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Order or Movement?: The Literature of Political Development as Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Mark Kesselman
Mark Kesselman
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Columbia University
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The term “political development” originated during the cold war. After World War II, the prevalent attitude in the United States toward the Third World resembled that toward Europe: Unless economic progress and political stability were encouraged by the United States, these areas would turn Communist. Underlying foreign aid was the sober calculation that communism would lose its appeal once men's bellies were full. Robert Packenham reports that when AID officials were asked in the mid-sixties how they viewed development, “one of the most common responses was, in effect, that political development is anti-Communist, pro-American political stability.”

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , October 1973 , pp. 139 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1973

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References

1 The Subjection of Women (London 1965), 229Google Scholar.

2 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston 1966), 523Google Scholar. (But cf. Moore's Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and Upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them [Boston 1973], 9Google Scholar, fn. 5.) 8 “Political-Development Doctrines in the American Foreign Aid Program,” World Politics, XVIII (January 1966), 213Google Scholar.

3 The examples all derive from the influential series of studies devoted to political development sponsored by die Social Science Research Council.

5 Riggs, Fred W., “Introduction,” in Riggs, , ed., Frontiers of Development Administration (Durham, N.C. 1970), 3–4Google Scholar.

6 For examples in the field of development administration, see ibid.; Waldo, Dwight, ed., Temporal Dimensions of Development Administration (Durham, N.C. 1970Google Scholar); and Braibanti, Ralph, ed., Political and Administrative Development (Durham, N.C. 1969Google Scholar).

7 For the sake of simplicity, and since the foreword states that the authors take joint responsibility for the entire work (p. ix), I will refer to the authors of Crises and Sequences collectively as Binder. It should be noted that in this essay I intend to examine convergences between Binder and Huntington, not differences.

8 “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics,” Comparative Politics, III (April 1971), 283–322Google Scholar. Binder differentiates between political change and political development (p. 16).

9 I have explored the point in “Overinstitutionalization and Political Constraint: The Case of France,” Comparative Politics, III (October 1970), 21–44Google Scholar.

10 The need for further clarification is underlined by a nineteenth-century anarchist's definition of order: “Anarchy is order, government is civil war.” (Quoted in Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change [Boston 1966], 34Google Scholar.) One is tempted to suggest that political order may be in the eyes of the beholder.

Huntington has admitted, in “The Change to Change” (fn. 8), that his concept of political mobilization is overly broad. He now confines the term to demands for political participation, excluding economic and social changes such as industrialization, economic growth, and urbanization from the definition of mobilization. Such a shift modifies the central argument of Political Order.

11 Moore, Social Origins (fn. 2), 104.

12 In another essay, “Alternative Strategies for Developing Administrative Capabilities in Emerging Nations,” LaPalombara advises scholars, “Unless those who propose administrative reform or increased capacity are committed to the overthrow of the existing political regime, it is necessary to demonstrate how proposed changes will either enhance existing power or at least not greatly diminish it. .. . Any proposal for improving administrative capacity that threatens the existing power structure must include persuasive analyses regarding how such losses in power base can be quickly replaced.” Riggs (fn. 5), 195. On the other hand, LaPalombara also cautions social scientists not to make value judgments; ibid., 224–25.

The historians writing the volume on sequences in the S.S.R.C. series on political development are less partisan. “Nor should so important an historical process [as crisis] be assessed merely in terms of crisis management whether 'successful' or not.” Raymond Grew, “Crises of Political Development,” paper presented to the 1972 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (Washington, D.C., September 1972), 2. The broadened definition of crisis directs attention to political “changes not made and threats not faced.” Ibid., 3.

13 Huntington and Binder are not unique in their advocacy of the powerholders' cause. In “Popular Participation in Development Administration,” Journal of Comparative Administration, in (November 1971), 362Google Scholar, Montgomery, John D. and Esman, Milton J. state, “we are considering participation from the development administrators' point of view. . . .”Google Scholar Their essay explores how participation can be manipulated without endangering the goals of administrators.

Hopkins, Raymond F., in a review of literature in comparative politics, suggests, “Taking the viewpoint of those in authority has an inherent conservative bias since their sine qua non is preservation of their position of power.” “Securing Authority: The View from the Top,” World Politics, xxrv (January 1972), 275Google Scholar–76.

In implicit contrast to much of the literature in political development, Dahl, Robert asks, “What circumstances significantly increase the mutual security of government and opposition . . . ?” Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven 1971), 16Google Scholar. Dahl seeks conditions that foster the growth of polyarchy, defined as participation (inclusiveness), and the right to oppose established leaders (contestation).

From another perspective, Ivo K. Feierabend and Rosalind L. Feierabend define instability as aggression, both by officeholders against non-officeholders and die reverse. Stability would apparently require limiting aggression by both sectors. “Aggressive Behaviors within Polities, 1948–1962: A Cross-National Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, x (September 1966), 249Google Scholar–71.

Other critiques of literature on comparative politics include Gideon Sjoberg, “Ideology and Social Organization in Rapidly Developing Societies,” in Riggs (fn. 5), chap. 8; Moskos, Charles C. Jr. and Bell, Wendell, “Emerging Nations and Ideologies of American Social Scientists,” American Sociologist, 11 (May 1967), 67–72Google Scholar; Dennon, A. R., “Political Science and Political Development,” Science and Society, xxiii (Summer 1969), 285Google Scholar–98; and Bay, Christian, ‘The Cheerful Science of Dismal Politics,” in Roszak, Theodore, ed., The Dissenting Academy (New York 1967), 208Google Scholar–30. For two useful discussions in related fields, see Fleron, Frederic J. and Fleron, Lou Jean, “Administration Theory as Repressive Political Theory: The Communist Experience,” 'Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, vi (November 1972), 4–41Google Scholar; and Reid, Herbert, “Contemporary American Political Science in die Crisis of Industrial Society,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, xvi (August 1972), 339Google Scholar–66.

