Modernization theory is used to explain the process of modernization within societies. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s drew on sociological analyses of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
,
Emile Durkheim
Emil or Emile may refer to:
Literature
*''Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life
*''Emil and the Detective ...
and a partial reading of
Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...
, and were strongly influenced by the writings of Harvard sociologist
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in soci ...
. Modernization theory was a dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, then went into a deep eclipse. It made a comeback after 1991, when
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Yoshihiro Fukuyama (; born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, international relations scholar and writer.
Fukuyama is known for his book ''The End of History and the Last Man'' (1992), which argue ...
wrote about the end of the Cold War as confirmation on modernization theory and more generally of
universal history
A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to t ...
. But the theory remains a controversial model.
Modernization refers to a model of a progressive transition from a "pre-modern" or "
traditional
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
" to a "modern" society. Modernization theory suggests that traditional societies will develop as they adopt more modern practices. Proponents of modernization theory claim that modern states are wealthier and more powerful and that their citizens are freer to enjoy a higher standard of living. Developments such as new data technology and the need to update traditional methods in transport, communication and production make modernization necessary or at least preferable to the status quo. That view makes critique difficult since it implies that such developments control the limits of human interaction, not vice versa. And yet, seemingly paradoxically, it also implies that human agency controls the speed and severity of modernization. Supposedly, instead of being dominated by tradition, societies undergoing the process of modernization typically arrive at forms of governance dictated by abstract principles. Traditional religious beliefs and cultural traits, according to the theory, usually become less important as modernization takes hold.
The theory looks at the internal factors of a country while assuming that with assistance, "traditional" countries can be brought to development in the same manner more developed countries have been. Modernization theory both attempts to identify the social variables that contribute to
social progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
and development of societies and seeks to explain the process of
social evolution
{{unreferenced, date=February 2015
''Social Evolution'' is the title of an essay by Benjamin Kidd, which became available as a book published by Macmillan and co London in 1894. In it, Kidd discusses the basis for society as an evolving phenomenon ...
. Authors such as
Daniel Lerner explicitly equated modernization with
Westernization
Westernization (or Westernisation), also Europeanisation or occidentalization (from the ''Occident''), is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, econo ...
.
Today, the concept of modernization is understood in three different meanings: 1) as the internal development of Western Europe and North America relating to the European New Era; 2) as a process by which countries that do not belong to the first group of countries, aim to catch up with them; 3) as processes of evolutionary development of the most modernized societies (Western Europe and North America), i.e. modernization as a permanent process, carried out through reform and innovation, which today means a transition to a postindustrial society.
Historians link modernization to the processes of
urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
and
industrialization and the spread of education. As Kendall (2007) notes, "Urbanization accompanied modernization and the rapid process of industrialization." In
sociological
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
critical theory, modernization is linked to an overarching process of
rationalisation. When modernization increases within a society, the individual becomes increasingly important, eventually replacing the family or community as the fundamental unit of society. It is also a subject taught in traditional Advanced Placement World History classes.
Modernization theory is subject to criticism originating among socialist and free-market ideologies,
world-systems A world-system is a socioeconomic system, under systems theory, that encompasses part or all of the globe, detailing the aggregate structural result of the sum of the interactions between polities. World-systems are usually larger than single stat ...
theorists,
globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
theorists and
dependency theorists among others. Modernization theory stresses not only the process of change but also the responses to that change. It also looks at internal dynamics while referring to social and cultural structures and the adaptation of new technologies.
The rise and fall of modernization theory
The modernization theory of the 1950s and 1960 drew on
classical evolutionary theory and a Parsonian reading of Weber's ideas about a transition from traditional to modern society. Parsons had translated Weber's works into English in the 1930s and provided his own interpretation.
After 1945 the Parsonian version became widely used in sociology and other social sciences. Some of the thinkers associated with modernization theory are
Marion J. Levy Jr.
