Scandinavian Political Studies, Bind 5 (1970)POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS A COHERENT AND RELEVANT THEORETICAL FORMULATION OF THE CONCEPTLars Rudebeck Side 21
University of
Uppsala I. IntroductionStatement of PurposeThe main purpose of this essay is to suggest a theoretical formulation of the concept of "political development" which, hopefully, is not only logically coherent but also relevant to the general problem of underdevelopment in the modern age, and the historical necessity to overcome that underdevelopment. It follows from this that references to the extensive literature already produced by political and other social scientists working in the same and related areas will be made only in order to acknowledge intellectual debts and to put the ideas expressed and formulated in this essay in their proper theoretical perspective, but not in order to summarize or criticize, systematically, the ideas of others. Thus, my purpose is different both from, for instance, the summarizing purpose of James S. Coleman, when writing succinctly about the concept of "political modernization" in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and from the critical purpose of, for instance, Andre Gunder Frank, when writing harshly about the Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology encountered in the industrialized capitalist countries.1 My own effort here will contain elements of both these purposes, but primarily — and perhaps also pretentiously — I would like to think of it as a small contribution to the difficult task of theory construction. Whatever merits the essay may turn out to have will be the result of previous interaction between theoretical studies and empirical confrontation with some aspects of Third World realities.2 Naturally I also hope to be able, later, to submit the theoretical ideas formulated here to empirical confrontation. The Plan of the EssayThe plan of the essay can be understood from the table on p. 23, which is an attempt to relate to each other the decisive factors characterizing, in different combinations, all approaches to the analysis of political development. The full meaning of the table is contained in the following text, but it is still presented at this early stage in order to provide the reader with a systematic theoretical guide to the argument of the essay. Side 22
The vertical axis of the table refers to the historical and normative elements which are inevitable in all social science. Position A on this axis is the position of social scientists whose work is analytically rigorous, at the same time as they themselves are strongly aware of its historical and normative determinants, which they do not fear to make clearly explicit. Position B, on the other hand, disregards the problem of valuations and historical determination of social science, while still maintaining high standards of analytical rigor and coherence. Position C, finally, mixes valuations and analysis in a manner which leaves it to the reader to make the distinction in order to be able to judge the theoretical validity of the analysis. This is the least advanced position along the axis, as it not only disregards the role of valuations and other historical determinants of social science, but is lacking also with regard to analytical rigor. The horizontal axis of the table refers to the extent to which any approach adopted with regard to the analysis of political development is openly teleological versus historically relativistic. According to position 1, it is possible to define the goal of political development in absolute terms, whereas social scientists holding position 2 are more careful, while still tending to imply a final goal in their theoretical thinking about political development. This implied goal is usually ethnocentric in the sense of being similar to an idealized version of the kind of political system defined as good by the theorist's own culture. Position 3, on the contrary, is historically relativistic, in an explicit manner and for theoretical reasons, with regard to the goals of political development. But it is important to note, on the other hand, that this position does not keep social scientists, who adopt it, from having and expressing their own historically determined preferences for certain kinds of political systems — in the sense, for instance, that Karl Marx preferred socialism and communism to capitalism, while still being keenly aware that not every kind of social structure could accommodate socialist-communist systems. It is important, too, with regard to both axes of the table, to remember that many individual social scientists do not offer clear-cut examples of the various positions but mix them in different ways. Most social scientists, however, still have a fairly consistent tendency in one direction or other. The relation between the plan of this essay and the table can now be indicated. After some conceptual definitions and other preliminary comments have been made in part II of the essay, part 111 will be devoted to a critical analysis of a few representative examples of the prevalent approach to the analysis of political development in Western political science and sociology. It will be shown that this approach, typically, has a strong normative-conservative, ethnocentric, and teleological bias, which places many of its representatives in the neighborhood of the lower left-hand corner of the table (Cl). But it will also be shown — and this is perhaps more interesting — that even the most sophisticated and strictly argued theories generated by the prevalent Western approach have ideological biases that leave them open to the charges of implicit normativeness, ethnocentrism, and teleology. These more rigorous examples of the prevalent Side 23
approach are
located, approximately, where the first and second rows
of the In part IV of the essay, finally, I will try to outline and exemplify a more fruitful approach to the theoretical analysis of political development, located in the upper right-hand corner of the table (A3), and thereby aim to combine theoretical rigor and consistency with historical relevance. The names in the table refer to those authors whose works will be used in order to illustrate the various positions defined by the terms of the table. Other authors will also be discussed, although not as thoroughly, and it is therefore left up to the reader who so desires to try to locate them in the table. Thus the main
purpose of this essay may be summed up as an attempt to
![]() Fig. 1. Different Approaches to the Analysis of Political Development II. Definitions and preliminary comments"Underdevelopment",
"Development", and "Political Development" Side 24
litical development", to a general definition of "underdevelopment". Such a definition can hardly be very exact in any absolute sense. "Underdevelopment" is a relative concept, and its definition will have to be relativistic, indicative rather than immediately operational. Thus, the term "underdevelopment" will be used here with reference to situations and societies where human and material resources are underutilized in relation to existing needs. A country is said to be "underdeveloped", if mass poverty coexists with mass idleness, and if people in great numbers lead miserable lives — which are also generally experienced as unjustifiably and unnecessarily miserable — at the same time as important human and material resources remain idle, underutilized, or exploited for the benefit of others. It is important to note that large-scale underdevelopment, thus defined, is a modern historical phenomenon; it is far from synonymous with such human and social misery as certainly existed also in earlier times, but then with less consciousness of possibilities for improvement and in a less dynamic international context than our own historical period provides us with today. It would certainly be unreasonable to claim that underdevelopment, in the general sense indicated, does not exist at all in the highly industrialized parts of the world. It certainly does. But the degree to which it exists in the so-called Third World today,3 where it strikes about two thirds of the world population with varying intensity, is incomparably greater — so much greater that the difference tends to become qualitative. If we accept the view of underdevelopment as essentially a problem of underutilization of human and material resources in relation to needs, then, obviously, efforts to overcome underdevelopment will have to be directed toward greater mobilization of such resources. Politically, this is a problem of changing and strengthening the structures and institutions of society in such ways that people will be enabled and encouraged to work hard and intelligently enough to create a surplus, which is then saved and re-invested in their own national economy, for purposes of their own progress. That is, in bare essence, what political development is about in most of the countries of the Third World today — with obvious variations due to different historical situations and different levels of development. The challenge to the political systems of these countries is dramatically harsh and unequivocal: either they develop adequate responses to the tensions and contradictions of underdevelopment or the societies they hold together will sink into stagnation, disorganization, and complete dependence upon others. That a fairly great number of Third World countries today are not very far from such a grave and dangerous situation is testimony to the strength of both external and internal vested interests in underdevelopment as well as to the strength of all kinds of other barriers to change. Still, the very fact of mounting difficulties and stagnation or much too slow progress is, in the long run, likely to increase the pressures for change on the political systems of the various countries. Historical experience and general knowledge of present conditions in the world Side 25
teach us that the
adaptation of political systems to such pressures may
take both It seems to be an inescapable fact of history, however, that development in the form of qualitative change from agrarian to industrialized society by peaceful evolution is the exception rather than the rule. This holds true both for capitalist and socialist historical models of development.4 Consequently, one of many important questions facing the countries of the Third World today is whether liberation from direct colonial rule in itself was enough of a revolutionary change to clear the road to the future. This is a difficult question, to say the least, and it will probably remain posed until history has given the answer(s). I have raised it here only to set the stage for our undertaking in this essay, which is related to, but is much more limited than any attempt to answer the question in definite terms. The "Political System" and "Political Development"It follows from the comments above that the political aspects of development are particularly important in situations of modern underdevelopment. This point will be further discussed in the following section of this essay, but it is necessary first to specify the theoretical approach adopted with regard to such concepts as "politics" and "political system". In 1967 I published a study of the development of the Tunisian political system during the first half of the 1960's.5 The theoretical point of departure for my book was the general idea that there exists a fundamental connection between policy and politics — a connection between the concrete political goals pursued within any political system and the way in which that system functions. As the main object of analysis was Tunisia's only political party, the Parti Socialiste Destourien (until 1964 the Neo-Destour Party), and its role in the total political system of the country, it was necessary to provide a logical link between my general point of departure and the concrete political systems of underdeveloped countries. I managed to provide this link by drawing upon Gabriel A. Almond's by now well-known ideas about functions and structures of political systems,6 which I then described as an "attempt to apply the essence of systems theory to politics".7 But regardless of whether this way of characterizing Almond's original approach was reasonable or not at the time, it is now quite obvious that it must be regarded as a bit off the mark. The great merit of the reasoning behind Almond's 1960 functional scheme was its emphasis on politics rather than on institutions, and not whatever connection it might have had with systems theory. The scheme, however, was not overly concerned with the conditions of change, as both Almond himself and several others have pointed out.8 It emphasized the bow and not the why of politics. Today it would appear more appropriate to use the phrase "the essence of systems theory applied to politics" about attempts Side 26
to analyze the interaction between entire political systems on the one hand and, on the other hand, both the environments of political systems and their own internal contradictions. To study the different stages of the political process going on within all political systems then becomes no more than one aspect of this wider task, but an aspect that remains important in its own right.9 The simple, descriptive "functionalism" proposed by Almond in 1960 should, to my mind, most appropriately be regarded as a useful approach to the limited but still very important task just mentioned — i.e. the task of studying, in a comparative manner, the political processes going on within different political systems. It is quite possible to regard Almond's brand of "functionalism" as primarily a systematizing device, suitable for this particular operational purpose, but without any far-reaching theoretical pretensions. Consciously used in this manner, it need not have any of the (conservative) philosophical and political implications often associated with the more ambitious explanatory functionalism of Talcott Parsons and of other social scientists with a more firmly based theoretical claim to the functionalist label than Almond appears to have.10 Thus the Almond of 1960 performed a highly progressive function with regard to the general state of political science at the time, whereas his later work, in spite of some theoretical advances, has clearly performed an opposite function, as we shall see in part 111 of this essay. In order to approach, explicitly, the task of analyzing the role of politics in social change, it is, in any case, necessary to move far beyond Almond's early formulations, and to look at the entire political system as a complex variable in its own right interacting with others. I believe that the theoretical foundations for such an undertaking can be found in the works of such modern political scientists as David Easton and Karl W. Deutsch.11 One particularly fruitful aspect of the theoretical work of these two authors is their emphasis upon the political system as the totality of social interactions involved in the authoritative allocation of values and setting of goals for a given society — which is, in fact, the eclectic and operationally flexible definition of "politics" adopted for the purposes of this essay. The political system, looked upon in this way, is the coordinating social system within which values are allocated and goals adopted, in an authoritive way, for the entire society, and where societal conflicts, tensions, and pressures are focused. It is therefore continuously faced with the necessity of responding to tensions and contradictions and to changes in the demands and supports emanating both from within itself and from its environment. Its interaction with the rest of society can be summed up in the well known inputoutput-feedback formula. The combined reference above to the definitions of two different authors may seem, to some, as a somewhat irreverent mixture of Easton's "authoritative allocation of values for a society"12 and Deutsch's "dependable coordination of human efforts and expectations for the attainment of the goals of the society* 13 But the point is precisely a wish to emphasize the basic affinity between the two theoretical approaches that have generated these two definitions Side 27
