources
and planning their own paths of development so as to achieve independence and autonomous
national development.
Self-reliance, of course, does not mean complete isolation from other nation-states. It means
only that peripheral countries should not be dominated by core countries. They should trade
with other peripheral countries on equal and mutually beneficial terms.
Comparison of the dependency and modernization schools
First, the two classical perspectives share the same research focus: They are concerned with
Third World development, and they want to find out what factors promote Third World
development. Second, the two perspectives adopt similar methodologies. They anchor their
discussions at a highly abstract level, with an eye toward explaining the very general process
of development applicable to all of the nations. Third, the two perspectives have developed a
polar theoretical framework, although the classical modernization perspective tends to call it
“tradition versus modernity” while the classical dependency perspective calls it “core
(metropolis) versus periphery (satellite).”
However, in predicting the future direction of development, the classical modernization
perspective is generally optimistic. With patience, Third World countries will eventually
catch up with Western countries and modernize themselves. The view of the classical
dependency perspective concerning the future of Third World countries is pessimistic. If the
present exploitative linkages remain unchallenged, Third World countries will become more
and more dependent on Western countries, leading to further underdevelopment and
bankruptcy.
Critique of the classical dependency school
The dependency school arose as a critique of the mainstream modernization school,
denouncing the latter’s studies as providing ideological justification for Western countries to
exploit Third World countries. In response to this criticism, modernization theory fought
back, characterizing the dependency perspective as a propaganda fragment of Marxist
revolutionary ideology. Dependency studies are seen by them as more like exercises in
pamphleteering than as products of scholarly work. It has been argued that the dependence
school gave up the battle for science after it lapsed into rhetoric. Consequently, instead of
providing a scientific analysis of what has actually happened in Third World countries, the
concept of dependency has become an all-purpose explanation for everything that is wrong
with Third World countries.
In addition, the dependency perspective is accused of being highly abstract. Aiming to
outline the general pattern of dependency in Third World countries, the dependency
perspective is said to have committed the major error of treating all peripheral areas as if
14

15. they were the same. As a result, dependency researchers tend to take a deductive approach to
national studies, making them conform to what is logically expected on the basis of the
dependency model. Dependency studies seldom make a serious attempt to bring out the
historically specific development of each particular Third World country. In fact, by treating
the concept of dependency as a global phenomenon, dependency studies have little room left
for analysis of national variants.
From the Marxist point of view, critics of the school charge that the dependency perspective
has overemphasized the factor of external conditions, and has neglected the role of internal
dynamics such as class conflict and the state. They charge that the clarity with which
classical Marxism located the question of class struggle at the centre of development and
decay of capitalism has been lost. Although the Marxists critics agree that it is important to
examine the transfer of surplus from the periphery, they suggest that dependency researchers
need to bring social classes, the state, and political struggles back into their analyses in order
to answer the crucial questions of how and why this transfer of surplus takes place.
Political struggles have been neglected because dependency studies generally assume that
Third World industrialist are a class dependent on foreign capital, that Third World
government are “administrative committees” of foreign capital and the imperial state, and
that Third World workers are merely a class of labour aristocracy whose interests are tied to
foreign capital. Consequently, the dependency school does not believe that these domestic
classes and institutions could resist foreign domination and promote independent
development for Third World countries.
The dependency school’s critics argue that no matter how strong the dominating effects of
the core countries, they also represent opportunities for ideas, institutions, and technologies
that can be used by peripheral countries for change. The dependency school critics argue that
historical evidence points to the existence of certain degrees of freedom for national
government and their ability to carry out, under certain circumstances, fairly drastic policies
of internal and external transformation.
The critics are of the opinion that dependency and development may coexist, and that
dependency may not necessarily lead to underdevelopment. For example, South Korea and
Taiwan were once colonies of Japan, yet these two countries have attained rapid economic
development since World War II. Countries such as Canada are dependent in the sense that
their economies have been penetrated by foreign-owned subsidiaries, yet Canada exhibits a
very high standard of living.
Furthermore, the critics contend that the dependency perspective is vague on policy
conclusions and that it has failed to spell out in concrete details how the newly independent
states should proceed in order to achieve their national goals. The critics argue that the
elimination of imperialist influence may not automatically bring about national development,
that a socialist revolution may not necessarily produce positive results for development.
Responses to the critics: the new dependency studies
The dependency school answered the above criticisms by developing new dependency
studies which utilize a historical-structural methodology to analyze and explain how the
internal dynamics of political struggles can promote a certain degree of development in
Third World countries.
Dependency has been employed not as a theory to generalize the universal pattern of
underdevelopment, but as a methodology for the analysis of concrete situations in Third
World development with the goal to delineate historically specific new situations of
dependency in the search for differences and diversities. In sum, many basic assumptions of
the classical dependency studies – such as external, economic dependency and structural
15

16. underdevelopment – get modified. This change of orientation has opened up new areas of
research in dependency studies.
The new dependency perspective has modified some of the basic assumptions of the classical
dependency perspective. Instead of treating dependency as a general, external, economic
process that leads to regional polarization and underdevelopment, new dependency theorists
now conceptualize it as a historically specific, internal, socio-political process that can lead
to dynamic development. Thus the new dependency perspective has put forward many
original concepts, such as associated-dependent development; the bureaucratic-authoritarian
state; the triple alliance among the state, local capital, and international capital; and dynamic
dependency. These new concepts have opened up new research frontiers and have promoted
a new wave of empirical studies on the changing situations of dependency in Third World
countries.
