Paper on Political Development and Modernism

Introduction.

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires,

that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.”

—Edward Said (2003) as quoted by (Whyte, 2016)

“Third Worldism” and the idea of political development as a modern social science, which can be utilised in the effort to assist or advance the globalisation of the world community, cannot be divorced from the broader debates raging in society today and in fact are central to those debates in many ways.

The question of whether this discourse has assisted and contributed to world political development, whether as a sustainable solution or whether as part of the challenges faced by the world today, remains largely unanswered by the establishment academia, despite the bold suggestion by some that we have reached the end of history and its culmination in a particular western understanding of political development, namely the particular type of liberal democracy emanating from the developed west.

The “victory” of liberal western values and neo liberal economics was held up as the final answer to the deep unresolved questions of liberty and equality. This final victory was to be premised on the supremacy of private property underpinned by modern enlightenment values of liberty and equality.

While conceding that the essays we have been asked to reference in this assessment are somewhat dated and engages with a “conceptual dinosaur” of the “Third World”, the essays are nonetheless illuminating in the manner in which a construct and conceptualisation of political development, extracted and adapted from a particular western worldview which is deeply entangled and stained by the use of violence and accumulation to assert its correctness and validity,  is passed off as a legitimate scientific endeavour.

Under the cloak of scientific enquiry, and ensconced in an acute denial of any epistemology that does not conform, the discipline seems to cling tenaciously to its blissful ignorance of the limits of its own paradigm. The core arguments expressed in these three essays remain firmly locked into a Kuhnian paradigm which ignores significant elements and characteristics of the dialectical nature of development in both the political and economic sense thus rendering the entire discourse sterile and hollow.

This paradigmatic limitation often sets up debates within this discourse in such a manner that key elements of the contending paradigm are lost to broader consideration as they do not fit neatly into the paradigm we are called on to uncritically accept.

The interlocutors to this debate often attempt to draw out usable and useful characteristics from the contending paradigm, but often fail to appreciate the nuances intended by the contending paradigm, and end up divorcing the characteristics or elements from its original context.

Yet it is precisely in this fragmentation and atomisation of ideas that the core methodological underpinnings of this constrained paradigm often fails to fully appreciate the globalisation imperative, its driving dynamic and logic and the manner in which this logic and imperative to compete, imposes itself.

By attempting to overstate the atomistic and manifold nature of particular elements within the social metabolism, the logic of domination is not only obscured, but the resulting atomisation obtains towards a means of manipulation and control as well.

The Management of difference thus becomes what Mahmood Mamdani in his book Define and Rule, calls “the holy cow of the modern study of society, just as it is central to modern statecraft.” It is, he argues, “under indirect rule colonialism that the definition and management of difference was developed as the essence of governance.” (Mamdani, 2013, p. 2)

 To the extent that the underlying  historical and material drivers are excluded from consideration,  the contributors often fail to acknowledge the interrelatedness and interdependence of the globalising imperative of world economics, and more particularly so when domination and competition has featured so prominently in its historical unfolding.

While all three papers we consider in this assessment does a sterling job in unpacking various elements of “Third World” political development and indeed they do succeed in not only highlighting critical shortcomings within the discipline but also contribute towards workable and practical solutions, we hope to show that they all fail spectacularly to realise the limitations of the constrained paradigms upon which they construct their castles. As a direct result of this conceptual blind spot, the solutions proffered are often only useful in the treatment of the symptoms of what the authors perceive as the problems.

Far from providing sustainable solutions to the political and economic underdevelopment of the “Third World”, the constrained Eurocentric analyses provided by this discourse has more likely contributed in an overall sense to continuing inequality, underdevelopment and denial of agency to the vast majority of the world`s population than to sustainable solutions that will affirm the “end of history”.

In this essay we have been asked to critically assess three specific essays in relation to the question of whether political development and modernisation provided a sustainable solution to political and economic underdevelopment in the “Third World”. 

In this regard we will consider the essays by Samuel Huntington, published in 1965 entitled; Political Development and Political Decay (Huntington, 2013), Handelman`s 2011 essay; Understanding Development (in) The Challenge of Third World Development (Handelman, 2013) as well as  Randall and Theobald`s 1998 essay entitled Towards a politics of modernisation and development. (Randall, 2013)

In order to critically assess their individual and collective arguments and to identify the limits of their paradigmatic horizon, we will endeavour to provide a brief synopsis of each argument as articulated in each essay.

This will allow us to then consider a critique of the essays in which we weigh up the validity and usefulness of their approach in helping us to consider the question before us.

The critique of each essay will be followed by an attempt to posit an answer to the question posed of whether the discourse of political development and modernisation provided a sustainable solution to political and economic underdevelopment and why.

A brief overview of the three essays.

Samuel Huntington.

In his essay entitled; Political Development and Political Decay, Samuel Huntington (1965) argues that a distinction must be made between political development and modernisation in order to understand the full import of de Tocqueville`s  assertion that ;

“among the laws that rule human societies, there is one that seems to be more precise and clear than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.” (Huntington, 2013, p. 1)

This art of associating, Huntington argues, is a “precondition for civilised society” and he equates this to the direct correlation between the rates of participation in the political system and the rates of organisation and institution within the political system. If these variables are out of line as they were at the time, namely participation rates are high but the rate of organisation and institution low, then the entire civilisation project “is in danger, if not already undermined.”