of "politics". For although Deutsch is interested mainly in "communications" systems, it seems clear that the goals of political analysis cannot be reached, unless the political content of the messages communicated in Deutsch's system is kept in focus. If this point is granted, I believe that the differences between Easton's and Deutsch's political systems become insignificant from the point of view of political science. The main problem with the combined definition of "politics" proposed above lies elsewhere, and its origins are to be sought in Easton's work rather than in that of Deutsch. For it is difficult not to notice the ambiguity involved in defining "politics" as the "authoritative allocation of values for a society", while still maintaining, as Easton does, a distinction between economy and polity which, for instance, locates "the distribution of scarce values" within an autonomous economic system rather than within the political system.14 This kind of narrow delimitation of the political system from the rest of society is implicit in several of Easton's formulations in spite of being in apparent contradiction with his general definition of politics. The problem involved is twofold: (1) From a theoretical point of view, the narrow delimitation of politics may easily imply a regression from the modern social science view of politics as being an aspect of or a process within the greater social system, and a possible return, through a back-door, to the dated view of politics as the exclusive domain of formal political institutions. This is so, despite the fact that Easton himself has made decisive contributions to the acceptance, in modern political science, of the more advanced "holistic" view. (2) From an ideological or normative point of view the narrow delimitation of the field of politics tends, furthermore, to create and maintain an artificially sharp distinction between "political" and "economic" decision-making — a distinction serving only the interests of those who prefer the "economy" to be handled with a minimum of "political interference". It is possible that this analysis of Easton's somewhat ambiguous definition of politics is based upon a too simple and even simplistic interpretation of his theoretical work. A more sophisticated interpretation would perhaps emphasize the distinction between two different kinds of social steering systems: one "political" and the other "economic" in the sense of following the laws of the "market". But even this interpretation would have to recognize that the allocations arrived at through the mechanisms of the "market" become "authoritative" only to the extent that a "market economy" is "politically" sanctioned within the society in question. It seems, then, that the easiest and most natural way out of the problem is to interpret Easton's definition literally and thus to regard all interactions which are in some way connected with the "authoritative allocations of values for a society" as "political", regardless of whether they have been worked out through the mechanisms of the formal political institutions, through those of the market, or in some other way. To anybody
regarding systems theory as a worthwhile approach to
political Side 28
ideological
conservatism, it is therefore encouraging to note
Deutsch's In the interchange between the economy and the political system, the economy provides the political system with a stock of disposable resources, skills, and expectable levels of productivity and capabilities (for example, the economic "war potential") while the political system provides the economy with guarantees of certain dependable expectations (for example, the protection of the prevailing patterns of private or collective property) ... Credit and investment policies thus appear, from the viewpoint of this theory, largely as political inputs into the economy — a relationship illustrated by the close connection between public policy and central banking. To the extent that such central banking functions are carried out by wholly private and unsupervised banks, or other financial organizations — or to the extent that such organizations share in these policies — it might be surmised that banks and their executives have acquired a substantial amount of political power. The comments now made on the thorny problem of how to distinguish the political from the economic system certainly do not exhaust the subject. But I hope that they are sufficiently clear and extensive to give some meaning to the proposed definition of the political system as "the totality of social interactions involved in the authoritative allocation of values and setting of goals for a given society". Perhaps it should be added that specified international political systems — ranging from the
international system of the whole world to smaller
geographically The preference expressed in this essay for a definition of politics, which emphasizes the decisive role in society of the political system as the focus of societal contradictions and conscious comprehensive goal-setting, may not be unrelated to my basic concern with societal change and development. It is worth pointing out, therefore, that a similar view is advanced by the French political scientist Nicos Poulantzas in a very thorough, theoretical exposition of the Marxist theory of politics — i.e. an exposition of what might be called the political science aspects of a theory of society aiming precisely to reveal the broad social forces involved in societal change and development.16 Poulantzas himself emphasizes the similarity between the Marxist view of the state (the "political system" in the terminology used here) as "the factor maintaining the unity of a social formation" and the kind of views advanced by modern political scientists, among them Easton and Deutsch.17 He does not, however, discuss another possible point of contact — and even overlap — between Marxist political analysis and those aspects of systems analysis which are particularly well suited to the analysis of social change and development. The common area referred to embraces the fundamental dynamic relationship which — either according to Marxist theory or according to systems analysis — connects — either through a dialectic or through a cybernetic feedback process — the political system and the various pressures to which it is subjected in any societal situation which is not perfectly balanced or harmonious. Although perhaps theoretically conceivable as particular cases of a more general Side 29
category, such static situations can hardly be imagined to occur in the real life of actual societies — and certainly not in our own historical period which almost everywhere is marked by deep national and international cleavages and contradictions, putting strong and sometimes overwhelming pressure upon most existing political systems. Thus a dynamic theoretical approach is indispensable both on theoretical and on empirical grounds, irrespective of whether the general model by which we try to visualize the constant interaction between competing social forces is called "dialectic", in a vague sense of the term, or "cybernetic". This latter question is, of course, not altogether unimportant, but at least a definite choice between the two terms would still not change much in the view of "political development" which I have tried to sketch in this section of the essay and which will be further specified in the following sections. To sum up then, "political development" is thought of here as a process through which the «political system» adapts to and acts upon conflicts and contradictions and changes in demands and supports emanating both from within the system and from its national and international environments. Only if such a process prepares the conditions for, initiates, results from, or in some other way is positively correlated with other changes in the direction of "development", is it thought of as "political development". Thus, "political development" may simply be regarded as political change in the direction required in order to approach objective solutions to basic societal problems connected with "underdevelopment" or insufficient "development". A dialectic (or cybernetic) relationship between the political system and the various conflicts and pressures of underdevelopment is established through feedback from the responses, or absence of responses, of the system. As already mentioned, the developmental results of this interaction — opposite, regressive results are also possible — may range all the way from small evolutionary adaptations to revolutionary changes, which substitute new structures and institutions, with new social bases, for the existing structures and institutions. In a general way, the outcome always depends upon the strength of the pressurecreating contradictions and tensions, the objectively existing alternatives in handling them, and the combined strength and flexibility of the established system. It is also important to note that the political system (those in command of it) may react to pressures both by changing or replacing the structures of the political system itself and by attempting to change its environment, for instance by breaking down cultural and social barriers to change or by challenging the international environment. To conclude, still another form of systemic reaction to political pressure should perhaps also be noted — but rather because of its frequency than because of any connection with political development as understood here. I am thinking of direct suppression, with more or less violent means, of emerging and newly articulated interests. As is well known, this kind of short-term "solution" to political problems is often adopted by classes, groups, and individuals in control of political systems. Side 30
The Primary Role of Politics in Relation to Modem Under development In a concise and illuminating discussion of the concept of development, the Brazilian political scientist Helio Jaguaribe formulates the important distinction between the idea of (economic) development and that of economic growth:18 The latter refers only to the quantitative increase in wealth or per capita product, whereas the idea of development includes the sense of qualitative improvement in the economy through a better social division of labor, the use of an improved technology, and the better utilization of natural resources and capital. Jaguaribe also makes a useful philosophical distinction between the concept of development and that of progress. Progress, as an idea of the Enlightenment, "implies a continuous incorporation of values throughout a process, in itself unlimited, of discovery and creation of values".19 Development, on the other hand, is a more radical and modern concept, closer to a materialistic view of history, we might add. Jaguaribe continues:20 • . . (the idea of development) . . . implies that virtually pre-existent possibilities have been made explicit and actualized. It thus conveys a sense of limitation in quantitative terms, and implies the existence of basic guidelines of legitimacy or validity in qualitative terms. Only certain given indices of development can be arrived at for a given community and for a given period. Development can be fostered only within the framework of certain norms and according to certain criteria dictated by the effective conditions in which the society to be developed finds itself. On the next page,
Jaguaribe also speaks of the process of development, in
a If we accept these formulations of Jaguaribe's, as I think we are justified in doing, we may also accept his conclusion that development in the sense of comprehensive, structural transformation of economy and society, first began to occur in history in the West, during and after the period of the Renaissance. It then becomes easy to distinguish two general historical models of development (in a loose sense of the term model). Because of their historical reality, these two models or patterns are available for consideration — if not always for application — by the peoples and leaders of those countries which today experience themselves as underdeveloped in the context of the modern world.22 But even if we prefer to use the concept of development in a more general historical sense, to include also economic growth and societal transformations that occurred before the Renaissance, the possibility still remains to distinguish between two principal historical models or patterns of development. On the most
general level, these two patterns may be called
spontaneous The most
clear-cut example of spontaneous development is, of
course, offered Side 31
less spontaneously, to several European countries. The British industrial revolution was spontaneous in the sense that it was not planned and foreseen on the national level and for the entire society. It was not systematically brought about through conscious political decisions made by the national leaders. The most comprehensive example so far of consciously initiated development, on the other hand, is offered by the development of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. But several other examples could also be mentioned, including the industrialization of Japan, with consciously initiated capitalist methods, as well as the socialist-communist development of China, now underway for more than twenty years. It is worth remembering, too, that the industrialization of countries such as France and Germany, and also several of the smaller European countries, was much less spontaneous than that of Britain and the United States. In fact, both France under Napoleon 111 and Germany under Bismarck offer examples of consciously initiated development, although of a far less comprehensive kind than that of the Soviet Union and, indeed, with regard to spirit, style, scope, and goals, considerably closer to the British pattern. The obvious differences with regard, to scope and goals in particular, but also with regard to methods, between consciously initiated development of the socialist-communist kind, on the one hand, and of the liberal-capitalist kind on the other hand, raise the question whether it would not be more meaningful to start from the basic distinction between liberal-capitalist and socialist-communist models of development rather than from, the partly overlapping distinction just made between spontaneous development and consciously initiated development. This is a tempting idea for anybody regarding social and political content as more important than mere form. Within the category of liberal-capitalist development, we may then regard the various examples of government initiated development as different examples of deviation from the pure, ideal model approximated by the historical example of Great Britain. My purpose in the present context, anyway, is not to propose a watertight typology of historical development models, but only to emphasize the point that spontaneous development is almost unique in history, and that also the less spontaneous cases of liberal-capitalist development — which are, if not unique, in any case not very frequent, globally speaking — started from rather favorable internal and international conditions which most of the countries of the Third World do not enjoy today and which they cannot re-create to any considerable extent, because their present historical situations are very different from the situations in which the now developed liberal-capitalist countries, including Japan, found themselves one or a few centuries ago.23 The general factors which characterize the situations of the Third World countries today — thus adding up to the complex condition of modern underdevelopment — will be discussed at some length in a following section of the essay. For the present purpose it is enough to point out that the main barriers to development are found, internally, in social structure, institutions, and attitudes, Side 32