From the view point of the new dependency studies, the state in the Third World is no longer
perceived as a dependent state for foreigners, but as an active agency that tacitly works
together with local capital and international capital. In addition, it is the political struggle
among the state, local capital, and international capital that shapes the ever-changing
situations of dependency.
The final characteristic of the new dependency studies is their willingness to acknowledge
the coexistence of two contradictory processes – dependency and development.
All in all, it seems that the new dependency studies are more sophisticated than the classical
dependency studies.
Question
What is the significance of the dependency theory? Discuss the main features of this theory
highlighting the importance of its contribution to the debate over development in the Third
World.
16

17. LECTURE 5: The world system theory
Although the dependency school was unable to destroy the modernization school, the
modernization school was unable to exclude competing views as illegitimate. The
coexistence of contrasting perspectives in the field of development made the 1970s a time of
intellectual fertility. By the mid-1970s, the ideological battle between the modernization
school and the dependency school began to subside. The debate on Third World
development became less ideological and emotional. A group of radical researchers led by
Emmanuel Wallerstein found that there were many new activities in the capitalist world-
economy that could not be explained within the confines of the dependency perspective.
In order to rethink the critical issues that emerged out of the changing world economy over
the last two decades, Wallerstein and his followers have developed a new world-system
perspective. This school had its genesis at the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of
Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilization at the State University of New York at
Binghamton. The Fernard Braudel Center publishes Review, a journal that calls for the
primacy of analysis of economies over long historical time and large space, the holism of the
socio-historical process, and the transitory (heuristic) nature of theories.
First, The unit of analysis for the world system perspective is, of course, the world-system.
Unlike the dependency perspective which focuses on the national level, the world system
perspective insists that the whole world should be taken as a unit of social science analysis.
Wallerstein argues that historical explanation should proceed from the viewpoint of the
world-system, and all phenomena are to be explained in terms of their consequences for both
the totality of the world system and its subparts. Thus Wallerstein calls for the analysis of the
holism of the socio-historical process over a long historical time and large space.
From the world-system perspective, there is only one world system in the twentieth century.
Even though world system researchers recognize the profound impact of the socialist
revolutions, they argue that the socialist states are still operating within the confines of the
capitalist world economy. Thus the socialist states policies on economy, politics, and culture
are, to a certain extent, constrained by the dynamics of the capitalist world economy, Unlike
classical dependency theorists, who formulate the strategy of socialist de-linking as a
solution to Third World development, world system analysts doubt the viability of this de-
linking strategy.
Second, influenced by French historical methodology, Wallerstein perceives social reality as
in a state of flux. He points out that we seek to capture a moving reality in our terminology.
We thereby tend to forget that the reality changes as we encapsulate it, and by virtue of that
fact.
Unlike the dependency school, which focuses upon the boom and bust of nation states, the
world system school studies the historical dynamics of the world economy. Wallerstein
points out that the capitalist world economy develops itself through the secular trends of
incorporation, commercialization of agriculture, industrialization, and proletarianization.
Along with these secular trends, the capitalist world economy has developed the cyclical
rhythms of expansion and stagnation as a result of the imbalance between world effective
demand and world supply of goods. When world supply outstrips world demand, when there
are too many goods on the market without enough consumers to buy them, factories have to
be closed and workers have to be laid off. The world economy the moves into the B-phase of
economic stagnation. During this downward phase, the core weakens its control over the
periphery, giving the periphery a chance to promote autonomous development and to catch
up with the core. The downward phase, therefore, serves as a period of redistribution of
17

18. world surplus from the core to the periphery. However, after a fairly long period of
recession, core production revives as the result of increased demand from the developing
periphery and technological breakthrough. When world demand begins to outstrip world
supply, this starts another upward A-phase of economic expansion. During an economic
boom, the core tries to regain its power and to tighten its control over the periphery in order
to dominate the world market. This economic boom, however, cannot last forever and will
finally lead to overproduction. At every occurrence of these upward and downward turns in
the world-economy, there is ample opportunity for the periphery to catch up and for the core
to core to fall behind. This is a dynamic model, since the nation states are always put on trial,
and are always in the process of transforming to either the core or the periphery at each stage
of the cyclical development.
Third, unlike the dependency school, the world system school has a unique theoretical
structure. Instead of a simplistic core-periphery model, Wallerstein’s capitalist world
economy has three layers: the core, the periphery, and the semi-periphery, which stands
between the core and the periphery and exhibits characteristics of both.
The formulation of the semi-periphery concept is a theoretical breakthrough because it
enables researchers to examine the complexity and the changing nature of the capitalist
world economy. This three-tiered model allows Wallerstein to entertain the possibilities of
upward mobility (a periphery moving into the semi-periphery or semi-periphery moving into
the core) as well as downward mobility (a core moving into the semi-periphery or a semi-
periphery moving into the periphery). With this intermediate layer of semi-periphery in the
model, the world system perspective is thus capable of studying the changing locations of the
state in relation to the contradiction and crises that are built into the working of the capitalist
world system.
Fourth, with respect to the direction of development, Wallerstein’s three tiered model avoids
the deterministic statement of the dependency school, namely, that a periphery is bound to
have underdevelopment or dependent development because the core always exploits the
periphery. With the semi-periphery concept, the world system perspective no longer needs to
explain away the problem of the path of autonomous, independent development in Third
World peripheries. Instead, the concept enables researchers to ask such interesting questions
as why a few East Asian states are able to transcend their peripheral statuses in the late
twentieth century.