Marion Joseph Levy Jr. (December 12, 1918 – May 26, 2002) was an American sociologist noted for his work on modernization theory.
Born in Galveston, Texas, Levy received his doctorate in sociology from Harvard, studying under Talcott Pars ...
,
Gabriel Almond
Gabriel Abraham Almond (January 12, 1911 – December 25, 2002) was an American political scientist best known for his pioneering work on comparative politics, political development, and political culture.
Biography
Almond was born on January 1 ...
,
Seymour Martin Lipset
Seymour Martin Lipset ( ; March 18, 1922 – December 31, 2006) was an American sociologist and political scientist (President of the American Political Science Association). His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union o ...
,
Walt Rostow
Walt Whitman Rostow (October 7, 1916 – February 13, 2003) was an American economist, professor and political theorist who served as National Security Advisor to President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969.
Rostow worked ...
, Daniel Lerner,
Lucian Pye
Lucian W. Pye (; October 21, 1921 – September 5, 2008) was an American political scientist, sinologist and comparative politics expert considered one of the leading China scholars in the United States. Educated at Carleton College and Yale Univ ...
,
David Apter
David Ernest Apter (December 18, 1924 – May 4, 2010) was an American political scientist and sociologist. He was Henry J. Heinz Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development and senior research scientist at Yale University.
He was ...
,
Alex Inkeles
Alex Inkeles (March 4, 1920 – July 9, 2010) was an American sociologist and social psychologist. One of his main areas of research was the culture and society of the Soviet Union. His career was mostly spent at Harvard University and Stanfo ...
,
Cyril Edwin Black
Cyril Edwin Black (September 10, 1915, Bryson City, North Carolina – July 18, 1989, Princeton, New Jersey) was a professor of history and international affairs, specializing in the modern history of Eastern Europe and, in particular, Russian his ...
,
Bert F. Hoselitz,
Myron Weiner
Myron of Eleutherae ( grc, Μύρων, ''Myrōn'' ), working c. 480–440 BC, was an Athenian sculptor from the mid-5th century BC. He was born in Eleutherae on the borders of Boeotia and Attica. According to Pliny's '' Natural History'', Agela ...
, and
Karl Deutsch
Karl Wolfgang Deutsch (21 July 1912 – 1 November 1992) was a social and political scientist from Prague. He was a professor at MIT, Yale University and Harvard University, as well as Director of Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (International Insti ...
.
By the late 1960s opposition to modernization theory developed because the theory was too general and did not fit all societies in quite the same way.
[; Andrew C. Janos, ''Politics and Paradigms: Changing Theories of Change in Social Science''. Stanford: Stanford University Presss, 1986; Paul Anthony Cammack, ''Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World: The Doctrine for Political Development''. London: Leicester University Press, 1997.] Yet, with the end of the Cold War, a few attempts to revive modernization theory were carried out. Francis Fukuyama argued for the use of modernization theory as
universal history
A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to t ...
. A more academic effort to revise modernization theory was that of
Ronald Inglehart
Ronald F. Inglehart (September 5, 1934 – May 8, 2021) was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was director of the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists who have carried out representati ...
and
Christian Welzel
Christian Welzel (born 1964) is a German political scientist at the Leuphana University Lueneburg and director of research at the World Values Survey Association. He is known for the model of cultural dimensions which measures emancipative valu ...
in ''Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy'' (2005). Inglehart and Welzel amended the 1960s version of modernization theory in significant ways. Counter to Lipset, who associated industrial growth with democratization, Inglehart and Welzel did not see an association between industrialization and democratization. Rather, they held that only at a later stage in the process of economic modernization, which various authors have chanracterized as
post-industrial, did values conducive to democratization - which Inglehart and Welzel call “self-expression values” - emerge.
Nonetheless, these efforts to revive modernization theory were critized by many (see the section on "Criticisms and alternatives" below), and the theory remained a controversial one.
Modernization and democracy
The relationship between modernization and democracy or
democratization is one of the most researched studies in
comparative politics
Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the ''comparative method'' or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relatin ...