and internationally, in the structure of the capitalist dominated, international political and economic system itself, which relegates the underdeveloped countries to low and disadvantageous positions at the bottom of the international hierarchy of power, influence, and material levels of living. All this calls for consciously and purposefully applied development policies — if there is to be any development at all — of a more comprehensive, egalitarian, and revolutionary kind than the policies once applied in those liberal-capitalist countries where development cannot be said to have been spontaneous. It is therefore clear that most of the Third World countries have more to learn, in an historical sense, from socialist historical experience in development than from liberal-capitalist experience. Regardless of the difficulties involved in making clear distinctions between, for instance, "state capitalism" or "noncapitalism" and various more or less diluted forms of "socialism" (African or others), the situations of the Third World countries thus assign to their political systems the crucially important task of initiating and sustaining, for a long time, the development processes which have to gain momentum if these countries are to survive as viable societies. From the limited point of view of political science, it is, of course, interesting to note how the socio-political reality of the Third World, in the way just analyzed, supports the notion that the political system will be of primary importance in most efforts to overcome the underdevelopment of our times. From the point of view of social science in general, it is, however, equally interesting to note how present-day reality forces an interdisciplinary approach upon social scientists — regardless of whether they call themselves political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, or historians. For even if it is true that the political system has a crucial role under the specified and concrete historical conditions of the Third World today, it is nevertheless also true that all variables in the greater social system of the entire society interact and "cause" each other in such a way that politics, economics, culture, etc., are never independent of each other. It is therefore important to maintain a distinction between what we might call logical "crucialness" on the most abstract level, which probably cannot exist in social science, and "crucialness" under specified and concrete historical conditions, which does exist and can also be empirically verified.24 III. The prevalent approach to the analysis of political developmentCurrent Theoretical Attempts: (a) the Example of Almond and Powell So far we have only spoken of political development in general terms, as the political response to underdevelopment. But it is necessary now to consider the possibility of giving a more specific and concrete meaning to the concept, starting with some comments upon current attempts in that direction. The general view of underdevelopment as essentially a problem of underutilization of human and material resources in relation to needs still provides us with a suitable point of departure. The main problem
of concern in this and the following section of the
essay Side 33
is whether it is possible or not to specify a direction of political development, and thus to give a concrete meaning to the concept, without running the theoretically grave risk of implicit normativeness, ethnocentrism, and teleology. The record, up to now, of Western (including much Marxist) social science is not encouraging in this respect, and it may well be that we shall have to wait until social scientists of the Third World manage, more conclusively than now, to make themselves heard with theoretical formulations of their own political realities. But even so, the task is not the exclusive domain of anybody, as it certainly concerns both the present and the future of us all. Keeping our definition of underdevelopment in mind, it is comparatively easy to indicate a general meaning of what we might call "political underdevelopment", i.e. the condition of the political system of a generally underdeveloped country. The most striking characteristic of such a political system is, almost by definition, its incapacity to bring about sufficient mobilization of the people or, in other words, to establish effective interaction between the people and their leaders. In such a politically underdeveloped situation, there is no effective political organization of the masses, strong enough to put decisive and revolutionary pressure upon the political system, nor is there, within the ruling elite, any political determination strong enough to transmit the spark of change to the masses — or simply to see to it that policies which have been decided upon are also implemented. There is thus, in such systems, a conspicuous lack both with regard to interest articulation and representation and with regard to legitimate authority. The situation is characterized by "intransitiveness", as Jaguaribe points out.25 Most social scientists working with the problems of development would probably accept the view that "political underdevelopment", in some way or other, has to do with lack of effective interaction between the people and their leaders, as just indicated. But the opinions of these same social scientists vary considerably about what is needed in order to overcome such a situation of political underdevelopment: they range all the way from Marxist revolutionary analysis to the excessive preoccupation with authority ("order", "amount of power") of, for instance, Samuel P. Huntington, or to the marked interest of Lucian W. Pye in "the suppression of rebellions".26 At different points in between these extremes we find, for instance, Jaguaribe's emphasis upon representation of social interests,27 or —in a somewhat different vein of thinking — David Apter's emphasis upon a proper mixture of coercion and information in order to balance societal values and types of authority against each other.28 Another example is provided by Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, who emphasize that the significance of political development is to "increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the performance of the political system: to increase its capabilities*.29 It would obviously
not be very fair to regard Almond and Powell as directly
Side 34
picture has several important nuances, some of which will be brought out later. But Comparative Politics: a Developmental Approach by Almond and Powell is still a conscious attempt to summarize, in a clear and comprehensive fashion, the combined functional-systems approach to the study of "development" which has grown to become rather generally accepted among political scientists, at least in the United States, since the beginning of the 1960'5. It is precisely because the book is written in good textbook fashion — straightforward, concrete, and not overly subtle — that the politically conservative normative implications of the theoretical outlook are clearly revealed. In this way then, are we entitled to regard Almond's and Powell's joint work as representative of the general direction of modern «developmental» political science. In order to increase its capabilities, "the political system", according to Almond and Powell, has to "develop". They define such "political development" as "the increased differentiation and specialization of political structures and the increased secularization of political culture".30 The basic variable in the classification scheme of political systems worked out by Almond and Powell31 is "differentiation" of political structures, which also implies "specialization" of structures and functions. Using this variable — uncritically combined with "secularization" — the two authors distinguish between "primitive", "traditional", and "modern" political systems. In "primitive" systems we do not find any special political structures, but political functions are performed by various multi-functional, non-specialized structures. In "traditional" systems special governmental structures have evolved, and in «modern» systems we also find such differentiated political Infrastructures" as parties, interest groups, etc. The second most important variable in Almond's and Powell's scheme is "subsystem autonomy", of which there are three degrees: low, medium, and high. Within the category of "modern" systems, this variable establishes distinctions between various kinds of "totalitarian", "authoritarian", and "democratic" political systems.32 By combining their key variables of "structural differentiation" — "cultural secularization" and "subsystem autonomy" into an ordinary two-dimensional typology of developmental levels,33 Almond and Powell manage to convey the idea of political development as a roughly continuous and uniform process beginning with "primitive bands" and ending (?!) with the Anglo-American type of "modern" ("differentiated"-"secularized") "democracy" ("high subsystem autonomy"). It should be clear, I think, even without a more penetrating analysis, that this is a non-relativistic, non-historical, ethnocentric, and teleological way of viewing development, and that it thus falls far short of Almond's and Powell's stated ambition "to break out of parochialism and ethnocentrism".34 In the original draft of this essay, these harsh conclusions about Almond's and Powell's joint work were substantiated through an extensive and critical analysis of the way in which they apply their concepts. Particular attention was given to their dubious combination of "differentiation" with "secularization", Side 35
as well as to the equally dubious way in which they tend to equate political "secularization" with something not very different from depoliticization or endof-ideology. -ideology. Another important point of critical analysis, originally included in the essay, concerned Almond's and Powell's method of defining political development and underdevelopment without regard to the historical situation and other conditions of any given country. Concerning the normative contents of their theory, finally, I also tried to show that these were never made really explicit but had to be inferred from arguments presented with claims to analytical objectivity 35 For reasons of space, however, this section of the essay is left out here, although I plan to return to the subject in a different context. For even if it is true that the kind of criticism of Almond and Powell which I have just suggested is beginning to penetrate into the minds of many students and political scientists, it is nevertheless also true that it has not yet — to my knowledge — received much systematic attention in books or review articles.36 But for the present purposes I hope that enough has now been said to render comprehensible the fact that Almond and Powell have been located in the lower left hand corner of the table on page 23. Current Theoretical Attempts: (b) Some Variations upon a ThemeAlthough it is clear that a highly positive evaluation of "pluralist" liberal democracy is a common characteristic, not only of Almond's and Powell's work but of almost all established Western or U.S. political science concerned with political development, this normative preference is not always woven into the analytical arguments in the naive or cunning manner of Almond and Powell. Pye, for instance, whose book Aspects of Political Development is a good example in this respect, very clearly demonstrates his subjective interest in defining public policy for the United States in response to the threat against U.S. domination posed by the revolutionary spirit of the Third World, but this does not keep him from comparing, quite objectively, various approaches to the analysis of development.37 Pye thus maintains a reasonably clear distinction between political analysis and his own strongly conservative views of international and comparative politics as presented in the book just mentioned. Ethnocentrism in the analysis of political development, however, cannot be disposed of even to a limited extent by a simple declaration of good intentions or by conscious efforts to distinguish between normative and analytical statements. For whenever an analytical argument is set up in such a way as to make the most developed kind of political system coincide with the system the theorist himself happens to be used to, then the circumstantial evidence supporting a charge of ethnocentrism is inevitably very strong. Thus any social scientist from the economically more developed parts of the world will almost automatically have to face such a charge, unless he or she explicitly and consistently adopts an historically relativistic approach. This means that very few "developmental" political scientists escape the charge, as very few of their works consistently em Side 36
brace what James
S. Coleman has called the "evolutionary perspective" as
opposed The evolutionary perspective emancipates the concept of political modernization from both its temporal (1500 to the present day) and its cultural and areal (Western world) constraints. It overcomes the implication of termination inherent in the idea of a "modern" polity and avoids the notion of "postmodern" political development. Although it does not becloud the fact that historically the major thrust in political modernization has occurred in the core area of western Europe in its postmedieval period, it allows us to reach back to the beginning of man's organized existence and to encompass the full range of structural diversity in man's experience in governing himself. It is possible on the other hand, although not certain that Coleman's emphasis upon «evolution» might contain an implicit normative element. For as pointed out in the beginning of this essay, there is nothing in the historical experience of mankind to make political development by evolution appear more probable than development by revolution. The facts, whether we like it or not, are rather to the contrary, and at least, it would seem therefore that social scientists ought to leave the question open. A more important difficulty with Coleman's otherwise unusually objective summary in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences is that he apparently does not question the general assumption of an axiomatic positive correlation between political development (or modernization, cf. note 1) on the one hand, and, on the other hand, political differentiation between, for instance, «administrative structure and public political competition*.39 It seems certain enough, to be sure, that differentiation of political structures is an important variable in connection with political development. But the correlation does not always seem to be altogether positive. In certain modern situations, a highly "politicized" or politically motivated bureaucracy, for instance, would appear to facilitate development rather than the other way around. A second point is that modern political systems may not always be as thoroughly differentiated as is usually assumed by Western political scientists of the «pluralist» faith. A third important point, finally, is that we should not fall into the trap of equating political development with a tendency for power to be exercised by people and structures specialized precisely in the exercise of power. But Coleman — approvingly, it seems — mentions "differentiation" as one of three "major headings" under which "the major characteristics most often associated with the concept of a modern polity and the process of political modernization can be roughly grouped". The other two are "equality" and "capacity ».40 Pye includes the same three major variables or characteristics in what he calls the "development syndrome".41 It is quite possible to find strong empirical evidence in support of the opinion that one or all of these three characteristics has at one time or another been associated with political development. It is even tautological to include increasing capacity in the development syndrome. But it is also important to note that the historically relativistic view of development precludes any such concrete Side 37
