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Underdevelopment and the “Gap” Theory of International Conflict*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

K. J. Holsti
K. J. Holsti*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Abstract

A common hypothesis about the sources of international conflict holds that war and turmoil will be an inevitable consequence of the widening “gap” between the developed and underdeveloped states. This view is based on a common Western image of underdeveloped countries which assumes that striving for economic betterment is universal in all underdeveloped countries, and is primarily a grass-roots phenomenon. This essay challenges the hypothesis and the assumptions upon which it is based. It argues that the images of underdevelopment generated by economists using aggregate data are in many cases incorrect or distorted. Studies by anthropologists which are based on micro- rather than macrodata produce quite different impressions of the underdeveloped society. The human costs involved are for the most part overlooked in development schemes, and the wholesale importation of Western economic development strategies has led in many cases not only to a poor allocation of resources, but also to many of the problems the developed societies are now facing, including urban congestion, rising crime rates, higher incidence of mental breakdown, and the like.

The paper concludes with a critical review of common liberal solutions to development problems, and suggests that one strategy possible for some developing countries is increased isolation from the international system. International conflict may result not only because the underdeveloped states wish to close the “gap,” but because some may choose deliberately to reduce their dependency on the West. Conflict may be generated through isolation as well as through increased interaction.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 827 - 839
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

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Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the IX World Congress, International Political Science Association, Montreal, August 23, 1973. Barbara Haskel, Hal Sarf, and Janice Stein, all of the Department of Political Science, McGill University, and Ole R. Holsti, Duke University, made many useful comments on a draft of this essay. I appreciate their kindness.

References

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2 This common view is proposed, for example, in Partners for Development: Report of the Commission on International Development, ChairmanPearson, Lester B. (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 7 Google Scholar; see also McNamara, Robert S., The Essence of Security (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 145–146 Google Scholar.

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4 Throughout this paper, the term “Western” includes most of the developed socialist states. The literature on the causes of underdevelopment is expanding rapidly, largely fostered by the pioneering work of André Gunder Frank. See particularly his essay “The Development of Underdevelopment,” in Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution? ed. Frank, A. G. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969)Google Scholar. A summary and critique of the underdevelopment-dependency literature is in Cohen, Benjamin J., The Question of Imperialism: The Political Economy of Dominance and Dependence (New York: Basic Books, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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17 Dan Usher describes finding that an early conception of living conditions among the Thais, based on economic studies, was greatly at odds with the reality he experienced living among them. The low per-capita income figures indicated virtually nothing about material welfare or sense of well-being. See his The Price Mechanism and the Meaning of Na-tional Income Statistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, intro.

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