Finally, unlike the dependency school, which concentrates on the study of the periphery, the
world system perspective has a much broader research focus. The world system perspective
studies not only the backward Third World peripheries but also the advanced capitalist cores,
the socialist states, and the rise, development (the secular trends and the cyclical rhythms),
and future demise of the capitalist world economy.
In sum, the word system school is different from the dependency school in that it treats the
whole world as its unit of analysis, adopts a historical methodology that perceives reality as
a state of flux, develops a tri-modal theoretical structure, abandons the deterministic point of
view on the direction of development, and has a much broader research focus.
18

19. Criticisms of the world system perspective
Reification of the concept of the World System
The concept of the world system is just a concept, no matter how useful it is in drawing the
attention of researchers to the study of global dynamics. So when it is hardened to the extent
that becomes a reality of its own, the concept of the world system becomes
counterproductive, serving to distract researchers from raising fruitful questions. There is a
distinctly organic quality to the word system, such that when internal difficulties arise the
system pulls itself together and reaffirms its fundamental social relationships. When trouble
appears, colonialism reappears, as means of more explicitly and forcefully realigning and
resetting the hierarchal structure of the world system. So historical events are used to explain
the origins of the world economy, but these historical events had to happen because the word
economy required them to happen. This formulation is teleological because the word
economy originated because of its consequences, because its inner purpose was realized in
the birth of capitalism.
Neglect of historically specific development
Due to reification and teleology, world system analysis is criticized for neglecting the study
of historically specific development. Wallerstein’s focus on the totality prevents him from
engaging in the concrete analysis of historically specific interrelation in particular societies.
The world system perspective obscures rather than reveals the concrete internal social
relations that underlie that so called capitalist world economy and propel its contradictory
historical development.
Stratification analysis
According to the critics, the word system perspective has focused on exchange relations and
the distribution of rewards in the market rather than on classes and class conflict in the
production sphere. Within this abstract model, there are no relations of compulsion, coercion,
and exploitation, no relationship between producers and appropriators, oppressors and
oppressed, dominant and subordinate classes. Slaves, serfs, tenant farmers, yeomen, artisans,
and workers become mere technical occupational categories. In this abstract a-historical
model, the capitalist world market or international division of labour appears upside down;
it appears as the cause of class relations in particular societies rather than as, in reality, their
refracted historical products.
Responses to the critics
When the world system school came under attack in the late 1970s, its researchers modified
some of their basic assumptions. In the modified version, the concept of the world system is
taken merely as a research tool rather than as a reified reality; studies are now conducted on
both the world level and the national level; and class analysis is brought back to supplement
stratification analysis and the like. These modifications started a research trend referred as
world system studies at the national level.
Question
In what ways has the world system theory contributed to the debate over development in the
Third Word? Assess the importance of this theory.
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20. LECTURE 6: The globalization theory
The globalization theory considers, first of all, the world as a whole. Regional and global
forces respond to and shape a set of common and converging global interests, identities, and
institutions. Market, cultures, and structures operate not only within countries but among
them as well.
The globalization of interests
The present international political economy consists of a set of interlinked country level
economies that create global markets in land, labour, and capital. Production in multinational
corporations is global. Trade, that is, imports and exports, is global. Financial markets are
global, too. Immigration and migration, migrant labour and guest workers, war refugees and
tourism are global. Communications and transportation, the movement of goods and
services, are global. Economic problems are consequently global problems. Growth and
prosperity are global problems. Inequality and poverty, the gap between North and South, is
a global problem. Diseases and epidemics are global problems – bubonic plague, influenza,
and small pox were problems for humankind and AIDS is now everyone’s problem.
Environmental problems are also now global. We are part of a single ecosystem, and hence,
environmental degradation, global warming, energy conservation, and water pollution are
global problems. In sum, it is not possible for a country to isolate itself from global economic
trends, cycles, and shocks.
The globalization of identities
Western, and especially American, values are increasingly hegemonic and have come to
define social and cultural identities around the entire world. English is the international
language used in business and politics, the arts and the sciences. Innumerable technical
standards derived from the West define the global business culture. Universal human rights,
such as the ideas of crimes against humanity and of war criminals, derived from the Western
definition of political culture. At a more mundane level, global pop culture is becoming
consumer cosmopolitanism, a common global lifestyle of taste, fashion, and talk in which
people define their identity and express themselves symbolically through their material
possessions. Many of the global masses, who consume Coca Cola soft drinks, McDonald
hamburgers, Levi blue jeans, Spielberg films, attempt to move up the material and status
hierarchy and enter the yuppie world of Armani apparel, Chanel perfume, Don Perignon
champagne, and Perrier mineral water. Much of the global yuppiedom, in turn, strives to
acquire the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
The Globalization of institutions
Global markets, Western values, and international institutions exercise an important
common, one might even say homogenizing, influence across borders. The last couple of
decades have witnessed a worldwide movement toward the independence of civil society and
the corresponding liberalization of political and economic systems. Reform and revolution
have moved scores of countries away from dictatorship and central plans and toward
democracy and markets, Among the poorest countries of the world, this has meant the
decline of authoritarianism and the fall of military regimes. The world has thus partially
converged and the result is diminished diversity of political and economic institutions. The
world wide movement toward variations on a common theme, originally developed in the
West, is enforced by the global community of countries. States that are out of tune change to
be able to trade their goods and services. Such pressures help explain the end of South
Africa’s white oligarchy and the demise of many one party socialist or communist states.
