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Political Development in the New States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Edward Shils
Edward Shils
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

There are very few states today which do not aspire to modernity. The day of rulers who were indifferent to the archaism of the society which they governed has almost disappeared. The leaders of nearly every state—both the old established states as well as the new states of Asia and Africa—feel a pressing necessity of espousing policies which will bring them well within the circle of modernity. Much of the opposition which they encounter among their politically interested countrymen contends that they are not modern enough. Many traditionalists are constrained to assert that only by cleaving to the essence of older traditions can a genuine and stable modernity be attained.

Modern states must be “dynamic”, above all else. To be modern, an elite, as the elites of the new states see it, must not fear change; on the contrary, it umst strive to bring it about. It does not wish to remain as it is. It is against the ancien regime; even where it affirms the past of the country, it stresses its adaptability to the needs of the pressent. “Dynamic” is one of the favorite adjectives of the elites of the new states. The elites pride themselves on their dynamism and they claim that the mass of the population demands it of them. Almost everything else which they esteem presupposes this praise of change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , April 1960 , pp. 265 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1960

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References

page 268 note 1 The confluence of these three properties: the recent acquisition of sovereignty and the attendant creation of the machinery of the modern state; the massively traditional character of the social structure and culture, and the urge towards modernity define the new states as a significant category.

New states are not alone in most of their problems. For example, long established states such as Ethiopia or Thailand are characterized by the traditionally of their social structure, cand many states with a long history of continuous sovereignty are the scene of conflict between attachments to tradition and the drive towards modernity. Almost all countries outside Western Europe and possibly the United States experience the cultural tension between metropolis and province. Numerous problems in the new states are instances of more general classes of problems which are shared by many states, Western and non-Western, new and old, advanced and underdeveloped, sovereign and colonial. The new states present however a unique constellation of problems.

page 276 note 2 It is too early yet to speak of withdrawal in the new states being formed in French Africa. Such developments do however seem to be in prospect.

page 277 note 3 Problematic though the modern intelligentsia might be, the situation of countries, like those of the Middle East where the Ottoman rulers established no modern educational institutions or like Indonesia where the Dutch did very little more, and where the modern intelligentsia s, therefore, far less numerous, is probably worse. In such countries, the modern intellectual class is extremely small and has not yet been able to establish itself as the proponent and embodiment of modernity. Furthermore, so few intellectuals are trained in modern scientific and technological subjects the army officers have become the chief representatives of modernity in these countries. They, through their engineering training, have become the sole bearers of the modern outlook in administration and in national development. When the state flounders and politicians “make a mess”, energetic officers come forward to establish a military oligarchy, claiming that they do so in order to set the country firmly on the path of modernization.

page 276 note 1 There is a closely related phenomenon which plays a great part in the new states—it occurs both in the new democratic states as well as in those which have become oligarchies of all but the totalitarian sort. This is the phenomenon of the “urban mob”, which consists partly of menials, servants and workmen away from their families, of refugees and displaced persons and partly of restive students and discontented high school and university graduates. These tumultuous crowds at the centers of concentrated population are the equivalent of public opinion in some of the new states. The common civil indifference and the general apathy towards public affairs does not constitute a governor on the turbulence of such bearers of public opinion. Even oligarchies, to survive, must ride on the crest of the waves of such public opinion—unless they can resort to force on a totalitarian scale. If they do not, the oppositional current penetrates into the bodies required for the maintenance of order, and democratic regimes and oligarchies as well, cannot resist their disintegrative influence.