specification of what development is about, unless a given historical situation is also specified. For any theoretical approach to the analysis of political development, which has the stated ambition to "encompass the full range of structural diversity in man's experience in governing himself", also has to maintain a careful distinction between the general or comprehensive concept of political development and the various particular examples encountered in history. By this, I am not advocating that we think in terms of some kind of Platonic "idea" of development. I am simply emphasizing that we cannot be one hundred per cent sure that the least common denominator of political development will always contain increasing differentiation and equality. Indeed, in many concrete situations, differentiation and equality, are even likely to be mutually exclusive. Particularly differentiation, in the sense of highly specialized political structures operating separately from economic and administrative structures, appears to be less firmly related to political development than the other two characteristics mentioned. This is so, in spite of the fact that general differentiaton, in the sense of improved social division of labor, certainly cannot be easily disconnected from a general definition of development. The same is even more true, though, of equality in relation to development seen as "qualitative improvement" (cf. the quote above on p. 30), and, by definition, also of increased capacity. A provisional conclusion, then, of our brief discussion of this subtle problem may be that differentiation is probably less closely related to political development than are increasing equality and capacity, which, so far, appear to be very intimately related to the reality covered by this concept as I have defined it here. The risk of future disavowal by the facts may therefore be reduced, if we attempt to maintain a distinction between the three variables rather than automatically including them all in our definition of political development. In his well known and often quoted book The Politics of Modernization, David E. Apter has approached, in a sophisticated manner, the problems under consideration in this essay. At first glance at least, his analysis appears to avoid most of the traps and fallacies of hidden normative implications, ethnocentrism, and non-relativistic historical teleology. For our purposes here, the most interesting aspect of Apter's approach is his effort to define "optimal" types of political systems for various particular stages of development.42 As most of his colleagues, Apter also views these stages in terms of increasing differentiation of social structures, but without excessive ethnocentric emphasis upon the "developed" character of "non-political" economic and administrative structures. The more or less developed stages, in Apter's terminology, range from "traditional" to "modern", and to "industrial" society, whereas the types of political systems most appropriate for these various stages are defined in terms of different societal value types and authority types. The value variable refers mainly to the kind of categories in which conflicts of interests are viewed — moral versus instrumental — and the authority variable refers to political structure and accountability of the government to the public. By combining these variables, Apter gets his basic typology of political systems:43 Side 38
![]() Fig. 2. Apter argues that the conversion from modernizing to industrial society "is most satisfactorily achieved by some form of mobilization system", the special value of which is that "it elevates certain instrumental objectives (industrialization, raising per capita income) to the level of symbolic and transcendental ends".44 This argument also implies the view that the political system is a fundamentally important variable in societies — such as those of the present Third World countries — where conscious "modernization" of social roles and structures, etc., tends to come before industrialization, as opposed to the historical pattern of the liberal-capitalist industrialized countries. In a later formulation, Apter defines a "mobilization system" as one where "a government which is hierarchical in its authority and consummatory in its values comes to power and creates a powerful synthesis of consummatory meanings in instrumental acts".45 Other types of political systems are likely to be "optimal" in other situations: «bureaucratic systems», for instance, at «midpoint or intermediate modernization" 46 and "reconciliation systems" in highly industrialized societies.47 It is important to note that Apter attempts to capture the essence of political development or modernization in terms of (1) information and coercion, which he defines as the two basic "functional requisites of governments",48 and (2) decision-making and accountability, which he defines as the two basic "structural requisites".49 The following quote from the concluding remarks of the more recent formulation just referred to summarizes Apter's central ideas about the political aspects of development:50 We conclude by restating the general hypothesis: As modernization grows in a system, the greater the complexity of differentiation in stratification-group competition, the more quickly a political system-type will reach its "ceiling" of effective responses, and the greater will be the need for coercion. Thus, in early and middle stage modernization, we can expect a succession of political system-types, with the bureaucratic type providing the greatest degree of stability. If the goal of industrialization is central and over-riding, during late modernization a mobilization system will emerge to "take" the society over the "hump" from late modernization into early industrialization. At this point, the need for information will grow and coercion will become increasingly dysfunctional to the system. In what important
ways, now, does Apter's general approach differ from
Side 39
It is undeniable, I think, that Apter manages to present an extremely coherent theoretical view of political development by reasoning consistently within the restricted area of his functional and structural requisites — with particular emphasis on information and coercion as functional requisites. Without hiding his personal preference for libertarian societies, whenever they can be expected to function, Apter does not allow his analysis to be tainted by the use of semi-normative terminology; he takes care not to induce his readers to regard societies where "Western democracy" has been made to work as morally superior to other societies; and nowhere does he write as if he expected political development to have reached its absolute end in Great Britain or in the United States of the 1960'5. It is important, too, that Apter, in spite of emphasizing the connection between social differentiation and development, does not resort to the common trick of lending "scientific" legitimacy to the ideological view that having depoliticized economic and administrative structures is necessarily more "developed" than coordinating them closely with governmental and other political structures. It is thus clear that Apter's sophisticated analysis represents a considerable theoretical advance when compared with the analyses of many other social scientists. But it is nevertheless also clear that it has definite limits, which essentially do not function very differently from the limits which restrict the usefulness of, for instance, Almond's and Powell's analysis. The limits are set by the functional and structural "requisites" postulated by Apter's theory, which tend to define political conflicts and contradictions in terms of "too much information" and "too little coercion" versus "too much coercion" and "too little information", in their turn connected with, respectively, "too much accountability" and "too little decision-making" versus "too little accountability" and "too much decision-making". This almost exclusive emphasis upon information and coercion diverts the analysis from the real political issues at stake in concrete situations. Coercion by whom,
against whom, for what purposes, and information about
These important questions are shunned by Apter's theory, which would have us believe that the essence of politics can be usefully defined as more or less coercion and information rather than as, for instance, more or less power and influence, exercised in the interests of this or that group or class, over the social interactions involved in the authoritative allocation of values and setting of goals for a given society. In this more subtle ense then, also Apter's approach to the analysis of political development has a conservative bias, as it tends to denature political conflict by depicting it as an abstract game and also tends to disregard its ideological content and its social and material bases. It would, to put the problem concretely, be impossible to make the distinction between "left" and "right" in politics by using Apter's terminology. In the terms of
his theory, both Peron's Argentina and Castro's Cuba,
for Side 40
instance, are classified as "mobilization systems", exercising strong moral and structural control of popular behavior, whereas the obvious differences between these two regimes would have to be accounted for outside the theory.51 It is difficult, too, to see how Apter's theory could make us aware of any significant differences between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, to take an extreme example not mentioned by Apter but likely to clarify the point. By restricting ourselves to Apter's terms, we would have to classify both these regimes as combinations of the "mobilization" and "bureaucratic" types, with information restricted and behavior controlled through a combination of consummatory, organizational, and repressive means. While such a description captures important aspects of the political realities of these two regimes, it is also obvious that it systematically avoids other aspects — and this in a way which makes Apter's theory appear far from neutral in an ideological sense. In pointing this out here, my purpose is not to moralize about what I suspect to be the ideological bias of Apter's work, but only to indicate in what direction the limits of his theory, and thus of its applicability, are to be sought. There are some interesting similarities between Apter's work on the political aspects of development and Erik Allardt's attempt to outline "a theory on solidarity and legitimacy conflicts" derived from Emile Durkheim's theory on the division of labor.52 With some minor reformulations of Durkheim's basic idea that societal solidarity may be either "mechanical" or "organic", depending upon whether it is based on "likeness" or "division of labor", Allardt arrives at the following thought-provoking typology where the dependent variable is called "solidarity" and defined as the absence of legitimacy conflicts in society, which, it should be noted, is not very different from political stability.53 ![]() Fig. 3. Apter's and Allardt's respective typologies are not immediately comparable, as the character of their independent and dependent variables differ. Apter's independent variables are directly related to the political system itself, and his dependent variable is precisely the political system-type. Allardt, the sociologist, on the other hand, works with general societal variables, and his dependent variable may be said to refer to the relationship between the political system and the greater social system, or, put somewhat differently, to the general situation of the greater social system within which the political system functions. Side 41
But if we substitute Apter's "differentiation" and different kinds of "authority types" for Allardt's "division of labor" and varying degrees of "pressure towards uniformity", the close relationship between the two typologies stands out clearly. The outcome of the proposed substitutions would be the following typology: ![]() Fig. 4. In the same manner as "stage of development" (= degree of differentiation) is an implicit third independent variable in Apter's typology, "value type" could be regarded as an implicit independent variable in this "politicized" version of Allardt's typology (cf. below on p. 43). It then becomes quite possible to envisage the type of political system most likely to be able to respond to the developmental pressures of each of the four situations defined by Allardt's typology, by putting Apter's four types in the respective squares as I have done above. Although it would take us much too far afield to demonstrate this in detail, the result is strikingly consistent both with Apter's and with Allardt's theoretical thinking. This is perhaps particularly well illustrated by the example of square 4, which, viewed from Allardt's angle, shows strong organic societal solidarity (democracy in a modern context?) to be dependent upon (a) a highly developed division of labor (industrialization) and (b) weak pressure towards uniformity (weak coercion). Viewed from Apter's angle, on the other hand, square 4 tells us that the "optimal" political system in (a) a highly differentiated (modern, industrialized) society is the reconciliation system (democracy?), which also depends upon (b) such a combination of the "functional requisites" of government that control is minimized and thus information maximized. Besides the very close similarities both between the structural and between the developmental variables used by Allardt and Apter respectively, these two social scientists also approach the task of defining the conditions (functional requisites) of organic solidarity (political reconciliation systems) with very similar theoretical arguments. Allardt's basic hypotheses in this regard are all derived from his typology. One of them reads as follows:54 The more developed
the division of labor and the stronger the pressure
towards uniformity, This may be compared with Apter's hypothesis that "highly industrialized societies, by virtue of the need for multiple sources of information, have, a "systems tendency" toward some form of "democracy"" — an hypothesis which presupposes, as Apter points out, "an inverse relationship between coercion and Side 42
information".55 In other words, as industrialization, viewed as a special form of modernity, proceeds, "coercion will become increasingly dysfunctional to the system", (cf. the quote on p. 38), or, in Allardt's words, increase the likelihood of legitimacy conflicts. In spite of these
basic similarities, however, there is still one
important difference Anybody trying to think systematically about political development in Allardt's terms will soon notice that they impose a very severe limitation upon the analysis by precluding any distinction between different kinds of social pressure towards uniformity. Allardt's pressure variable only refers to the strength of the pressure, but not to its normative direction. This explains, among other things, why "value type" had to be regarded as an implicit third independent variable for the purposes of the combined Allardt-Apter typology given above. Allardt thus puts the social pressure of a traditional agrarian society in the same category as that experienced by the citizens of a tightly controlled, modern industrial society, such as the society of the Soviet Union for instance. By definition, Allardt's typology also excludes the possibility that strong pressure towards uniformity might be exercised in modern industrialized countries with reasonably legitimate political systems — a postulate which appears somewhat optimistic, to put it mildly. One way of resolving this problem is indicated by Goran Hydén in an unpublished working paper presented for discussion among colleagues.56 Hydén simply proposes that a variable called "pressure towards universalism" (strong versus weak) be substituted for "pressure towards uniformity". In this way a value variable (particularistic versus universalistic standards of evaluation) is introduced into Allardt's typology, which is a step forward. But by combining two fundamental dimensions into one variable, Hydén's idea disregards the fact that the strength of social pressure and the normative direction of the same pressure may very well vary independently of each other. His typology therefore, it seems, creates as many problems as it resolves. At first thought, the best solution to the problems raised by Allardt's and Hydén's typologies would seem to be some kind of three-dimensional typology, combining into one space independently varying degrees of (1) social division of labor, (2) strength of social and political pressure or coercion, and (3) the normative content and direction of that pressure, which would not necessarily have to be classified in terms of the problematic particularism-universalism dimension proposed by Hydén. A somewhat different and perhaps more easily manageable approach, however, is indicated by a simultaneous consideration of Allardt's and Apter's two typologies — in the manner already suggested by the combined typology presented above. It is important to