20

21. The globalization project in the developing countries
In the Third World, the global era signifies a new stage of thinking about development. This
process is highlighted, for instance, by the recent debt crises which has shifted the terms of
development from a national to a global concern. Third world countries still pursue
development goals, but often these goals have as much to do with global positioning than
with the management of the national household. Certainly some specific assistance projects
are cast in terms of national development, but development is associated with the ability to
compete in the global market.
Unlike the development project, the globalization project no longer simply addresses the
postcolonial world. It is universal, and it concerns the attempt to promote and manage
global markets in order to sustain the Western lifestyle (which also means
incorporating, eliminating, or containing alternatives). That all states are involved is
confirmed by the fact that even those developing countries still nominally adhering to
communist ideologies, like China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea are now entering or
desperately trying to enter the world market.
Although the globalization project replaces the development project, development has
not so much lost its currency as changed its meaning. Its frame of reference has shifted,
both upward and downward. Development as shifted downward largely at the initiative of
proliferating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that fill the vacuum as states
withdraw, or lose, their capacity to assist sub-national groups and causes. Thousands of
community and regional development projects continue at the local level, attempting to
improve local conditions or stabilize communities affected one way or another by the
restructuring of their states. In the other direction, development has been reframed (upward)
as globally managed growth, with information technologies, and possibly biotechnologies as
the leading sectors.
The globalization project emerges in the wake of the development project. Its
centrepiece is the belief in market liberalization that took hold under the debt regime. Debtor
governments that reduced their size and role were rewarded by the debt managers with
credit released bit by bit to ensure their continuing compliance with loan conditions.
Thus, national economies were opened up to global forces; they were increasingly
globalized, or turned inside out. National governments, in varying degrees, have embraced
global rather than national criteria of economic growth.
Criticisms of globalization
The globalization project is likely an unrealizable ideal on two counts:
First, the expectations do not square with the reality in which this project is pursued. Neither
nation states nor the world community are singularly composed of market oriented
individuals: there are class, gender, and ethnic relations that divide people to begin with.
Some regions are historically more equal than others, and there are powerful institutional
forces that actually organize and reorganize markets, with profits rather than social welfare
in mind.
Second, there are many social movements and state organizations that actively resist and/or
qualify the globalization project. Many of these movements reject belief in the self-
regulating global market as the most logical principle of social organization. Some
movements aim to protect their communities by re-regulating the market; others see
withdrawing from the market as the most satisfactory form of resistance. Whatever the
21

22. alternatives, the globalization project is only one way, albeit the most powerful we have seen
of reorganizing the world. That is to say, the globalization project is the most powerful force
so far, in part because it has not had to confront its contradictory effects in any fundamental
way. But now one effect is already causing alarm in the inner circles of global management:
the fragility of the world monetary system, as pointed out by the Asian financial crisis of
1997.
The counter-movements of globalization
The globalization project is a relatively coherent perspective and has a powerful set of
agencies working on its behalf, but its discourse and the process of instituting its rules
are in continuous contention. The globalization project is an attempt to fashion the
world around a central principle through powerful political and financial institutions.
And this principle is the principle of global market rule. Because the principle of
market rule is framed in the liberal discourse of freedom, its power depends
significantly on consent.
Counter-movements are not simply coincidental alternatives to the globalization project and
its market regime. They constitute it because they express the material and discursive
conditions that its corporate agents actively seek to appropriate. For example, the global
managers and the biotechnology corporations impose a singular and abstracted logic on a
culturally, ecologically, and politically diverse world. In other words, the discourse and
practices of the market regime assert and manage globalization as the path to prosperity and,
in doing so, limit cultural diversity, small producer and consumer rights, and biodiversity as
alternative forms of sustainable development.
Most Third World governments feel pressure by the developed world governments and
institutions to play by the new and emerging global rules, but their citizens do not always
share their outlook. Where global restructuring weakens nation states (by eroding their
public welfare function, increasing social and regional polarization, and reducing state
patronage systems), citizens have fresh opportunities to renew the political process. This
political process may be represented as an escalating tension between global (or universal)
and local (or particular) understanding of how humanity should proceed.
Responses range from withdrawal into alternative projects, often in contrast one another (for
example, Islamic revival, feminist cooperatives, recovery of non-capitalist agro-ecological
practises) to attempt to reframe development as a question of rights and basic social
protections. All these responses express the uncertainties of social arrangements under
globalizing tendencies. Many express a fundamental desire to break out of the
homogenizing and disempowering dynamics of the globalization project and to establish a
sustainable form of social life based on new (or, sometimes, old) forms of associative
politics. A protective global counter-movement (as a combined movement) is possible (even
though not inevitable because of the inherent divisions within the counter-movements),
evidenced in the proliferation of resistance movements among citizens, workers, consumers,
landless peasants, indigenous peoples, and so forth. The debate pivots on the adequacy of the
market as a guardian of social and environmental stability.
Question
What are your reactions to globalization, in what respects it can be deemed a positive
phenomenon and in what respects a negative one? Do not rely on slogans, but qualify your
answer with reference to specific situations in the Third World.