. There are many studies show that modernization has contributed to democracy in some countries. For example, Seymour Martin Lipset argued that modernization can turn into democracy." There is academic debate over the drivers of democracy because there are theories that support economic growth as both a cause and effect of the institution of democracy. “Lipset’s observation that democracy is related to economic development, first advanced in 1959, has generated the largest body of research on any topic in comparative politics,”
Larry Diamond
Larry Jay Diamond (born October 2, 1951) is an American political sociologist and leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is Stanf ...
and
Juan Linz
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, ...
, who worked with Lipset in the book, ''Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America'', argue that economic performance affects the development of democracy in at least three ways. First, they argue that economic growth is more important for democracy than given levels of socioeconomic development. Second, socioeconomic development generates social changes that can potentially facilitate democratization. Third, socioeconomic development promotes other changes, like organization of the middle class, which is conducive to democracy.
As
Seymour Martin Lipset
Seymour Martin Lipset ( ; March 18, 1922 – December 31, 2006) was an American sociologist and political scientist (President of the American Political Science Association). His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union o ...
put it, "All the various aspects of economic development—industrialization, urbanization, wealth and education—are so closely interrelated as to form one major factor which has the political correlate of democracy". The argument also appears in
Walt W. Rostow, ''Politics and the Stages of Growth'' (1971); A. F. K. Organski, ''The Stages of Political Development'' (1965); and
David Apter
David Ernest Apter (December 18, 1924 – May 4, 2010) was an American political scientist and sociologist. He was Henry J. Heinz Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development and senior research scientist at Yale University.
He was ...
, ''The Politics of Modernization'' (1965). In the 1960s, some critics argued that the link between modernization and democracy was based too much on the example of European history and neglected the
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
.
One historical problem with that argument has always been
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
whose economic modernization in the 19th century came long before the
democratization after 1918.
Berman Berman is a surname that may be derived from the German and Yiddish phrase ( ‘ bear-man’)https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e250048/Family_Name/BERMAN or from the Dutch , meaning the same. Notable people with the surname include:
* Abba ...
, however, concludes that a process of democratization was underway in Imperial Germany, for "during these years Germans developed many of the habits and mores that are now thought by political scientists to augur healthy political development".
One contemporary problem for modernization theory is that it is highly contentious that modernization implies more human rights, with China in the 21st century being a major test case.
Ronald Inglehart
Ronald F. Inglehart (September 5, 1934 – May 8, 2021) was an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He was director of the World Values Survey, a global network of social scientists who have carried out representati ...
and
Christian Welzel
Christian Welzel (born 1964) is a German political scientist at the Leuphana University Lueneburg and director of research at the World Values Survey Association. He is known for the model of cultural dimensions which measures emancipative valu ...
contend that the realization of democracy is not based solely on an expressed desire for that form of government, but democracies are born as a result of the admixture of certain social and cultural factors. They argue the ideal social and cultural conditions for the foundation of a democracy are born of significant modernization and economic development that result in mass political participation.
Randall Peerenboom explores the relationships among democracy, the rule of law and their relationship to wealth by pointing to examples of Asian countries, such as Taiwan and South Korea, which have successfully democratized only after economic growth reached relatively high levels and to examples of countries such as the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
,
Cambodia
Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailan ...
,
Thailand
Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
and
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, which sought to democratize at lower levels of wealth but have not done as well.
Adam Przeworski
Adam Przeworski (; born May 5, 1940) is a Polish-American professor of political science specializing in comparative politics. He is Carroll and Milton Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics of New York University. He is a scholar of de ...
and others have challenged Lipset's argument. They say political regimes do not transition to democracy as per capita incomes rise. Rather, democratic transitions occur randomly, but once there, countries with higher levels of gross domestic product per capita remain democratic. Epstein et al. (2006) retest the modernization hypothesis using new data, new techniques, and a three-way, rather than dichotomous, classification of regimes. Contrary to Przeworski, this study finds that the modernization hypothesis stands up well. Partial democracies emerge as among the most important and least understood regime types.