remember that these two typologies have been conceived
Side 43
from the political system than that of Apter, as the dependent variable of the former is a general social characteristic of importance for politics, whereas the dependent variable of the latter is expressed as different types of the political system itself. At the same time, the value aspect ignored by Allardt is accounted for by Apter as one of two independent variables affecting the political system. Therefore, it appears feasible to link the two typologies by having Apter begin, as it were, where Allardt ends — i.e. by using Apter's terms in order to specify types of political systems likely to be able to meet the developmental needs of the four kinds of societal situations described by Allardt. The outcome of such an operation was demonstrated and briefly commented upon above. It shows, I think, that one way of providing Apter's abstract classification of political systems with a developmental sociological basis is indicated in Allardt's work, whereas, on the other hand, Apter's approach makes it possible to introduce the missing dimension of political value type into Allardt's framework. My reason for discussing Apter's work on the political aspects of development as relatively thoroughly as I have now done, as well as my reason for bringing into the picture also Allardt's theoretical thinking about the more general aspects of social change, is that these two authors together, to my mind, clearly demonstrate the theoretical limits of the prevalent functional-systems approach to the problem under consideration in this essay. They serve the function of demonstrating these limits precisely because of the high scientific standard of their work within them. Critically and creatively, and without much intrinsic normativeness nor ethnocentrism, they push the analysis to the very limits set by their own conceptual definitions and theoretical premises. But these limits, on the other hand, cannot be moved without a change of theoretical premises. By way of conclusion of this section of the essay, it is necessary therefore to sum up, very briefly, the historical and normative nature of the theoretical premises which set the limits. Both Allardt and Apter proceed by specifying (necessary) "conditions" or functional-structural "requisites" of a limited number of types of social/political situations. Thus both of them exclude by definition a number of alternative types. Their theories, therefore, are closed theories, conservative in the sense of not seeing through and beyond their own historical determinants. The clearest example is offered by their unquestioning acceptance of social differentiation or division of labor as the basic independent variable of development. While it is probably historically correct to identify increasing differentiation with development, the assumption that the process of differentiation will and can continue indefinitely is clearly historically determined and loaded with political-normative implications. Add to this the fact that the two types assumed to be most developed in both typologies — i.e. Allardt's strong organic solidarity and Apter's political reconciliation system — are both pure or idealized versions of "pluralist", liberal-capitalist Western democracy, and we do not find ourselves too far from the politically conservative and openly teleological position of Almond and Powell, despite the differences with regard to scientific sophistication. Side 44
Consequently a more open kind of theory or approach — one which explicitly defines necessary social conditions or requisites in an historically relativistic manner — would appear to be the only possible answer to the problems raised even by the most sophisticated applications of the prevalent Western approach to the analysis of political development, as represented by the Allardt combination discussed here.57 Before turning to the task of sketching and exemplifying such an open, historically non-teleological approach, let me just emphasize again that the kind of theoretical arguments and classifications presented by Allardt and Apter, and also by other social scientists, may be extremely helpful in clarifying certain macro-sociological correlations and connections, and also in establishing past historical trends. Any theoretical approach which is (a) relevant to any aspect of social reality, and (b) skillfully and honestly applied, is useful for such purposes. To the extent that social scientists meet these two requirements, we can only challenge them by challenging their premises, either by proposing more comprehensive ones or by proposing premises that are relevant from different or alternative points of view — relevant, for instance, from the point of view of the Third World as opposed to the point of view of the industrialized capitalist countries. But in trying to give meaning to the general concept of political development, we are dealing not only with the past but also, in a theoretical way, with the future. The social implications of these two kinds of activities are not identical, even if it is true that, logically, the task of analyzing past and present social systems and trends is very similar to the task of establishing prognoses. But the feed-back of social science to social reality itself is probably more important when we are dealing with the future, and therefore it is then, if possible, even more important to be aware of the historically determined and normative elements which in some way or other are contained in all theoretical premises, and also, consequently, to realize that the road of future development cannot be specified «scientifically» except in an historically determined and therefore also partly politically normative manner. Hence the importance of starting with an open theoretical approach to the analysis of political development, which obviously does not mean that social scientists either could or should regard all kinds of development as equally probable and/or desirable. It simply means a constant effort, on the part of the social scientist, to analyze and be aware of the determinants and implications of his choice of theoretical premises. IV. Towards a coherent and relevant theoretical formulationAn Open Theoretical ApproachAlthough I have devoted considerable space in this essay to the task of indicating several kinds of limitations of the various ways in which the analysis of political development is normally approached in modern political science, I have not, so far, had much to say about what is probably the most serious ideological distortion brought about by the conservative bias of the established political science of Side 45
development: its
almost total disregard of the international political
and economic It may seem paradoxical, therefore, that I shall use as my point of departure for an attempt to sketch a more relevant way to tackle the problem, still another approach which avoids any consideration of low position in the capitalist dominated, international political and economic system as one among several causes or independent variables connected with underdevelopment. The point, however, is that the particular theoretical approach which I have in mind is, in principle, open, value-conscious, and historically relativistic. It belongs therefore — with all its shortcomings, which I have attempted to analyze elsewhere59 —in the upper right-hand corner of the table on p. 23, and its logical framework is thus perfectly able to accommodate also those international aspects of underdevelopment which are normally defined far out of the picture by most non-Marxist social scientists. The approach I am referring to is introduced by Gunnar Myrdal as a theoretical sketch of the mechanism of underdevelopment and development in an appendix to his Asian Drama. It is important here to note the pragmatic and unpretentious character of the concept of "theory" as used by Myrdal in Asian Drama. He simply says, in brief, that social scientists, as other human beings, have certain preconceived ideas when they regard the world of empirical data. For these ideas to generate true and useful knowledge, it is important that they be coherent and logical, and both in order to facilitate judgment of the conclusions of social scientists and for the sake of intellectual honesty, it is important that these same ideas be made explicit. "Theory" in
research thus becomes no more than "generalizations
about Myrdal's theory of the mechanism of underdevelopment and development is precisely of this unpretentious and useful kind. Its nucleus is a list of six categories of «conditions» assumed to characterize the social system which the situation of any country can be said to constitute. Another important assumption is that these conditions are all causally interrelated. Several pages of systematic comments are also part of the theory.61 The listed conditions are variables, the different values of which may either be "desirable" or "undesirable" from the point of view of development. Myrdal's own criteria of desirability are contained in what he calls his value premises, which are presented in considerable detail in chapter 2 of Asian Drama. He labels these valuations "the modernization ideals", and they include such general ideals of the industrialized world as rationality, development planning, social and economic equalization, and "improved" institutions and attitudes. Although these are mainly Western ideals, Myrdal claims that they have also become part of the official creed of the South Asian countries. The mutual
interrelationships between the six conditions of the
list are as Side 46
sumed to be such that a change in one will cause changes in the others — an assumption however, which does not mean, as we shall soon see, that changes of the whole system can be initiated with equal ease in all of the conditions. With a few reservations, Myrdal furthermore makes the bold assumption of unidirectional causal relationships between the various conditions. Given the criteria of desirability contained in the value premises, it then becomes possible to name the direction of systemic change in a meaningful way. Thus a change in one condition will tend to change the others in the same direction: "upwards" ("desirable" from the point of view of development) or "downwards" ("undesirable"). Strong enough upward changes may be assumed to set off, eventually, a cumulative developmental process. Myrdal's six broad
categories of conditions are as follows:62 (1) output and
incomes (2) conditions of
production (4) attitudes
toward life and work (6) policies
As Myrdal emphasizes throughout Asian Drama, it follows from the analysis he carries out with the help of his theory that it is necessary, for the practice of planning, to rely on policies "aimed at changing the conditions under 4 and 5 directly," at the same time as the analysis also implies, "the futility of relying on the indirect effects of changes induced by conditions 1—3, or only 1 and 3".63 This empirical result of the analysis of South Asian underdevelopment makes it necessary to qualify Myrdal's assumption about the mutual interrelationships of the conditions of the list. It is true "that a change in one will cause changes in the others,"64 but it is also important to emphasize, as Myrdal does, that "the extent of their interaction" is variable.65 In situations of modern underdevelopment, cumulative change in the direction of development is thus less likely to start in the purely "economic" conditions than in the more political ones. At least two remarks about this kind of development theory are now in order. The first remark concerns the normative component of the premises of the theory and the second one concerns its lack of comprehensiveness with regard to the social reality of underdevelopment. It should be clear, I think, that mere statements of general beliefs held by a social scientist do not in themselves contribute to the theoretical validity of his or her analyses of social realities. Only insofar as the normative preferences of the social scientist become part of his theoretical premises, should they be of direct relevance to his purely analytical efforts. This, however, is naturally very different from maintaining that the choice of premises is not of the utmost importance. As far as Myrdal is concerned, we have seen that the mixture of gene Side 47
ral ideals and theoretical postulates, which he calls his value premises, becomes an integral part of his theory, inter alia, in the form of criteria of desirability from the point of view of development. These criteria make it possible for Myrdal to judge the extent to which a social system is underdeveloped or developed. The historically determined and normative foundations of such judgments are obvious and explicit. Therefore they can also be challenged. In Myrdal's case, one could easily and probably correctly hold that the foundations are much too "Western", for instance. My point here, however, is only that it is possible to change them and to substitute other perhaps more relevant premises. This is one important aspect of the openness of Myrdal's concept of theory in social science. Without entering into the argument about Myrdal's valuations as such, let me just point out, too, that my own are contained in the general definition of underdevelopment given on p. of this essay. As far as the ability of this kind of theory to comprehend or cover social reality is concerned, this ability obviously depends upon the character and number of the conditions postulated. Here again the value premises — or more succinctly put: the normative component of the theoretical premises — stand out as extremely important. For it is clear that any such enumeration of conditions as Myrdal's is in a sense arbitrary, which is precisely why the historically determined normative criteria according to which it has been established, have to be made explicit. On this account Myrdal fails in the theory sketched in his appendix, as he does not provide any explanation whatsoever of the striking contradiction between the considerable number of pages in Asian Drama devoted to descriptive comments on international economic and political relations and the almost total absence of such problematic issues in his theoretical appendix.66 The reasons for this contradiction are not contained in Myrdal's stated value premises but have to be inferred instead from other aspects of his work — for instance from the absence in Asian Drama of any systematic discussion of the developmental results achieved by those socialist-communist Third World countries (China, North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba) which have, consciously and partly voluntarily, broken with an international political and economic system where they occupied positions very close to the bottom of the hierarchy. It is possible thus to detect an implicit ideological bias also in Myrdal's developmental theory. The most important point here, though, is that this bias does not follow from the logical structure of the theory itself, but from the limited coverage of the social reality under study provided by Myrdal's list of six categories of conditions of underdevelopment. Precisely because of the theoretically open character of the theory, it is also possible to extend and change the list, and to make its coverage of social reality both more complete and more relevant — limited only by our own values and by the availability of empirical knowledge, both of which are historically determined limitations. It is necessary,
in other words, to try to transcend the historically