14 I am here equating Huntington's conception of political order widi Binder's conception of crisis management. This is an oversimplification, but for the purposes of this analysis I am more interested in die shared elements.

It might be asserted that the issue being raised is irrelevant to the authors' concerns. Huntington asserts that the validity of his analysis tracing the conditions that promote stability is independent of whether one shares his preference for that goal (p. vii); Verba recognizes diat there may be “ambiguous normative implications” deriving from die expansion of governmental capacity, but he does not choose to explore the question (pp. 293, 303). Yet in both volumes diere are repeated attempts (bodi implicit and explicit) to justify as well as describe: It is to these efforts diat die present discussion is directed. Moreover, I am not taking issue with the fact of advocacy (on the contrary, more elaboration would have been desirable), but rather with the particular position that is advocated and with what I suggest are inadequacies in its defense.

15 The Political Sciences (London 1969), 177Google Scholar–78.

16 Rustow, Dankwart A., “Modernization and Comparative Politics: Prospects in Research and Theory,” Comparative Politics, 1 (October 1968), 37–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics, 11 (April 1970), 337Google Scholar–63.

17 The forthcoming S.S.R.C. volume on sequences will deal with the question in greater depth. However, Raymond Grew's paper suggests that the theoretical rationale underlying Crises and Sequences is not shared by historians who apply the theory to empirical cases: “Few historians found it reasonable to treat sequences as causes or apply the concept with precision. A means of describing political systems over time, the sequence of crises becomes a process of change primarily as the historians make it so through independent analysis. But prediction does not follow for the variables remain infinite.” Grew (fn. 12), 14.

18 Choice and the Politics of Allocation (New Haven 1971), 67Google Scholar.

19 “The Structure of Political Conflict in the New States of Tropical Africa,” American Political Science Review, LXII (March 1968), 77Google Scholar.

20 James Scott, private communication. The point is underlined by the presidential coups of Marcos in the Philippines and Park in South Korea.

21 In “The Change to Change” (fn. 8), Huntington explains why he would now substitute political participation for social mobilization. He also provides a useful analysis of political change (pp. 316–19, esp. 317).

22 Cf. Birnbaum, Norman, Toward a Critical Sociology (New York 1971), 107Google Scholar.

23 Moskos and Bell point to “the failure by social scientists to explore the contingencies on political and social development resulting from the growing gap between the rich and poor nations” (fn. 13), 71. Also see Hensman, C. R., Rich Against Poor: The Reality of Aid (Cambridge, Mass. 1971Google Scholar); Lagos, Gustavos, International Stratification and Underdeveloped Countries (Chapel Hill 1963Google Scholar); and Bodenheimer, Suzanne, “The Ideology of Developmentalism: American Political Science's Paradigm-Surrogate for Latin American Studies,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology, xv (1970), 95–137Google Scholar. For another perspective, see literature on transnational organizations, e.g., Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr., eds., Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass. 1972CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Huntington also perceptively explores the domestic political effects of external penetration in the Third World (ignored in Political Order). “Transnational Organizations in World Politics,” World Politics, xxv (April 1973), 333Google Scholar–68, csp. sections III and However, V., he appears to exaggerate the benefits accruing to the host country (pp. 364Google Scholar–68).

24 In an essay questioning the rationale of military assistance programs in Africa, Henry Bienen suggests that “military assistance in Africa is not merely the provision of material and services to another state but often means giving aid that can tip domestic political balances precipitously.” Furdier, ‘Twentieth-century foreign aid may be as significant for domestic political change in recipient countries as nineteenth-century colonialism was.” “Foreign Policy, The Military, and Development: Military Assistance and Political Change in Africa,” in Butwell, Richard, ed., Foreign Policy and the Developing Nations (Lexington, Ky. 1969), 95Google Scholar, 69. Also see Wolpin, Miles D., “External Political Socialization as a Source of Conservative Behavior in the Third World',”Google Scholar (unpub.). Dahl points out that both the United States and Great Britain lacked a strong army during the period in which they were undergoing liberalization (fn. 13), 48–50. Pye, however, warns readers “to avoid being excessively influenced by ideological considerations which may be relevant only in advanced societies. . . . The military in the underdeveloped countries can make a major contribution to strengthening essentially administrative functions.” “Armies in the Process of Political Modernization,” in Johnson, John J., ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton 1962), 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 89. Although Huntington favors party rule, not military rule, his recommendations appear to have as much likelihood of producing the latter as the former.

25 Coleman also uncritically adopts Wilbert Moore's view of stratification as being functional and equitable: “The type of creative capacity we are talking about is clearly impossible without the stimulus of individual and collective motivations and striving, and only status differentiation can produce that” (p. 82).

26 “Ideology and the Human Sciences: Some Comments on the Role of Reification in Psychology and Psychiatry,” The Human Context, II (July 1970), 169Google Scholar.

27 Berger, and Luckmann, , The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, N.Y. 1967), 62Google Scholar.

28 Stretton (fn. 15), 262.

29 Roots of War (New York 1972), 74Google Scholar.