Daron Acemoglu and
James A. Robinson, in their article "Income and Democracy" (2008) further weaken the case for Lipset's argument by showing that even though there is a strong cross-country correlation between income and democracy, once one controls for country fixed effects and removes the association between income per capita and various measures of democracy, there is "no causal effect of income on democracy." In "Non-Modernization" (2022), they further argue that modernization theory cannot account for various paths of political development "because it posits a link between economics and politics that is not conditional on institutions and culture and that presumes a definite endpoint—for example, an 'end of history'."
Sirianne Dahlum and Carl Henrik Knutsen offer a test of the Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel revised version of modernization theory, which focuses on cultural traits triggered by economic development that are presummed to be conducive to democratization. They find "no empirical support" for the Inglehart and Welzel thesis and conclude that "self-expression values do not enhance democracy levels or democratization chances, and neither do they stabilize existing democracies."
A meta-analysis by
Gerardo L. Munck of research on Lipset's argument shows that a majority of studies do not support the thesis that higher levels of economic development leads to more democracy.
Modernization and economic development
Development, like modernization, has become the orienting principle of modern times. Countries that are seen as modern are also seen as developed, which means that they are generally more respected by institutions such as the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
and even as possible trade partners for other countries. The extent to which a country has modernized or developed dictates its power and importance on the international level.
Modernization of the health sector of developing nations recognizes that transitioning from "
traditional
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
" to "modern" is not merely the advancement in technology and the introduction of Western practices; implementing modern healthcare requires the reorganization of political agenda and, in turn, an increase in funding by feeders and resources towards public health. Additionally, a strong advocate of the DE-emphasis of medical institutions was
Halfdan T. Mahler, the
WHO
Who or WHO may refer to:
* Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun
* Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism
* World Health Organization
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book '' Horton He ...
General Director from 1973 to 1988. Related ideas have been proposed at international conferences such as
Alma-Ats and the "Health and Population in Development" conference, sponsored by the
Rockefeller Foundation in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
in 1979, and selective primary healthcare and
GOBI
The Gobi Desert ( Chinese: 戈壁 (沙漠), Mongolian: Говь (ᠭᠣᠪᠢ)) () is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, and is the sixth largest desert in the world.
Geography
The Gobi measures from southwest to northeast ...
were discussed (although they have both been strongly criticized by supporters of comprehensive healthcare). Overall, however, this is not to say that the nations of the Global South can function independently from Western states; significant funding is received from well-intention programs, foundations, and charities that target epidemics such as
HIV/AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ...
,
malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
, and
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
that have substantially improved the lives of millions of people and impeded future development.
Modernization theorists often saw traditions as obstacles to
economic development
In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and ...
. According to Seymour Martin Lipset, economic conditions are heavily determined by the cultural, social values present in that given society. Furthermore, while modernization might deliver violent, radical change for
traditional societies, it was thought worth the price. Critics insist that traditional societies were often destroyed without ever gaining the promised advantages if, among other things, the economic gap between advanced societies and such societies actually increased. The net effect of modernization for some societies was therefore the replacement of traditional poverty by a more modern form of
misery, according to these critics. Others point to improvements in living standards, physical infrastructure, education and economic opportunity to refute such criticisms.
Modernization theorists such as
Samuel P. Huntington held in the 1960s and 1970s that authoritarian regimes yielded greater economic growth than democracies. However, this view had been challenged. In ''Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990'' (2000),
Adam Przeworski
Adam Przeworski (; born May 5, 1940) is a Polish-American professor of political science specializing in comparative politics. He is Carroll and Milton Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics of New York University. He is a scholar of de ...
argued that "democracies perform as well economically as do authoritarian regimes." A study by
Daron Acemoglu, Suresh Naidu, Pascual Restrepo, and
James A. Robinson shows that "democracy has a positive effect on GDP per capita."