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23. LECTURE 7: Democracy in the Third World
Globalization can result in profound political changes. That is to say, factors such as the
expansion of international commerce and easy access to new ideas through media and
technology have led to demands for changes not only at the economic but also at the political
level. These demands have resulted in calls for the introduction of democratic institutions
and practises in several Third World countries. A process is occurring that may lead to the
exhaustion of viable alternatives to Western democracy. In other words, Western liberal
democracy has already become or is rapidly becoming the dominant political paradigm, at
least in theory - if not in practice, also in (most) Third World countries.
However, to dispel undiscerning naivety, we should bear in mind that in the West not less
than in the Third World, democracy (i.e., government by the people) is more than its
structural and institutional components and must be considered in terms of its intrinsic
qualities of liberal values and rights. That is to say, what is commonly understood as
liberal democracy is a system of government which is supposed to combine the right to
representative government with the right to individual freedom, and limitations on the
invasion of this freedom by government. In practise, the features of a liberal democratic
system must include:
1 Representative institutions based on majority rule,
2 Free and fair elections;
3 A choice of political parties;
4 Accountability of the government to the electorate;
5 Freedom of expression, assembly, and individual rights, guaranteed by an independent
judiciary;
6 Limitations on the power of government guaranteed by the existence of a free and vibrant
civil society which includes free and independent mass-media, N.G.O., etc.
Only, in the late 1940s most Western countries became in their structural and institutional
components, full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. (But, in terms of
intrinsic qualities and rights, the process is still ongoing.) However, one hundred years
earlier, by the late 1840s, most of them had already adopted important aspects of
constitutional liberalism – the rule of law, private property rights, free speech and
assembly, and increasingly, separated powers between legislative, judiciary and
executive. So for much of modern history, what characterized governments in Europe and
North America, and differentiated them from those around the world, was not democracy but
constitutional liberalism. That is to say, the “Western model” is best symbolized not by the
ideal of democracy, as government by the people through mass plebiscite (as practised in
Switzerland), but by the ideal of the rule of law and of the impartial judge.
The recent history of much of East and South-East Asia (often broadly defined until recently,
but less so now, as developing areas) follows the Western itinerary. After brief flirtations
with democracy after World War II, many East and South-East Asian regimes turned
authoritarian. Over the time they moved from autocracy to liberalizing autocracy, and, in
some cases, toward liberalizing semi-democracy. Most of these regimes remain only semi-
democratic, with patriarchs or one-party systems that make their elections ratifications of
power rather than genuine contests. But these regimes have accorded their citizens a
widening sphere of economic, civil, religious, and limited political rights. As in the West,
liberalization has included economic liberalization, which is crucial in promoting both
growth and liberal democracy. Historically, the factors most closely associated with full-
fledged liberal democracies are capitalism, a bourgeoisie, and a high per capita income.
23

24. Today many East and South-East Asian governments are a mix of democracy, liberalism,
capitalism, oligarchy, and corruption – much like the Western governments circa 1900.
Constitutional liberalism has led to democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring
constitutional liberalism. Moreover, during the last two decades in other developing areas,
i.e., in Latin America, Africa, less so in other parts of Asia and the Middle East, dictatorships
with little background in constitutional liberalism have given way to democracy. The results
have been mixed.
In the Third World, paradoxically, often illiberal democracies gain legitimacy and thus
strength, from the fact they are reasonably democratic. However, in this way, illiberal
democracy can discredit liberal democracy itself, casting a shadow on democratic
governance. This would not be unprecedented as it has been often the case, especially in
Latin America, that every new wave of democracy has been followed by setbacks in which
the system was seen as inadequate and new alternatives were sought by ambitious leaders
and restless masses. In Europe, the last such period of disenchantment was during the
interwar years, it was seized upon by demagogues, many of whom were initially popular and
even elected.
Lofty democratic ideals versus political realities in the Third World
The effective role of political ideals can be grasped in terms of ideas, institutions and
historical practice. This seems to be most clearly the case for the ideal of democracy in the
Third World. Thus, firstly, if the notion of democracy can be read primarily in terms of
classical European political philosophy, the equivalent ideas in developing countries to be
solidly grounded will also have to be located in the various local great and little traditions, as
well as in the imported schemes of the first generation of leaders after decolonization. Then,
secondly, in terms of institutional vehicles (the ways in which ideas generally affirmed are
expressed in concrete and practical institutional machineries) the notion of democracy comes
in varieties with American-style representative democracy (separation of powers, open
debate and conflicting interest groups – all theorized typically via notions of political-liberal
pluralism) and European social-democracy (with a more clearly dispersed pattern of power,
open debate and an active and involved citizenry). But in the Third World, democracy will
have to be expressed either through (or in some cases against) institutional vehicles
which typically revolve around elite-ordered developmental states often oriented to the
pragmatic pursuit of material advance. Then, thirdly, the rise and consolidation of
democracy is an historical experience occurring in the aftermath of a process which has
included colonial rule, the pursue of independence and development, and the emergence of
integrated regional and world economies.
In sum, overall, it does make sense to speak of locally grown models of democracy in the
Third World but at the same time it necessary to be sensitive both to the real world diversity
of political experiences and to the element of elite excuse making in those countries where
the governments are simply authoritarian.
Of course, this is not to deny that some post Cold War missions by Western powers to spread
democracy can be seen partly as a pose, given the fact that in some countries free and fair
elections would be seen by those same Western powers as their worst nightmare. That is to
say, Western powers while they praise democracy, in fact they often endorse autocratic
rulers in the Third World.