determined Side 48
means that open
theory should never be allowed to mean politically
innocent A Suggested Extension of Myrdal's Open Theoretical ApproachIt is possible to discern, for analytical purposes, a number of international social systems in the world. The whole world defines the geographical boundaries of one such system. The Western (or Capitalist-industrialized) World, the Socialist World, and the Third World, define the boundaries of others, etc. It is possible also to define international social systems by specifying the kinds of relations we have in mind — for instance religious, commercial, or others. But if we judge from the amount and weight of political and economic interaction, the most important international system for the Third World in general is probably the international capitalist system, dominated by the United States and Western Europe in the order now mentioned.67 Because of the high degree of integration of the majority of Third World countries in the international capitalist system, we are also forced to assume a high degree of interaction between the conditions in Myrdal's list and various conditions characterizing both that international system itself and the dominant systems within it. One such condition or factor of great importance is the structure of the international system itself — in this case, as everybody knows, a structure of great political and economic inequality between nations. Consequently an important condition of each individual national system is its relative position within the international capitalist system. Occupying a low position in that system has all those undesirable developmental effects which Myrdal describes without accounting for them in his theory. These "underdevelopmental" effects may be summed up as dependence upon powerful strangers and consequent lack of control over one's own human and material resources. The absence of the international system in Myrdal's list of six conditions is certainly the most striking thing about it. But there are other factors, too, which are insufficiently or only vaguely accounted for by the list. The most important ones are probably the existence of real conflicts of interests between classes and groups, within the countries of the Third World, and also the existence of strong vested interests of some of these groups in the established underdevelopment of their own countries. Myrdal certainly does not shy away from discussion of these conflicts and vested interests. On the contrary, they occupy a prominent place in his descriptive analyses of various problems.68 It is also possible that he considers them covered by the other categories of the list. But if this is so, it is not made quite clear in his text. My point is therefore that it might have been useful, for purposes of greater clarity, to include also another category called «social structure« in the list. This would probably make it easier to use the list in order to characterize and analyze the contradictory nature of the social systems in the countries both of South Asia and of the Third World in general. Side 49
In accordance with
the preceding comments, a tentatively extended version
(1) output and
incomes (2) conditions of
production (4) attitudes
toward life and work (6) institutions,
political and others (7) relative
position in predominant political and economic
international system It is naturally important to remember that even this extended list is in a sense arbitrary and therefore open to changes and improvements — as long as these are empirically and politically relevant from the point of view of the historical necessity to overcome underdevelopment. Such changes do not affect the simple logical structure of this kind of theory, but "only" its relevance. A Syndrome of UnderdevelopmentThe theoretical points of departure now sketched make it possible to characterize as "underdeveloped" any social system in the modern world where the variables included in the extended list take on low values. Our general definition of underdevelopment provides us with criteria for judging the "desirability" versus the "undersirability" of the values of the variables. Together, these variable conditions, given "undersirable" values, add up to what we might call a syndrome of underdevelopment (thus paraphrasing Pye — cf p. 36). The syndrome includes a low position in the predominantly capitalist international political and economic system as one fundamental variable condition, and it is clear that this condition will have to be changed in and by each country, if underdevelopment is ever to be overcome. But it is also clear that such change is extremely difficult to achieve in the face of the powerful international establishment. Two possibilities for the underdeveloped countries are: (1) to bring pressure to bear — together with those willing partners who can be found within the dominant countries — upon the capitalist dominated international political and economic system, and (2) to withdraw, partially and/or temporarily, from the same system.69 The most dramatic example of the first alternative at the present time is undoubtedly the effective resistance of the Vietnamese people to the aggression of the United States. But several other ways are also possible. It is conceivable, for instance, that pressure could be brought to bear through determined efforcs to change the internal conditions of the extended list. Regional cooperation between the underdeveloped countries themselves, rather than between some of them and the former metropolitan countries, will also become absolutely necessary in the long run. To the extent that they are successful, efforts in the mentioned directions cannot but influence the structure of the international system. Side 50
But although fundamental structural change of the predominantly capitalist international system of the whole world probably is a necessary long-term condition of full development in the Third World, there is obviously not much to indicate that such change will come about in the near future. The problem is further complicated by the vested economic and political interests which the ruling and privileged strata in the Third World countries often have in the established international system. Because of the limited possibilities to bring enough pressure to bear upon the international political and economic system within the foreseeable future, it is necessary, from a developmental point of view, to pay serious attention also to the second way out of the dilemma. We may call this second way partial and temporary withdrawal from the international capitalist system. This is the position from which Japan was able to start her efforts to modernize around 1860, and it is the position the Soviet Union was forced into after the October revolution of 1917. It is also what the previously mentioned socialist-communist Third World countries today practice more or less voluntarily. There are also elements of such a development strategy in the self-sufficiency policies that a few other countries are trying to apply — Tanzania is probably the best example at the beginning of the 1970'5. On a general level., I think that the two alternatives mentioned — i.e. pressure of various kinds and/or partial withdrawal — cover the possibilities open to the countries of the Third World, as they face the necessity to change their relative positions in the international political and economic system. But not any kind of national political system will make it possible to put pressure upon, to resist, or to manage partial withdrawal from the international system. Some measure of political and economic self-sufficiency and self-reliance would seem to be important prerequisites. Remembering the important distinction made on p. 32 between logical "crucialness" of societal variables and "crucialness" under specified and concrete historical conditions, we may therefore assume that Myrdal's general conclusion about where changes should be initiated, in the syndrome of underdevelopment, for purposes of practical politics, holds true also for the extended version of his list (cf. p. 42). If this assumption is correct, we may consequently single out "institutions" and "policies" (as "attitudes" do not change easily without policies) as particularly crucial for purposes of practical development politics in most of the countries of the Third World today. Using the extended list as our point of departure, we also have to take "social structure" into consideration. Myrdal's definition of what he means by "institutions" includes important aspects of "social structure".70 The whole complex variable can be neatly and quite adequately summed up under the label of "political system" as defined earlier in this essay (cf. pp. 26 ff.). The "policies" referred to under condition 8 of the extended list are precisely policies of developmental relevance. They are, in other words, the concrete application of the development strategy adopted in a given country. By translating the variable conditions of the extended Side 51
list into the language of political science in this manner, we get two variables of crucial importance for the analysis of political development: the political system itself and the development strategy adopted by those who control it, the latter perhaps best defined as a "withinput" in Easton's useful phrase.71 Political Systems and Development StrategiesIf it is true that the two variables now mentioned are of crucial importance both for the analysis of political development and for political development itself, it is also true that their own mutual interdependence is basic and important enough to merit separate consideration. It is possible to illustrate this interdependence, crudely but analytically, by dichotomizing the two variables and combining them in an ordinary four-field table. The four combinations resulting from such an operation will thus summarize conditions of high developmental relevance.72 It is necessary, before presenting the suggested four-field table, to say a few words about the two variables to be used. For the sake of clarity and simplicity they will be dichotomized here. In reality, however, they may be assumed to be continuous, and most concrete cases will obviously represent mixtures in varying proportions of the two pure types, which hardly exist in pure form anywhere. As far as the political systems of Third World countries are concerned, I am going to make a distinction between "mobilization oriented" and "vested interest (in the established social, political and economic order) oriented" systems This distinction is best understood by keeping in mind our definition of underdevelopment as essentially a problem of underutilization of human and material resources in relation to needs. Doing this will also make it clear that the "mobilization oriented" type is more "desirable" than the other type, from the point of view adopted in this essay. The "mobilization oriented" type of political system is primarily characterized by conscious and determined efforts, on the part of those who control the system, to organize and mobilize the interests and the energy of the people into some kind of mass party or similar national organization likely to arouse popular confidence. The organizational form given to such efforts is much less important to the distinction than the effort itself to establish effective and confident interaction between the people and their leaders. To the extent that this kind of political work is successful, the developmental pressure put by the people and by the people's articulated interests upon the system will continue to increase, and the leaders will be faced with a choice, if they want to remain in power, between satisfying some of these interests or suppressing them violently. In the latter case, of course, the system ceases to be mobilization oriented. But in the best of cases, a developmental dynamic may be initiated through the growth of a mobilization oriented political system where pol'tical leadership is linked to the people's interest in overcoming underdevelopment. We may note also that there is no necessary logical connection between mobilization orienration Side 52
and single party systems. For although this combination is not uncommon, and also appears quite natural for several reasons, there are still many single party regimes that are not mobilization oriented, as well as it is possible to conceive of mobilization oriented systems with military and perhaps even multiparty regimes. "Vested interest oriented" political systems, on the other hand, may have either single party, multiparty, military regimes, or regimes dominated by traditional absolute rulers. There is no correlation at all, neither logical nor empirical, between "vested interest orientation" and more formally defined institutional types. The most typical characteristic of this type of political system is instead the absence of any direct link between the developmental needs, expectations, and demands of the people and the political process going on within the system. In countries characterized by "vested interest oriented" political systems, the masses remain excluded from the political process, which is devoted instead to the reconciliation of the vested interests in the established political and economic order of various existing privileged elite groups, both modern and traditional. The developmental expections of the masses are not stimulated, and to the extent that they still emerge, they are either violently suppressed or satisfied only just enough to keep the system from bursting. The mounting contradictions in this kind of political system are thus kept from being resolved by the very structure of the system itself. As we all know, such political systems are not uncommon in the Third World. The main difference between these two types of political systems may thus be summed up as a difference with regard to the social basis of support sought by each of them. In mobilization oriented systems there is a clear ambition to provide an organizational link between the political process and the developmental needs of the masses, whereas this ambition is lacking in vested interest oriented political systems, which seek instead the support of privileged elites while implicitly relying upon the apathy of the masses. As far as development strategies are concerned, the main general distinction of importance in the present context is between more or less "socialist" attempts to overcome underdevelopment by conscious, far-reaching, and systematically undertaken planning policies, aimed at challenging the established order, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, more or less liberal-capitalist development strategies, characterized by the assumption that an adaptive attitude toward the "market" and toward the international economic system will ultimately remove the causes of underdevelopment. It is possible to think of many different names for these two types of development strategies. Here they will simply be called "revolutionizing planning strategy" and "adaptive planning strategy". The latter term has been chosen in order to acknowledge the fact that some kind of "planning" exists in most countries of the Third World, even in those that adopt a markedly liberal-capitalist attitude toward the forces of the national and international markets. Viewing the problem from the theoretical and normative points of departure adopted for this essay, it is also natural to point out that Side 53
the
"revolutionizing planning strategy" appears more