Modernization and globalization
Globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
can be defined as the integration of economic, political and social cultures. It is argued that globalization is related to the spreading of modernization across borders.
Global trade has grown continuously since the European discovery of new continents in the
Early modern period; it increased particularly as a result of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
and the mid-20th century adoption of the
shipping container
A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes. In the context of ...
.
Annual trans-border tourist arrivals rose to 456 million by 1990 and almost tripled since, reaching a total of over 1.2 billion in 2016. Communication is another major area that has grown due to modernization. Communication industries have enabled capitalism to spread throughout the world. Telephony, television broadcasts, news services and online service providers have played a crucial part in globalization. Former U.S president
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
was a supporter of the modernization theory and believed that television had potential to provide educational tools in development.
With the many apparent positive attributes to globalization there are also negative consequences. The dominant, neoliberal model of globalization often increases disparities between a society's rich and its poor. In major cities of developing countries there exist pockets where technologies of the modernised world,
computers, cell phones and satellite television, exist alongside stark poverty. Globalists are globalization modernization theorists and argue that globalization is positive for everyone, as its benefits must eventually extend to all members of society, including vulnerable groups such as women and children.
Technology
New
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...
is a major source of social change. (Social change refers to any significant alteration over time in behaviour patterns and cultural values and norms.) Since modernization entails the social transformation from agrarian societies to industrial ones, it is important to look at the technological viewpoint; however, new technologies do not change societies by itself. Rather, it is the ''response'' to technology that causes change. Frequently, technology is recognized but not put to use for a very long time such as the ability t
extract metal from rock Although that initially went unused, it later had profound implications for the developmental course of societies. Technology makes it possible for a more innovative society and broad social change. That dramatic change through the centuries that has evolved socially, industrially, and economically, can be summed up by the term modernization. Cell phones, for example, have changed the lives of millions throughout the world. That is especially true in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
and other parts of the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
, where there is a low-cost communication infrastructure. With cell phone technology, widely dispersed populations are connected, which facilitates business-to-business communication and provides internet access to remoter areas, with a consequential rise in literacy.
Applications
United States foreign aid in the 1960s
President
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
(1961–63) relied on economists
W.W. Rostow
Walt Whitman Rostow (October 7, 1916 – February 13, 2003) was an American economist, professor and political theorist who served as National Security Advisor to President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969.
Rostow worked ...
on his staff and outsider
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through t ...
for ideas on how to promote rapid economic development in the "
Third World
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...
", as it was called at the time. They promoted modernization models in order to reorient American aid to Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the Rostow version in his ''The Stages of Economic Growth'' (1960) progress must pass through five stages, and for underdeveloped world the critical stages were the second one, the transition, the third stage, the takeoff into self-sustaining growth. Rostow argued that American intervention could propel a country from the second to the third stage he expected that once it reached maturity, it would have a large energized middle class that would establish democracy and civil liberties and institutionalize human rights. The result was a comprehensive theory that could be used to challenge Marxist ideologies, and thereby repel communist advances. The model provided the foundation for the
Alliance for Progress
The Alliance for Progress ( es, Alianza para el Progreso, links=no), initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, ostensibly aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marí ...
in Latin America, the
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F ...
,
Food for Peace, and the
Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 ...
(AID). Kennedy proclaimed the 1960s the "Development Decade" and substantially increased the budget for foreign assistance. Modernization theory supplied the design, rationale, and justification for these programs. The goals proved much too ambitious, and the economists in a few years abandoned the European-based modernization model as inappropriate to the cultures they were trying to impact.