Question
In what ways can the global context influence the rise of democracy in the Third World?
Make an overall assessment of the opportunities and challenges which the present
international situation offers for the process of democratization in the Third World.
24

25. Lecture 8: Review of the previous topics. Democracy and the Middle East. Question:
What are the challenges and which democratization faces in the Middle East?
LECTURE 9: Democratic consolidation in Latin America
The background to the recent regional wave of democratization in Latin America was the
widespread assumption of power by military rulers in most Latin American countries in the
1960s and 1970s, which took on a particular form, known as bureaucratic authoritarianism.
While specific characteristics of military rule differed from country to country, what they all
had in common was a political scene where civil and political societies were
comprehensively repressed. Prior to the regional wave of democracy, regime legitimacy had
plummeted in many of these countries, the consequence of political repression and poor
economic performance. Encouraged in many cases by the government of the United States
and pressured by rejuvenated civil and political societies, democratically elected leaders
came to power proclaiming a willingness to try to make democracy work.
Regional democratic transitions in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s led to a situation
whereby, in 2000, all 35 members of the Organization of American States, except Cuba,
were run by popularly elected leaders. In mid-2000, the Mexican presidential elections
brought to an end 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), confirming
what appeared to be a clear trend towards more democracy and pluralism in Latin America.
On the other hand, frequent allegations of electoral fraud in some countries, various coup
attempts, popular revolts and undeclared civil wars suggest that, in some cases, progress
towards democratization and stability is highly problematic.
Structural impediments to democracy in Latin America
Two main structural impediments to democratic sustainability in Latin America are
frequently noted:
1 Lack of governmental legitimacy and accountability. Intent on pursuing the interests of
civilian and military elites, most regional governments have ruled with scant concern for the
interests of ordinary people.
2 The political relationship between state and military power. In many regional countries, a
close relationship developed between civilian and military elites from the days of regional
colonial independence in the early nineteenth century. The armed forces were seen as the
main defenders of the state from external (foreign governments) and internal (class-based
political actors) attack.
The consequence of these structural factors is that regional political systems are said to be
rooted in a culture(s) of repression and passivity that is antithetical to democratic citizenship.
That is, a complex of anti-democratic structures are said generally to inhibit chances of
democracy and democratic consolidation in the region.
That is to say, in many countries, the legacy of transition to democracy, and in particular
pacts among the elite to protect their vested interests, served to deliver (only) limited
democracy. National political cultures in the region rarely seemed emphatically pro-
democracy, being the result of decades of authoritarian rule by civilian caudillos and military
personnel, while party systems were only patchily institutionalized and representative. Civil
societies had become more robust in pressing for reforms but there was no guarantee that
they would not fragment under democracy.
Turning to economic growth and prosperity, the region’s recent experiences were that
economic reform programmes hit the poor the hardest, while often enhancing the position of
the wealthy. Many people would anticipate that this would lead to a drop in support for
democracy among those who did not benefit economically. Finally, the impact of external
factors – especially Washington consensus policies – was a contingent factor which, at least
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26. theoretically, could encourage political leaders to take the democracy road. In sum, the
factors having an impact on democratic outcomes in Latin America turn out to include both
structural and contingent issues.
Prospects for democrat consolidation in Latin America
The experiences of both Mexico and Venezuela underline a more general point: limited
democracies are notable for their maintenance of elite privileges, a price for the elite’s
support for democracy. Nothing in the foregoing suggests that limited democracy will not
endure in the region. If a return to the past seems unlikely, and a leap into the consolidation
of full democracy equally improbable, what lies ahead for the countries of Latin America? In
the 1970s and 1980s divisions among economic, political and military elites led them to
promote democratization. This was not necessarily or even primarily for the purpose of
facilitating popular participation but more as a means of resolving their differences,
strengthening their own influence and striving to channel political action along lines which
would enable them to retain as much power as possible in the post-authoritarian order. In
other words, political reforms championed by civilian and military elites alike created the
opportunity for limited democracies. However, what ultimately determined whether such
regimes endured or evolved in a more participatory direction was the extent to which
political and civil society could put pressure on governments to move in the latter direction.
Where such factors were relatively strong, as in Chile and Uruguay, democracy seemed to
advance. When they were not, it did not. As the examples of Venezuela, and to an extent,
Mexico, indicate, limited democracies were the outcome, with no guarantee that such
systems would eventually evolve into more conventionally democratic polities. In other
words, limited democracy in Latin America is not necessarily a temporary or transitional
stage, but could well be an enduring form of government that mixes a substantial degree of
democracy with a substantial degree of authoritarianism.
Question
Discuss what reform you think Latin American countries must undertake in order to
consolidate liberal democracy.
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27. LECTURE 10: Democratic transitions in Africa
Case study: South Africa
As one of the world youngest democracies, South Africa seeks to escape a bitter political
legacy. During the second half of the 20th
century, its white minority fovernment
systematically built a powerful, militarized state around institutions of racial oppression.
Starting even earlier, governments helped foster an advanced industrial economy, which
thrust Africans and the descendants of European settlers into close contact in the country’s
burgeoning urban areas. Predictably, political conflicts erupted between blacks, who
provided labour, and whites, who benefited from economic growth. Because the old regime
was dead set against political change until the late 1980s, the struggle over apartheid
(Afrikaner, literally, apart-ness), as racial segregation was called in South Africa, seemed
destined to end in a cataclysm of violence.
