Development Traditions

Modernization and Dependency Schools

What are the three components of development

thinking?

• Development theories

• Development Strategies

• Development Ideologies

What is the relationship between the Enlightenment and Development Thinking?

• Idea of applying reason, and empircism

• Ideas of progress, and universality

• Evolution through ‘natural’ stages

• Idea of modernity

• Idea of mastering nature

• Emphasis on social order

• The role of the state/ those with ‘scientific’ knowledge as trustees and forces for progress

How has post-war era influenced development

thinking? What were its key premises?

• Cold War and Marshall Plan to manage change

• Post-colonial states and development choices

• Premises:

1. Social Engineering

2. State

3. Poverty as a social pathology

4. Fear of mass society

Modernization School

• What does development entail?

• Societies develop through evolutionary stages.

• Social change is unidirectional, progressive, gradual or phased (Rostow) and irreversible leading to convergence as societies become more advanced

• Example: Rostow’s five stages (tradition, preconditions for takeoff, takeoff, drive to maturity, and finally high mass consumption)

Development in Mod (continued)

• Economies in developing contexts are qualitatively different

• Economic structure is like a “steel frame that cannot be changed with growth and accumulation of capital”

• State plays a key role in providing a ‘big push’ in order for industrialization to happen.

• Key challenge is lack of accumulation of productive capital in modern sector due to low levels of savings.

• The state plays an important role in forward and backward linkages

• Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and can fill the gaps

• Integration into world economy is consistent with development

Values • Cultures of poverty• Development is a question of instilling the right

values and personality types• Modern cultural values traits as a commitment

to rationality and science (over emotionalism and superstition), universalism, independence, and personal achievement.

• Modern values make it possible for people to accept risk, to act in their own self-interest, to engage in long-term planning, to honor commitments to people outside their family..etc.

Political Modernization

• Traditional societies are not becoming ‘liberal democracies’

• Development is messy and can lead to social mobilization and demands of participation that traditional institutions can not absorb.

• Political order and state strength as pre-requisites for development

Main tenets of Modernization

• A) Ideal Types and Dualities

• 1) Traditional society: “ascriptive, particularistic, an extended kinship structure with a multiplicity of functions, little spatial and social mobility, a deferential stratification system, mostly primary economic activities, a tendency toward autarky of social units, an undifferentiated political structure, with traditional elitist and hierarchical sources of authority, etc.”

• 2) Modern society is dominated by ‘achievement; universalistic, specific, and neutral orientations; a nuclear family structure serving limited functions; a complex and highly differentiated occupational system; high rates of spatial and social mobility; a predominance of secondary economic activities and production for exchange; the institutionalization of change and self-sustained growth; highly differentiated political structures with rational legal sources of authority; and so on’

• B)Endogenous explanation of underdevelopment

• society was conceptualized as an integrated self contained unit with functionally compatible roles and institutions. Hence, the institutions and patterns of action of traditional society are a cause and manifestation of underdevelopment.

C. Governance

• Political institutions and political order matter in the development process.

• Economic performance and viable rule are mutually reinforcing.

Problems With Modernization School?

Dependency School

• What are its key premises?

• Under-development cannot be understood in isolation from the international economic order.

• Development is a Hobbesian drama.

• Value systems and cultures are not the causes of underdevelopment.

Tenets of Dependency School

• Core and periphery

• Development = industrialization

• The state is “hollowed out” due to :

1) structural dominance of the core

2) domestic dominance of the ‘lumpen-bourgeoisie’

How can development happen?

• Empowerment of working classes in the periphery

• State’s autonomy from the local bourgeoisie

• De-link developing societies from the international economic system

What are the weaknesses of dependency school?

• Perpetuate ideal types

• A-historical analysis

• Static view of the developing world

• Rise of the NICs, India, China?