Kennedy and his top advisers were working from implicit ideological assumptions regarding
modernization. They firmly believed modernity was not only good for the target populations, but was essential to avoid communism on the one hand or extreme control of traditional rural society by the very rich landowners on the other. They believed America had a duty, as the most modern country in the world, to promulgate this ideal to the poor nations of the Third World. They wanted programs that were altruistic, and benevolent—and also tough, energetic, and determined. It was benevolence with a foreign policy purpose. Michael Latham has identified how this ideology worked out in three major programs the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, and the
strategic hamlet program in South Vietnam. However, Latham argues that the ideology was a non-coercive version of the modernization goals of the imperialistic of Britain, France and other European countries in the 19th century .
Criticisms and alternatives
From the 1970s, modernization theory has been criticized by numerous scholars, including
Andre Gunder Frank
Andre Gunder Frank (February 24, 1929 – April 25, 2005) was a German-American sociologist and economic historian who promoted dependency theory after 1970 and world-systems theory after 1984. He employed some Marxian concepts on politi ...
(1929–2005) and
Immanuel Wallerstein
Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (; September 28, 1930 – August 31, 2019) was an American sociologist and economic historian. He is perhaps best known for his development of the general approach in sociology which led to the emergence of his wor ...
(1930-2019). In this model, the modernization of a society required the destruction of the indigenous culture and its replacement by a more Westernized one. By one definition, ''modern'' simply refers to the present, and any society still in existence is therefore modern. Proponents of modernization typically view only Western society as being truly modern and argue that others are primitive or unevolved by comparison. That view sees unmodernized societies as inferior even if they have the same standard of living as western societies. Opponents argue that modernity is independent of culture and can be adapted to any society. Japan is cited as an example by both sides. Some see it as proof that a thoroughly modern way of life can exist in a non western society. Others argue that
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
has become distinctly more western as a result of its modernization.
As Tipps has argued, by conflating modernization with other processes, with which theorists use interchangeably (democratization, liberalization, development), the term becomes imprecise and therefore difficult to disprove.
The theory has also been criticised empirically, as modernization theorists ignore external sources of change in societies. The binary between traditional and modern is unhelpful, as the two are linked and often interdependent, and "modernization" does not come as a whole.
Modernization theory has also been accused of being
Eurocentric
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western worl ...
, as modernization began in Europe, with the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
, the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
and the
Revolutions of 1848
The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europea ...
and has long been regarded as reaching its most advanced stage in Europe. Anthropologists typically make their criticism one step further and say that the view is ethnocentric and is specific to
Western culture
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
.
Dependency theory
One alternative model is
dependency theory
Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a " periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a " core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. A central contention of dependency theory is that poor ...
. It emerged in the 1950s and argues that the underdevelopment of poor nations in the Third World derived from systematic imperial and neo-colonial exploitation of raw materials. Its proponents argue that resources typically flow from a "periphery" of poor and
underdeveloped states to a "core" of
wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theorists such as
Andre Gunder Frank
Andre Gunder Frank (February 24, 1929 – April 25, 2005) was a German-American sociologist and economic historian who promoted dependency theory after 1970 and world-systems theory after 1984. He employed some Marxian concepts on politi ...
that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "
world system A world-system is a socioeconomic system, under systems theory, that encompasses part or all of the globe, detailing the aggregate structural result of the sum of the interactions between polities. World-systems are usually larger than single sta ...
".
Dependency models arose from a growing association of southern hemisphere nationalists (from Latin America and Africa) and Marxists. It was their reaction against modernization theory, which held that all societies progress through similar stages of development, that today's underdeveloped areas are thus in a similar situation to that of today's developed areas at some time in the past, and that, therefore, the task of helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market. Dependency theory rejected this view, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world
market economy.
Barrington Moore and comparative historical analysis
Another line of critique of modernization theory was due to sociologist
Barrington Moore Jr.
Barrington Moore Jr. (12 May 1913 – 16 October 2005) was an American political sociologist, and the son of forester Barrington Moore.
He is well-known for his ''Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy'' (1966), a comparative study of ...
, in his
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966). In this classic book, Moore argues there were at least "three routes to the modern world" - the liberal democratic, the fascist, and the communist - each deriving from the timing of industrialization and the social structure at the time of transition. Counter to modernization theory, Moore held that there was not one path to the modern world and that economic development did not always bring about democracy.