That it did not was one of the most remarkable stories of an eventful interlude of global
democratization. Against the odds, political leaders from both sides (but especially Nelson
Mandela, president of the African National Congress) came to recognize that the long-term
interests of South Africa’s deeply divided communities were inextricably intertwined.
Through tough negotiation and painful compromise, hardened opponents forged an elite pact
that allowed the country to hold an open election and to install the country’s first democratic
government in 1994. The world welcomed this transition as marking both the end of colonial
rule in Africa and the burial of the last 20th
century government based on myths of racial
supremacy.
The years that followed in South Africa have seen a flurry of political creativity. A wide
range of new institutions and policies have been designed to redress the exclusions and
inequities of the past. But difficult question remain about the viability of the new order.
The problems of consolidating democracy in South Africa
The long-term challenge in South Africa is to consolidate gains made in peace, prosperity,
and democracy. Even though the country’s transition from authoritarian rule was led by bold
political initiatives, the health of its fragile new institutions will hinge on subsequent
economic and social developments. Satisfying the material interests of disadvantaged
identity groups is the key to the country’s future. As president Mandela stated when he
opened parliament in 1998, “Our performance should be judged above all on whether our
programmes are positively affecting the lives of the most vulnerable sections of society.”
In this task, the South African government faces several knotty dilemmas. Can the economy
be expanded fast enough to enable a redistribution of wealth and opportunity? Can
institutions made non racial at the same time as services are being effectively delivered? Can
crime be aggressively fought within a human rights regime? And, can democratic institutions
function well if citizens are not strongly attached to democracy? The ways in which these
contending priorities are addressed will determine the kind of economy, society, and polity
that South Africa will attain in the future.
First, can the economy grow fast enough to enable redistribution? South African political
leaders are bound to be preoccupied with the economy, which must generate enough jobs to
ease chronic black impoverishment. Yet employment has slumped because mining,
manufacturing, and agriculture all recently experienced net job losses. Foreign investment
was slow to arrive in South Africa after 1994, and capital took flight from all emerging
markets following the Asian financial crashes of 1997. These events undermined the
government’s strategy for rapid economic growth and strengthened the hands of critics, who
called for the state to play a larger role in job creation. It is ironic, however, that the more the
state intervenes in the economy, the less competitive South Africa will become in attracting
essential private investment from both domestic and international sources. Such are the
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28. narrow policy options available to a government whose economy re-entered the world
market place at a moment when capital had become thoroughly mobile.
Second, can public institutions be made non racial at the same time as services are being
effectively delivered? The South African government is trying to downsize a bloated
bureaucracy while also transforming it (i.e., making it more socially representative and
politically responsive). Some ministries and department have been virtually paralyzed by
clashes between old-order officials and new civil service recruits, often in disputes over
affirmative action. This has contributed to the crisis of institutional capacity that has slowed
South Africa’s post-transition development. Malaysia’s experience suggests that preferences
for formerly disadvantaged groups can be implemented with little conflict in the context of a
rapidly growing economy. But where job opportunities are shrinking, affirmative action
implies real losses to the formerly advantaged, leading those with marketable skills to seek
opportunities abroad. Already, South Africa has lost too many doctors, accountants, and
engineers whose talents are vital to the country’s progress.
Third, can the government fight crime and respect human right at the same time? Because
democratization raises demands for the accountable use of state power, it relaxes controls
over society. People who previously feared state repression are free to engage in new
pursuits, both legal and illicit. In South Africa, evidence is rising that former combatants
from the apartheid conflict – both regular soldiers and guerrillas – are applying their war
skills to careers in violent crime. Criminals of all types are taking advantage of the African
National Congress liberal and enlightened policies, like the abolition of the death penalty
and guarantees against arbitrary arrest and detention. Lacking confidence that the state will
punish wrongdoers, citizens in South Africa are increasingly taking the law into their own
hands. The response varies across social groups: In the wealthy enclaves, people retreat
behind the protection of private security guards; in poorer communities, they are more likely
to resort to vigilante action. Quite regardless of whether the government cracks down, crime
threatens to undermine many of the gains of democratization.
Finally, how well can democratic institutions function in the absence of a supportive political
culture? Observers have hailed the impressive array of democratic institutions embodied in
South Africa’s new constitution. But the behaviour of citizens reveals low levels of political
tolerance among competing social groups and strong popular attachments to antidemocratic
political traditions. Certainly, there is little in South Africa’s political history – whether in
Zulu chieftaincy the apartheid state, or exiled liberation movements – that could have
nurtured democratic commitments. We should not be surprised, therefore, that South
Africans do not value democracy intrinsically, that is, as an end in itself: Just one quarter of
respondents in a national survey associate democracy with civil and electoral rights. Instead,
South Africans tend to regard democracy instrumentally, as a means to other ends: Almost
one half associate it with jobs, education, and housing. And a similar proportion of citizens
say they would be willing to give up elections in exchange for a leader who would provide
these material goods.
Thus, South Africa has a distance to travel before its formal political institutions are
transformed into a living, breathing democracy. Those who expect democracy to deliver
social and economic equality may be sorely disappointed. All that democracy bestows is
political equality. It does not guarantee that disparities of social and economic status will be
redressed, although comparatively, democracies have a slightly better track record at
redistributing wealth than do authoritarian regimes. This does not mean that constructing a
culture of democracy is a lost cause in South Africa. There are at least two hopeful signs.
