San Francisco / Morocco Board News---   To those of us who are concerned about the evolution of political development in the last 60 years in the developing world, and the current political changes taking place in North Africa and the Middle East, one important question is this:  Can we modernize without losing the best of our traditions?  I will try to shed some light on what the social sciences have been defining as political and economic development and modernization for us to understand the implications of where we are heading on this path to “modernization.”
Developed countries in the West assume that the development that they have experienced can be and should be emulated by developing countries.  But what they omit in this invitation is the fact that their political development was based on economic development, which in turn was based on slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.  Countries that are now seeking development and its benefits have experienced the negative impact of these three economic systems.  Some will argue that we shouldn’t dwell on the past, but as William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.”

Today in the developing world several dynamics are taking place.  These dynamics are assumed to be factors of change and political development in the Western mode, which is welcomed by the social sciences.  Let’s see why.  Capitalism as an economic system imposes structures which undermine the traditional sector, representing the masses, for the sake of upholding the modern sector, representing “modern man.”  This modern-traditional dichotomy viewed from the perspective of development is the backbone of the “continuum theory” –one of the dominant schools of thought in the Western social sciences.  According to the continuum theory, development proceeds in a continuous, linear progression from “traditional” to “modern”.  The basic tool of inquiry is the accumulation of data applied toward a state of being “developed” which is projected as some universal, pre-determined state.

The continuum theory characterizes developed and underdeveloped countries as “traditional” or “modern” and defines “development” as the abandonment of one set of characteristics in favor of the other.  Social scientists, such as Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, look at pairs of pattern variables to analyze social action or social systems.  These variables include achievement  and ascription, specificity and diffuseness, universalism and particularity, effective-neutrality and affectivity, and self-orientation and collective-orientation.  According to this model, the developed country would be achievement-oriented, and the individual or system within it  would focus attention on achieved aspects of  a person rather than his or her ascribed qualities, i.e., sex, status, etc. Roles in the developed society would be, according to the model, functionally specific rather than diffuse, characterized by the specific obligations of a contract rather than wider obligation of family loyalty. A developed society and the individual and system actions within it would be guided by universally accepted percepts rather than ones relating to a particular situation or person; interactions would be characterized by effective-neutrality and self-orientation rather than by emotion and a concern for the common good.

In addition to defining the characteristics of traditional and modern societies, social scientists, such as Walt Rostow, advance the theory that economic development is a transition through stages.  According to Rostow, “It is possible to identify all societies, in their economic dimensions, as lying within five categories: the traditional society, the precondition for take-off, the take-off, the drive to maturity, and the age of high-mass consumption.” According to Walt Rostow, underdeveloped countries today find themselves in a historical stage through which presently developed countries have already passed.

Within the assumptions of the continuum theory, according to Herman Kahn, the diffusion model asserts that “development occurs largely through the spread of certain cultural patterns and material benefits from developed to the underdeveloped areas; and that within each underdeveloped nation a similar diffusion occurs from the modern to the traditional sectors.”  He also states “that maintaining the present world economic, technological and political environment is the perfect way for “richer” nations to accelerate the rate of development in “poorer” nations.  The best “developer” is the transnational corporation, (that is, the corporation owned and controlled by one nation with access to many others).” According to Kahn, the transnational corporation is a good institutional builder.

This theory makes even more explicit the notion of the “dual society” that pervades in the social sciences in the West today and the assumption that development means assimilation of the “traditional” by the “modern”. The diffusion theory sums up development as the input of material goods (technology and capital) or cultural and social goods (values and institutions) through foreign aid and investment.

These approaches have their critics.  Thomas Balough criticizes the Kahn approach for its acceptance of international oligopoly and its belief that the price mechanism produces optimal resource allocation, even taking into account such things as social and environmental costs.  In his words it is “ludicrous to think of the transnational corporation as playing a positive role in economic or international development since its aim is to get as much as possible for as little as possible.”

Given the traditional-modern dichotomy and the goal of the continuum theory, which is stability, the structural-functional equilibrium model becomes the mechanism through which stability is assumed attainable. How is this stability achieved? According to Samuel Huntington, stability results from old, well-established, complex, coherent, and adaptable institutions which create power and expand their scope within and beyond their peripheries.

Social science’s mode of applying a structural-functional analysis typically involves a comparison of political institutions with “traditional” at one end of the spectrum and “modern” at the other, various “transitional” categorizations in between.

The study of comparative politics is assumed feasible when societies are viewed as political system.  Gabriel Almond defines political system as the system of interactions “which performs the function of integration and adaptation (both internally and vis-à-vis other societies) by means of the employment, or threat of employment, of more or less legitimate physical compulsion,”

Lucien Pye viewed the process of extending the nation-state system to all societies as a process in four stages:

(1.) The initial efforts to persuade traditional authorities to adhere to international standards,
(2.) Colonial administration and foreign rule,
(3.) Indirect assistance and foreign aid,
(4.) Extension of the nation-state system by creating internal political forces.

This brings us to the concept of political culture. Pye and Sidney Verba have defined political culture as “the system of empirical beliefs, experience, symbols, and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place. It encompasses both the political ideas and the operating norms of a polity.”

The Euro-American-centered political scientists define a developed political system as one which is structurally differentiated (i.e., where distinct structures perform increasingly specialized functions, analogous to the division of labor and role specialization which accompanied European urbanization, migration, and industrialization) and one in which participation in politics takes the form of interest groups aggregating and articulating interests through coalitions and political parties.

Thus we go from political development to political cultural development and both implicitly or explicitly equate development with movement toward “modernization” and “Westernization,” thus becoming ethnocentrically monopolized.

The question for the developing world is who are we, what are we, and where are we going?

 


 

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