Development theory: Modernization and dependency, Slides of Modern History

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Development Theory I:

Modernisation and

Dependency

Structure of the Lecture

• Section One: Brief Historical Introduction
• Section Two: Modernisation Theory
• Section Three: Dependency Theory
• Section Four: Capitalist Structuralism

• For Marx Imperialism was about the export of capital
• The expansion of capitalism led to uniformity
• Not that different from liberal political economy
• Even critics of Imperialism (Hobson) saw it as ‘developmental’

• Modern Development Economics was born in Latin America in the 1930s in response to world depression
• The main early contributions of Development economics come under heading of the ‘structuralist’ school

• 1960s (in wake of the Cuban revolution) formation of a radical explanation of underdevelopment

Modernisation Theory

• Has cultural, political and economic component
• Different authors stress different aspects of the argument

• A number of levels of the analyse
• First and third world ‘man’ are seen as different physiologically (Oscar Lewis and David McClelland ).
• First world ‘man’ is individualist, rational and goal orientated.
• Third world ‘man’ is collective, irrational and fatalist

• Second, first and third world social systems are fundamentally different in terms of levels of evolution:
• Parsons Ideas of evolutionary ‘universals that all societies need to evolve beyond a particular level’.

• Politically modernisation theorists did not simply promote liberal democracy
• Concerned with problems of transition (the confluence of the modern and the underdeveloped)
• Need mechanism of integration, depersonalisation, mediation and moderation to make democracy work

• Order (anti-communism) most important
• Army appeared as a rational modern institution. A medium term political solution
• Pye, "Armies in the Process of Political Modernization”
• Democracy ideal in long-term

• Lewis. Dual Economy and Expanding Capitalist nucleus
• Two economies in underdeveloped state (capitalist and traditional)
• The key to achieving growth is expand capitalist sector

• It is necessary to channel additional resources to the sector.
• Squeeze the peasantry
• Importantly there is no serious consideration of external constraints

• You cannot simply ignore the structures of the global economy
• The economic solutions it proposes will exasperate poverty in the medium term
• Political solutions questionable?
• Does not properly delineate between different societies
• All cultural explanations of growth pose problem of hitting the target (Catholicism, Confucianism etc )

Dependency Theory

• Marx turned on his head
• Focus on exchange than production
• Underdevelopment and development two sides of the same coin
• The idea of a traditional sector is nonsense
• The problem is how third world is integrated into the global economy