appropriate than its opposite Before we present the four-field table, one more remark is in order. It concerns the important distinction, which should never be forgotten, between politico-ideological ambitions and concrete political reality. Each square of the table will represent a tendency that can be found both in the realm of lofty goals or ambitions and in the realm of practical politics. It is clear that we often encounter a wide gap between theory and practice in the Third World, as well as elsewhere, both with regard to the structure of the political system itself and with regard to the development strategy adopted by the leaders. The variables of the following table may refer to the level of ambitions, to the level of practical politics, or to both levels simultaneously. But for the present purposes it seems natural to let the systemic variable refer mainly to the concrete level of politics, while letting the strategy variable refer both to the level of declared goals and ambitions and to the methods used in order to reach the goals. In fact, the two levels usually interact with each other: the mobilizing capacity of a political system, for instance, may be drastically reduced, if the gap becomes too wide between the beautiful goals stated in the National Plan, and the harsh socio-economic realities experienced by the people. After these
preliminary remarks, it is now possible to illustrate
the interdependence ![]() Fig. 5. Interdependence of Development Strategy and Political System By systematically investigating the performance of political functions on the different stages of the political process, in a manner similar to what I tried to do for Tunisia in Party and People, it should be possible to decide, approximately, the horizontal position of any system in the table on the concrete level of practical politics. The vertical position is determined by the nature of the development strategy adopted by the regime in question. Given the descriptive definitions of the variables of the table offered above, it appears reasonable to expect a kind of balance between development strategy and political system — between policy and politics — in squares 1 and 4, whereas political systems found in either of the two squares 2 and 3 would tend to move toward 1 or 4, depending upon the relative strength and character of the political structures and the forces standing for different economic policies. If it is true,
as suggested earlier, that the situatons in which most
of the Third Side 54
World countries find themselves make the chances of development dependent upon the political mobilization of popular energy, it would also follow that the balance in square 4 can only be sustained in those (most probably) exceptional cases where a capitalist transition to a developed national economy turns out to be possible. If it is also true that the contradictions of squares 2 and 3 will tend to push the systems in other directions, something approximately like the situation in 1 would remain as the most hopeful combination for a country faced with the task of pulling itself out of a state defined and experienced as underdeveloped, under the conditions of the present historical period. Ideally, such a dynamic square-1-situation may briefly be described as one in which the planned development policies require the mobilization of popular energy, at the same time as the mobilization itself generates modern demands which can hardly be satisfied without conscious planning for the satisfaction of the interests of the people. In most real cases, the picture will surely look quite different, with coercion and repression taking the place of mobilization, and talk about planning taking the place of planning. But, as I have tried to indicate in a recent paper about Tunisian agricultural policies, there are probably limits beyond which such substitution cannot go without threatening the entire social system.74 By studying the movement of political systems between the tendencies represented by the squares of the table, we may be able to account analytically for some of the crucial forces connected with political development. A few concrete examples will serve to illustrate briefly. It might, for instance, facilitate understanding of political events in Ghana, from the introduction of "African socialism" at the end of the 1950's and up to the present time, if we visualize them as a movement, caused by the increasing isolation of the leadership from the masses, from a dynamic equilibrium in square 1 to an unstable situation in square 2 and then a further movement, with the coup d'etat of 1966, to square 4, which is marked by greater stability than 2, but probably less developmental dynamism than 1. Furthermore, the political and economic radicalization of the closing 1950's may in itself be viewed as an effort to move Ghana out of an unstable square-3-situation characterizing the country during the first few years of independence, when the Convention People's Party was still a mobilization oriented party, while the economy remained quite liberal. It is possible also to interpret what has happened in Tanzania since early 1967, with the Arusha Declaration75 and subsequent new policies, as a movement from square 3 to 1, made necessary, among other things, by the tensions caused through political mobilization of expectations that could not possibly be satisfied through the mechanisms of the "free market" in a country such as Tanzania — a poor agricultural country at the bottom of the hierarchy established by the international division of labor. A third
illustration is provided by Tunisia. As I have shown in
some detail Side 55
through all the squares of the table, but still consistently close to the center. The movement began in square 3, where the system was located immediately after independence, and continued toward a situation of the kind indicated by square 4, with a weaker grip of the party structures over the system combined with a laissez-faire economy. Mainly because of the absence of any kind of economic growth produced by this liberal or disorganized economy, "Tunisian socialism" and "planning" were proclaimed fairly abruptly in 1961 and also quickly implemented with considerable energy and consistency, thus moving the system to square 2. But the new economic and social policies were dependent upon the activation of the people and their energy, which, still according to our basic assumption, produced a movement just across the line to 1. This position, however, was again seriously threatened toward the end of 1969, after the effort to maintain it through the introduction of a radical cooperative agricultural reform had failed, partly or completely, At the moment of writing, the tendency thus appears to be in the direction of a return toward 2 and 4, with all the developmental risks and problems this implies for an economically weak and vulnerable country such as Tunisia. More examples of the applicability of the table could easily be given. It is a tempting thought, for instance, that the pressing political problems of a great country like India could be expressed, at least partially, in the terms of the fourfield table. The idea would be that India appears to offer a clear example of a vested interest oriented political system, and that this fact makes it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to mobilize the people enough for the fulfillment of the development plans, although these are both comprehensive and systematic.77 If this is correct, it follows that drastic structural change of the political system is necessary in order to involve the Indian people in the task of developing their own country. Similar analyses — although perhaps with somewhat less revolutionary implications — could also be made of such countries as Egypt, Peru, and Chile, which implies that some of the basic political and developmental problems of India, Egypt, Peru, Chile, and several other countries, can possibly be understood, if we regard them as special cases, all different from each other, of the general situation indicated by square 2 of the table. Similarly, China and Cuba, and Liberia and Thailand, for instance, may be regarded as representing different examples of special cases of squares 1 and 4, respectively. Thus, the simple four-field table now presented makes it possible to capture a fundamental aspect of the dynamics of internal political development and change in terms which I would like to be able to think of as being both logically coherent and historically relevant. My hope is that the simplification of the problem, as formulated in the table, will be justified through gains in the form of clarification and systematization of some basic relationships. Let me repeat that the variables of the table are crude: indicative rather than immediately operational, in the same manner as the definition of underdevelopment in relation to which they have been formulated. The four squares of the table only illustrate tendencies, and precisely because of the fact that the Side 56
variables have consciously been given broad definitions, is it also impossible to locate exactly any individual country within the broadly delimited squares. Subdividing the squares, to allow for this, would require a kind of quantitative exactness which goes beyond the purposes of this essay. A final remark about the four-field table concerns an important difference between it and Apter's and Allardt's previously presented tables. Both in Apter's table and in Allardt's is it possible to distinguish a clear developmental direction along the diagonal from the upper left-hand toward the lower right-hand corner of the table. My own table should not be read in this way. It only presents four different combinations of two crucial developmental variables. For various reasons, explained in some detail in this essay, the combination in square 1 is considered most promising from the point of view of development in the Third World today. But the table as such is no attempt to encompass the whole theoretical space of political underdevelopment and development. V. Concluding remarksThe focal point of the entire argument of this essay is the relativistic definition of underdevelopment spelled out in the beginning of part 11. By consistently viewing underdevelopment as a problem of underutilization of human and material resources in relation to human and social needs — and development thus as a problem of mobilizing these resources or, slightly differently put, a problem of making the best of existing possibilities — I hope to have suggested also a logically coherent and historically relevant way of approaching the analysis of political development. This approach begins with a social scientist's common sense view of history and society, which emphasizes the usefulness of regarding human interaction as one or several social systems possible to delimit in time and space and with regard to type of interaction. These systems are all in constant motion within themselves, and they all interact with one another and with their material environments. Both the internal motion of the systems and their interaction may range from insignificant to very great. The interaction, furthermore, may be either direct or indirect. In this process, tensions, conflicts, and contradictions arise, both within the various systems and between them and their social and material environments. The stronger these tensions and contradictions, the stronger the pressure upon any given system to react in some way or other. In the social system of any underdeveloped country today, tensions and contradictions are strong and mounting because of contradictions between unsatisfied social and human needs and gross underutilization of existing possibilities to satisfy at least some of these needs. The same is very true of the international social system, in which the countries of the Third World interact with the rest of the world. These interrelated facts constitute the general situation of national and international underdevelopment, which cannot be overcome, unless people — as actors within national systems — as well as nations — as actors within the international system — manage to become masters of their own fates, in the Side 57
sense of
becoming able to use their own human and material
resources for their A political system
is that kind of social system within which human and
In a situation of general underdevelopment, the political system does not interact with its social and material environment in such a way that sufficient human and material resources are mobilized for underdevelopment to be overcome. This is the political aspect of underdevelopment, which means that people and nations are discouraged or prevented from using their own potential for qualitative improvement of their own situations. Political development occurs whenever the pressures resulting from such underdevelopment become strong enough to cause the political system to change in the direction of mobilizing interaction between itself and the rest of society. The direct impetus to such change may come from either the outside or from the inside of the political system, but it is always the result of a contradiction between demands and expectations and the (in)capacity of the existing political system to meet these demands and expectations. With the help of a simple and unpretentious conceptual framework, which I borrowed from Gunnar Myrdal and extended to include also the international aspects of underdevelopment, I have argued, in this essay, that the role of the political system is particularly important: as far as efforts to overcome the underdevelopment of our own historical period are concerned. I have also tried to demonstrate how different kinds of political systems may be assumed to interact with different kinds of development strategies. The most hopeful combination was said to be one in which dynamic political interaction was established between the developmental needs and aspirations of the masses and a purposefully planned development strategy. It is an important task of political science to attempt to define the conditions under which such interaction may be established and sustained. They appear to be minimal conditions of development for any Third World country included in the capitalist international system. The approach I am suggesting combines political systems analysis with a view of development inspired by historical materialism. It is easy to see that it is an eclectic approach. I think, nevertheless, that it is a coherent one and that it indicates a possible way of transcending the conservative bias and/or political innocence as well as the explicit or implicit ethnocentrism of the various prevalent approaches to the analysis of political development in modern political science. Side 59
NOTES 1 Coleman, 1967; Frank, 1967 (2). The question why Coleman (or the editors of the Encyclopedia?) preferred the narrower term "political modernization" to "political development" is perhaps intriguing, but also, I think, of secondary importance. Although it is quite clear that the present essay is about "development" and not about the narrower concept of "modernization", the two terms are often used in such ways that they tend to become mutually interchangeable. Pye, 1966 pp. 31—48, for instance, discusses "political development" in a way that is not very different from Coleman's way of discussing "political modernization". Cf. n. 46 below. Cf. also Apter, 1965, pp. 67 ff., where "modernization" is regarded as a particular key case of "development". — Apter and Andrain, 1968, is another example of a good summary of various approaches to the comparative study of political development (modernization). 2 Rudebeck, 1967 and 1969 (3) give reports on some of this empirical confrontation. As far as the present essay is concerned, it should also be mentioned how valuable it has been for me to be able to listen to the good advice willingly offered by my friends and colleagues Stefan Bjorklund and Sverker Gustavsson at the Political Science Institute of Uppsala University. I am sure that their constructive criticism has added considerably to whatever clarity and coherence there is to be found in my exposition. 3 According to one point of view, it is necessary to avoid the term "the Third World", because it might shield from our minds the metropolis-satellite relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries, interacting in the same capitalist international system. Cf. Frank, 1967, note on p. 145. I think, however, that it is quite possible to talk about the Third World without forgetting this harmful relationship. The term is useful for at least two reasons: (1) because it establishes a distinction between the economically developed capitalist world, the developed socialist world, and the more or less underdeveloped parts of the world, and (2) because it reminds us of "the third estate" — the rising social force — in the French revolution of 1789. Side 60
