Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T01:03:28.480Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Modernization and Political Instability: A Theoretical Exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Claude Ake
Affiliation:
Nigerian, teaches political theory at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario.
Get access

Extract

What is the effect of the process of modernization on political stability? That is the question I want to explore theoretically. I will suggest that there are no plausible reasons for the expectation that the process of modernization is destabilizing, and also that there is no problem of political instability in transitional societies or anywhere else. Let us begin by examining some of the arguments used to support the thesis that modernization causes political instability.

Type
Research Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pye, Lucián W., Politics, Personality and Nation Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven 1963), 5455.Google Scholar

2 Apter, David, “Political Systems and Developmental Change,” in Holt, Robert T. and Turner, John E., eds., The Methodology of Comparative Research (New York 1970), 158–59.Google Scholar

3 Apter, David, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago 1965), 123–24.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 125.

5 See Franz Neumann, “Anxiety and Politics” and “Notes on the Theory of Dictatorship,” in Neumann, Franz, ed., The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (New York 1957), 270300 and 233–56Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold D., “The Psychology of Hiderism,” Political Quarterly, IV (July-September 1933), 373–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Apter, (fn. 2), 159.Google Scholar

7 Apter, (fn. 3), 132 n.Google Scholar

8 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven 1968), 5969.Google Scholar See Huntington, also, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, XVII (April 1965), 386430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Huntington, , Political Order … (fn. 8), pp. 59, 60, 61, 69, 63.Google Scholar

10 Weiner, Myron and Hoselitz, Bert F., “Economic Development and Political Stability in India,” Dissent, VIII (Spring 1961), 173–74.Google Scholar

11 Eisenstadt, S. N., “Modernization and Conditions of Sustained Growdi,” World Politics, XVI (July 1964), 584.Google Scholar

12 Weiner, and Hoselitz, (fn. 10), 177.Google Scholar

13 Olson, Mancur Jr, “Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force,” Journal of Economic History, XXIII (December 1963), 533.Google Scholar

14 Russett, Bruce M. and others, World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven 1963), 97100.Google Scholar

15 K., Ivo and Feierabend, Rosalind L., “Aggressive Behaviors Widiin Polities, 1948–1962: A. Cross-National Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, x (September 1966), 249–71Google Scholar; also, Feierabend, Ivo K., Feierabend, Rosalind L., and Nesvold, Betty, “The Comparative Study of Revolution and Violence,” Comparative Politics, v (April 1973), 393424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Blondel, Jean, “Party Systems and Patterns of Government in Western Democracies,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1 (June 1968), 180203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Needier, Martin, “Political Socioeconoiriic Development: The Case of Latin America,” American Political Science Review, LXIII (September 1968), 889–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of the main conceptions of political stability in contemporary political science, see Hurwitz, Leon, “Contemporary Approaches to Political Stability,” Comparative Politics, v (April 1973), 449–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am indebted to this review essay.