The first is that South African will surely always remember that democratization restored to
people of all races the human dignity that apartheid had denied. This they will not surrender
easily. The second is that, when push came to shove, South Africans of widely differing
backgrounds resorted to negotiation and compromise to find their way out of the country
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29. deepest political crisis. One must, therefore, be confident that in addressing the country’s
new challenges, South Africa’s diverse identity groups will recognize afresh that their
interests are inexorably connected.
The challenges for democracy in Africa
There is an important strand of analysis that, while focusing on South Africa, is of more
general relevance to Africa in that it highlights the problems of democratization arising from
the general lack of a regional structural basis for democratic sustainability:
Inauspicious social conditions;
Fragile economies and high population growth;
Semi-presidentialism with parliamentarism, often in the context of informal one-party
dominance;
Lack of developed democratically accountable institutions, including robust opposition
parties.
The most spectacular setbacks for early and frail democratic openings have been in Sub-
Saharan Africa, where ethnic violence in some cases has led to the breakdown not merely of
democracy, but also of state authority altogether, as in Rwanda and Somalia. In several
cases, the fragile democratic opening has itself fuelled violent conflict. In many
African countries, new, weak parliaments tend to become merely another player in the old,
authoritarian system of personal rule.
There are two main constraints on democratization. First, it is extremely difficult if not
impossible to graft democracy on to countries lacking a stable political community. On the
one hand, if an election is legitimate, then the state must be clearly seen as legitimate, and
that is rarely the case in Africa. Second, liberal democracy emerged in Western Europe in
tandem with the expansion of capitalism and the rise of a middle class constituency. It
developed in opposition to medieval, hierarchical institutions – the despotic monarchies
whose claim to all-powerful rule rested on the assertion that they enjoyed divine support.
Liberal democrats attacked the old system on two fronts. First, they fought for the creation of
a sphere of civil society where social relations including private business and personal life
could evolve without state interference. An important element in this respect was the support
of a market economy based on the respect for private property. The second element was the
claim that state power was based not on natural or supernatural rights but on the will of the
sovereign people. Ultimately, this claim would lead to demand for democracy – that is for
the creation of mechanisms of representation that assured that those who held state power
enjoyed popular support. The tradition that became liberal democracy was liberal first
(aimed at restricting state power over civil society) and democratic later (aimed at creating
structures that would secure a popular mandate for holders of state power). Even when the
focus was on democracy, liberals had various reservations. They feared that democracy
would impede the establishment of a liberal society. Today, in many countries there is a real
tension between attempts to promote democracy, and the increasingly global rather than
local dynamics of capitalism. In many states, especially in Africa, powerful middle classes
have yet to develop, and it is unclear whether the European and North American experience
can be duplicated there.
Question
Given the absence or the weakness of a democratic heritage and the persistence of violence,
what are the prospects for consolidating democracy in Africa?
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30. LECTURES 11 and 12: The prospects for democracy in Asia
(a) South Asia: India and Pakistan
South Asian countries differ greatly in terms of size, geography, economic structures,
political traditions, forms of rule, relations with external powers, and cultures. The region
has had a variable democratic history since its emergence from colonial rule in the late
1940s, reflected in the region’s political diversity: monarchical rule in Nepal, long running
civil war in Sri Lanka between Tamils and Sinhalese, alternating military and civilian
regimes in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and India’s established democratic system. However,
all regional countries, with the exception of Pakistan, had democratically elected
governments in 2000.
Structural impediments to democracy in South Asia
The political histories of India and Pakistan reflect several structural factors of importance in
explaining their differing democratic histories. They are:
1 Widespread religious and ethnic competition and conflicts. Both countries have large
numbers of different ethnic and religious groups which would, many democratic theorists
would expect, make it difficult to develop and environment facilitating democratic
sustainability.
2 The nature of the political relationship between the state and the armed forces. Pakistan,
but not India, has traditionally had a close relationship between state and military elites. In
Pakistan but not in India, the military has traditionally had a powerful political role.
3 Weak governmental legitimacy and accountability. Following independence, for several
decades successive Congress Party governments in India helped develop the country’s
political system rooted in democracy. Such an outcome did not occur in Pakistan, where
neither a viable party system nor a hegemonic party like Congress developed. However, the
increasing incidence of weak, short-lived governments in both countries suggests that
regimes have struggled to built their legitimacy among increasingly cynical populations, who
them as largely unaccountable and unrepresentative.
Turning to contingent factors, India’s democratic history is studded with the example
highlighting the importance of such factors. First, pro-democracy nationalist leaders adeptly
exploited the situation immediately after World War II, when a much weakened Britain
finally became willing to grant India freedom from colonial rule. Second, incoming
nationalists leaders, including the prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, were personally
committed to democracy and used their positions in power to help embed democratic
institutions and norms of behaviour. Third, as the hegemony of the Congress Party waned in
the wake of various corruption scandals – to the extent that in the 1980s it lost its formerly
tight grip on power – new, populists leaders emerged who were able to exploit the situation
to further their own electoral fortunes.
The importance of contingency can also be seen in Pakistan’s political developments over
time. First, there was the contingent situation provided by the country’s extraordinary
emergence as an independent nation in 1947, resulting in the creation of a dual country –
East and West Pakistan – separated by thousands of kilometres of hostile Indian territory.
Second, the breakdown of democracy in 1999 was encouraged by the democratically malign
behaviour of senior politicians who, by their corruption and poor rule encouraged the army
to take over.
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