3 According to one point of view, it is necessary to avoid the term "the Third World", because it might shield from our minds the metropolis-satellite relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries, interacting in the same capitalist international system. Cf. Frank, 1967, note on p. 145. I think, however, that it is quite possible to talk about the Third World without forgetting this harmful relationship. The term is useful for at least two reasons: (1) because it establishes a distinction between the economically developed capitalist world, the developed socialist world, and the more or less underdeveloped parts of the world, and (2) because it reminds us of "the third estate" — the rising social force — in the French revolution of 1789. 4 Cf. Moore, 1966. 5 Rudebcck, 1967. 6 Cf. Almond, 1960 7 Rudebcck, 1967, p. 10. Cf. also my postscript to the second impression, Rudcbcck, 1969 (1), P- 259. 8 Cf. Almond, 1965 9 Cf. Rudebcck, 1969 (1), pp. 259 f. 10 On Parsons and political science, cf. Mitchell, 1967. 11 Cf. Easton's later works, 1965 (1 and 2), and Deutsch, 1963. 12 Easton, 1965 (1), p. 50 and 1965 (2), p. 21. 13 Deutsch, op. cit. (1966 edition quoted here), p. 124. 14 Easton, 1965 (1), p. 80. Cf. also pp. 22 and 23, and 1965 (2), pp. 49 ff. Almond and Powell, 1966, go even further, if possible, in this direction. Cf., for instance, p. 195, where they propose "the amount of resources which flows into the government at various levels (national, state, local)" as a measure of the "extractive capability" of political systems. Cf. Rudebeck 1969 (2), pp. 167—169, for a more detailed discussion of this problem. 15 Deutsch, op. cit., pp. 119—120. 16 Poulantzas, 1968. See in particular chapter l, "Sur le concept de politique", pp. 35—56. 17 Ibid., in particular n. 16, p. 47, and n. 27, p. 51. 18 Jaguaribc, 1968, p. 5. Jaguaribe, of course, is not alone to make this distinction, which is slowly beginning to gain some acceptance. Cf. also Griffin, 1969, p. 117. 19 Ibid., loc.cit. 20 Ibid., loc.cit. 21 Ibid., p. 6. 22 The following thoughts about historical "models" of development have not been directly inspired by Jaguaribe's thought-provoking work, although they certinly do not contradict his line of argument. 23 It would take us too far to elaborate on this topic. The following works give examples of valuable discussions of different important aspects of it: Amin, 1965 and 1966: Emmanuel, 1969; Frank 1967 (1); Jaguaribe, op.cit.; Moore, op.cit.; Myrdal, 1957 and 1968 (in particular chapters 13 and 14); Nettl, 1967; and several others. 24 Cf. Myrdal, 1968, pp. 1859 and 1864, as well as my own comments on the problem in Rudebeck, 1969 (4), p. 271. 25 Jaguaribe, op.cit., pp. 53 f. 26 Huntington, 1968; Pye, op.cit. The expression quoted from Pye refers to the title of chapter VII, "Insurgency and the suppression of rebellions". 27 Jaguaribe, op.cit. 28 Apter, 1965 and 1968. 29 Almond and Powell, op.cit., p. 105. 30 Ibid., loc.cit. 31 Ibid., pp. 217 and 308. The tableon p. 308 is perhaps particularly instructive and revealing. 32 Ibid., loc.cit. It is true that "subsystem autonomy" is not explicitly included in the quoted definition of political development. The whole structure of the book, however, makes it very clear that the authors intend also structural autonomy to be part of their concept of political development. On p. 300, for instance, it is explicitly stated that "level of development" is specified "in terms of differentiation, autonomy, and secularization", in order to provide us with a "starting point for description, explanation, and prediction". 33 Ibid., p. 308. 31 Ibid., p. 6. — On the point of the various "levels of development", cf. also Coleman's criticism of what he calls "the three-stage approach" (traditional-transitional-modern) in Coleman, 1967, pp. 396—397. Coleman points out that this approach (1) tends to exaggerate the characteristics it assumes traditional politics to have or have had, (2) suggests ail irreversible and unilinear movement toward "modernity", and (3) implies a termination of the "moderniztion" process at "modernity". Side 61
31 Ibid., p. 6. — On the point of the various "levels of development", cf. also Coleman's criticism of what he calls "the three-stage approach" (traditional-transitional-modern) in Coleman, 1967, pp. 396—397. Coleman points out that this approach (1) tends to exaggerate the characteristics it assumes traditional politics to have or have had, (2) suggests ail irreversible and unilinear movement toward "modernity", and (3) implies a termination of the "moderniztion" process at "modernity". 35 Part of this criticism is included in Rudebeck 1969 (2), pp. 170—172, where I also point to a difficulty Hydén 1968 (1) runs into by using Almond's and Powell's terminological framework. For in order to fit his empirical findings into this framework, Hydén is forced to regard "the increased preoccupation with ideology" he finds in Tanzania as an "important part of the process of cultural secularization", which obviously is not exactly in accordance with Almond's and Powell's way of thinking. Cf. Hydén 1968 (1), p. 59. 38 Bay 1967 and Lindahl 1967 have dealt with the subject, though, from slightly differing points of view. 37 Pye, op.cit., pp. 31—48. 38 Coleman, op.cit., p. 397. With regard to the distinction, discussed in n. l above, between "modernization" and "development", it is worth pointing out that Coleman here states his conviction that "the evolutionary perspective" allows us to "conceptualize political modernization, political development, and political growth as synonymous". 39 Ibid., loc.cit. 40 Ibid., loc.cit. 41 Pye, op.cit., pp. 45—48. 42 This is the specific subject of Apter, 1968. 43 Here quoted after Apter, 1968, p. 338. Cf. also Apter, 1965, pp. 24—25 (in 1967 edition, to which also the following references are made). 44 Apter, 1965, pp. 252 and 251, respectively. 45 Apter, 1968, p. 339. 46 Ibid., p. 341. 47 Ibid., p. 342, and, in a slightly different context, also Apter, 1965, pp. 420—421. 48 Apter, 1965, pp. 237 ff. 49 Ibid., pp. 243 ff. 50 Apter, 1968, p. 349. 51 Apter, 1965, p. 253, and 1968, p. 338. 52 First presented in Allardt, 1964, and then elaborated in greater detail in Allardt, 1965. 53 Allardt, 1964, p. 82. 54 Ibid., p. 83. 55 Apter, 1968, p. 330. 56 Hydén, 1968 (2). 57 As most theorists and theories can naturally be judged from more than one point of view, it is always somewhat problematic to assign individual social scientists to specific categories, as well as to classify their theoretical approaches. It is quite possible, for instance, that Allardt does not regard himself as a "functionalist", and it is quite possible, too, that neither Allardt nor Apter would accept my view that their approaches to the theoretical analysis of development are theoretically closed. As far as Allardt and functionalism are concerned, all I have wanted to say here is that there are striking similarities between the ways in which Allardt and Apter — the latter explicitly working within the framework of functional theory — approach the theoretical analysis of development. As far as the "closedness" of their theories is concerned, let me quote Heiskanen, 1966, p. 38, who points out: "Because of the nature of its basic tenets, functional analysis is bound to a kind of reduction strategy. The analysis must start with a closed (italics mine), limited system, and the phenomena under investigation and in need of explanation are analyzed according to their relationship (functions, dysfunctions) to this system." Then, again, I am well aware of the fact that Heiskanen, loc.cit., mentions Allardt as one among several representatives of theorists working with "open (italics mine), non-functional theoretical systems", which is exactly how l would like to classify the kind of approach I am trying to advocate in this essay. Easton is also mentioned by Heiskanen as a representative of this category. This demonstrates, I believe, that we must think in terms of a gliding scale between closed and open theoretical approaches, an opinion that is supported, too, by the fact that Heiskanen himself in a later work makes a distinction, within functionalism, between "closed" and "open" functional approaches: "In terms of our methedological basic dimension the latter are closer to the 'informal' end, aiming more at descriptive theory formation, while the former in many respects have as definite application interests as the rationalistic approaches." (Heiskanen, 1967, p. 70, cf. also the following pages.) — As far as the historical relativism, of the theoretical approach to the analysis of political development advocated in this essay, is concerned, it should not be necessary to point out that it ought not to be equated with any kind of value relativism. By linking the entire argument of the essay to the general definitions of underdevelopment and development given in the beginning of part 11, I hope to have made it clear that not just any kind of functioning political system may be defined as "developed", if the premises of the argument are to be retained. Side 62
57 As most theorists and theories can naturally be judged from more than one point of view, it is always somewhat problematic to assign individual social scientists to specific categories, as well as to classify their theoretical approaches. It is quite possible, for instance, that Allardt does not regard himself as a "functionalist", and it is quite possible, too, that neither Allardt nor Apter would accept my view that their approaches to the theoretical analysis of development are theoretically closed. As far as Allardt and functionalism are concerned, all I have wanted to say here is that there are striking similarities between the ways in which Allardt and Apter — the latter explicitly working within the framework of functional theory — approach the theoretical analysis of development. As far as the "closedness" of their theories is concerned, let me quote Heiskanen, 1966, p. 38, who points out: "Because of the nature of its basic tenets, functional analysis is bound to a kind of reduction strategy. The analysis must start with a closed (italics mine), limited system, and the phenomena under investigation and in need of explanation are analyzed according to their relationship (functions, dysfunctions) to this system." Then, again, I am well aware of the fact that Heiskanen, loc.cit., mentions Allardt as one among several representatives of theorists working with "open (italics mine), non-functional theoretical systems", which is exactly how l would like to classify the kind of approach I am trying to advocate in this essay. Easton is also mentioned by Heiskanen as a representative of this category. This demonstrates, I believe, that we must think in terms of a gliding scale between closed and open theoretical approaches, an opinion that is supported, too, by the fact that Heiskanen himself in a later work makes a distinction, within functionalism, between "closed" and "open" functional approaches: "In terms of our methedological basic dimension the latter are closer to the 'informal' end, aiming more at descriptive theory formation, while the former in many respects have as definite application interests as the rationalistic approaches." (Heiskanen, 1967, p. 70, cf. also the following pages.) — As far as the historical relativism, of the theoretical approach to the analysis of political development advocated in this essay, is concerned, it should not be necessary to point out that it ought not to be equated with any kind of value relativism. By linking the entire argument of the essay to the general definitions of underdevelopment and development given in the beginning of part 11, I hope to have made it clear that not just any kind of functioning political system may be defined as "developed", if the premises of the argument are to be retained. 38 Cf. Emmanuel, op.cit.; Frank 1967 (1 and 2); Griffin, op.cit.; Jaguaribe, op.cit.; Myrdal, 1957; Rweyemamu, 1969; and several others not included among the references who have dealt with this fundamental aspect of underdevelopment — notably few political scientists, however. 59 Rudebeck, 1969 (4). Jørgensen, 1969, criticizes Myrdal in a similar way. 60 Myrdal, 1968, pp. 24 and 25. This kind of "theory" is naturally very "open" (cf. n. 65 above). 61 Ibid., p. 1840 and pp. 1859 ff. 62 Ibid., p. 1860. — Note that Myrdal uses the word "condition" to mean "condition of being in a certain state or having a certain characteristic . . ." rather than "condition" as "requirement or requisite". Sometimes the terms "factor" or "variable" would seem more appropriate than "condition", but I do not think this implies a different view of what constitutes a system. On pp. 1858 ff. Myrdal himself alternates between "condition" and "factor". 63 Ibid., p. 1864. 64 Ibid., p. 1860. 65 Cf. ibid., p. 1863. 66 Ibid., Appendix 2, "The Mechanism of Underdevelopment and Development and a Sketch of an Elementary Theory of Planning for Development", pp. 1843—1940. The descriptive analyses of the international system not theoretically accounted for in this appendix are mainly contained in chapter 13, "Foreign Trade and Capital Flows", pp. 581—672; chapter 14, "Differences in Initial Conditions", pp. 673—705; and also in various sections of chapter 10, "Population and the Development of Resources", pp. 413—471, particularly pp. 477 ff. It is also true that Myrdal, 1957, presents the broad lines of a theory that views underdevelopment as a structural characteristic of the international political and economic system. This work, however, is only referred to once in Myrdal, 1968, and then in a completely different context (n. 1, p. 12). 67 Evidence of this fact is provided by Myrdal himself, as far as South Asia is concerned, in Myrdal, 1968, pp. 591—595, where we also find table 13—14 (pp. 592—593) with detailed quantitative information on "Direction of exports and role of former colonial power". — It could also be claimed that the international economic system of the entire world functions as a capitalist system and that the term "international capitalist system" thus is rather synonymous with the most inclusive international political and economic system, that of the whole world. There is much in the international practice of socialist countries to support such a view. The point is not essential in this context, but it is still recognized that "the predominantly capitalist international political and economic system" may for some purposes be a more adequate and exact term than merely "the international capitalist system". Most countries of the Third World, anyway, belong to both systems, which, furthermore, are heavily overlapping. 68 Cf., for instance, ibid., pp. 374, 1888, and 1910. 69 Cf. Rudebeck, 1969 (4), p. 277. Side 63
70 Myrdal, 1968, p. 1863: "The national community is also characterized by a number of institutional conditions unfavorable for economic development: notably a land tenure system detrimental to agricultural advance; undeveloped institutions for enterprise, employment, trade, and credit; deficiencies of national consolidation; imperfections in the authority of government agencies; instability and low effectiveness in national politics; low standards of efficiency and integrity in public administration; ineffective organs for provincal and local selfgovernment; and a weak infrastructure of voluntary organizations — the institutional conditions which together constitute these national communities (of South Asia) as 'soft states' in our terminology. At the root of all these institutional debilities is a low degree of popular participation and a rigid, inegalitarian social stratificaton." 71 Easton, 1965 (1), p. 114. 72 Cf. Rudebeck, 1969 (1), pp. 262 ff.; 1969 (3), pp. 8 ff.; 1969 (5), pp. 19 ff. 73 This table is found also in Rudebeck 1969 (3), and (5), p. 23. 74 Rudebeck, 1969 (3). 75 The Arusha Declaration, 1967. 76 Rudebeck, 1969 (1 and 3). 77 Cf. Myrdal, 1968, in particular part 5, "Problems of Labor Utilization", chapters 21—26, pp. 959—1384. REFERENCESAllardt, Erik. "A
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