Guillermo O'Donnell and bureaucratic authoritarianism
Political scientist
Guillermo O'Donnell
Guillermo Alberto O'Donnell Ure (February 24, 1936 – November 29, 2011) was a prominent Argentine political scientist, specializing in comparative politics, who spent most of his career working in Argentina and the United States, and who m ...
, in his ''Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism'' (1973) challenged the thesis, advanced most notably by Seymour Martin Lipset, that industrialization produced democracy. In South America, O’Donnell argued, industrialization generated not democracy, but bureaucratic authoritarianism.
Acemoglu and Robinson and institutional economics
Ecoonomists
Daron Acemoglu and
James A. Robinson, in "Non-Modernization" (2022), argue that modernization theory cannot account for various paths of political development "because it posits a link between economics and politics that is not conditional on institutions and culture and that presumes a definite endpoint—for example, an 'end of history'."
[Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, "Non-Modernization: Power–Culture Trajectories and the Dynamics of Political Institutions." ''Annual Review of Political Science'' 25(1) 2022: 323-339, p. 32]
/ref>
See also
* Bielefeld School
The Bielefeld School is a group of German historians based originally at Bielefeld University who promote social history and political history using quantification and the methods of political science and sociology.Lorenz, Chris "Wehler, Hans-Ul ...
* Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the su ...
* Dependency theory
Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a " periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a " core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. A central contention of dependency theory is that poor ...
* Development criticism
Postdevelopment theory (also post-development or anti-development or development criticism) holds that the whole concept and practice of development is a reflection of Western-Northern hegemony over the rest of the world. Postdevelopment thought ...
* Ecological modernisation
* Globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...
* Gwangmu Reform timeline
* Idea of Progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension w ...
* Mass society
Mass society is a concept that describes modern society as a monolithic force and yet a disaggregate collection of individuals. It is often used pejoratively to refer to a society in which bureaucracy and impersonal institutions have replaced some ...
* Mediatization (media) Mediatization (or medialization) is a process whereby the mass media influence other sectors of society, including politics, business, culture, entertainment, sport, religion, or education. Mediatization is often understood as a process of change or ...
* Modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
* Modernization theory (Nationalism) Modernization theory is the predominant explanation for emergence of nationalism among scholars of nationalism. Prominent modernization scholars, such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawn, say nationalism arose with modernization ...
* Progressive Era (US, early 20th century)
* Postmodernism
* Postmodernity
Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the ...
* Rationalization (sociology)
In sociology, the term rationalization was coined by Max Weber, a German sociologist, jurist, and economist. Rationalization (or rationalisation) is the replacement of traditions, values, and emotions as motivators for behaviour in society with co ...
References
Bibliography
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*Cammack, Paul Anthony, ''Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World: The Doctrine for Political Development''. London: Leicester University Press, 1997
*; An intellectual history of American, Chinese, and Japanese views of modernity.
* Davidann, Jon Thares. ''The Limits of Westernization: American and East Asian Intellectuals Create Modernity, 1860–1960'' (2019).
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* Garon, Sheldon. "Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on State-Society Relations" ''Journal of Asian Studies'' 53#2 (1994), pp. 346–36
online
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*Janos, Andrew C. ''Politics and Paradigms: Changing Theories of Change in Social Science''. Stanford: Stanford University Presss, 1986
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*, modernizers, traditionalists and post-moderns make state history
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*Munck, Gerardo L. “Modernization Theory as a Case of Failed Knowledge Production.” ''The Annals of Comparative Democratization'' 16, 3 (2018): 37-41
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* Wucherpfennig, Julian, and Franziska Deutsch. 2009. "Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited." ''Living Reviews in Democracy'' Vol. 1, p. 1-9. 9
External links
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{{Authority control
Comparative politics
Development studies
Sociocultural evolution theory
Modernity