Huntington’s central theses is thus that rapid increases in mobilisation and participation in the political system, which is a direct result and principal political aspect of increased modernisation, undermines political institutions and does not produce political development but political decay.

Participation, according to Huntington, “distinguishes modern politics from traditional politics” while contending that the “new world political culture will be a political culture of participation.”

Huntington sees the political system as a complex admixture of competing interests in which recurring patterns of behaviour are institutionalised as particular behaviours gain in value and thus stability. It is thus the level of institutionalisation and organisation which ultimately determines the modernity of the society. Institutions can accordingly be measured as part of the scientific project by the particular society’s institutions` adaptability, complexity, autonomy and coherence.

Not only are the relative level of institutionalisation of a society offered as a measure of political development, Huntington goes on to suggest that the public interest is coequal to the interests of political institutions. He suggests this as an extension of the Aristotelian marriage of democracy and oligarchy. “What is good for the Presidency is good for the country.”(p. 28)

Huntington makes the case that most modernising countries are “buying rapid social modernization at the price of political degeneration” and further makes the explicit connection to new states succumbing to corruption “once the colonial guardians have departed”, and how this gives rise to oligarchs and demagogues.(p.30-31)

The only way to overcome this barbarous nativism, Huntington suggests that “effective political institutions are necessary for stable and eventually democratic government”, and a “precondition of sustained economic growth.”(p.32)

None of the political development, which forms the cornerstone of the entire essay, is necessarily linked to democracy as a pre-requisite by Huntington’s reckoning. Instead he deals extensively with institutions and the Party institution in particular, as the nexus from which springs a stable economically prosperous modern society.  In making this claim, and in a brief peep into the limited paradigmatic horizon offered by his argument, Huntington suggests that “American policy” should , require “at least one strong non-communist party”, which must be supported to a “dominant position” in “modernizing countries” in order to drive home the advantages of Western political development.(p.44)

Handelman.

Handelman`s 2011 essay; Understanding Development, on the other hand, sets out to argue that America`s interest in the political development of the “Third World” is predicated mainly on the simple fact that the “warfare, internal violence” and the “massive human suffering” brought about by “insurgency, religious intolerance, poverty and revolutionary conflict, ethnically based massacres and political repression” that “ultimately draws our (Americans) attention.” (Handelman, 2013, p. 55)

Handelman, while suggesting that his theses will make use of a multi-disciplinary approach argues that even though economic, social and political underdevelopments are closely related to each other, they are nonetheless “not perfectly correlated”. (p.57)

Handelman does not divert from the general narrative articulated by Huntington but spends considerable time unpacking reams of data of how under the rubric of economic, social and political components, certain parts of the Third World share similarities, while in others they are significantly different. Handelman then uses the cover of a “complex relationship between political, economic and social development to point out that “some scholars” have argued that “authoritarian government might be helpful in the early to middle stages of industrialisation in order to control labor unions and worker`s wages, thereby increasing company profits and attracting new external investment”, in an uncanny echo of Huntingtons` Aristotelian marriage of democracy and oligarchy. (p.68-69)

In a postmodernist twist to the narrative that seeks to place responsibility for the chronic and systemic underdevelopment at the door of the underdeveloped, Handelman invokes a relativist approach in arguing that “ [f]requently, their (scholarly an analysts) evaluations (of the causes of underdevelopment) reflect their personal background, country of origin, or ideology.”(p.69) 

While Handelman debunks modernity to some extent by claiming that its proponents “were too optimistic and too simplistic in its initial views of change”, and concurs with Huntington that they “erroneously assumed that ‘all good things go together’”, he nonetheless holds out its later variations of “conflict theory” and the “reconciliation approach” as presenting the possibility that “developing nations can simultaneously achieve goals previously thought to be incompatible.”(p.69-71)

On the other hand, Handelman makes short shrift of the “dependency theory” on the tenuous basis of Cardoso`s suggestion that countries could modernize and expand their economies while still remaining dependent on foreign banks and MNC`s. (p.73-75)

Handelman unfortunately does not articulate exactly how the expansion and modernization of the economy reduces dependency, but does conceded that the dependency approach offered useful corrections to modernisation theory by highlighting the importance of international trade, finance, and investment and the subsequent dependence of third world countries on the core.(p.75) Yet Handelman rejects the notion that dependent countries are not able to influence their condition citing East Asia`s economic miracle and India and Brazil`s ascendance up the economic pyramid of nation states. (p.76)

In the end analyses Handelman argues that further analyse should be based more firmly on empirical data rather than on abstractions, and then goes on to inadvertently show how empirical data can be used as a postmodernist aversion to anything but a relativistic view of the world. (p.78-79)

Randall and Theobald.

Randall and Theobald`s 1998 essay entitled Towards a politics of modernisation and development, ends up making a similar, if much more extensive and critical, argument to the two essays already considered above. Their essay unpacks the origins of the three key strands of thought prevalent at the time, namely modernisation, political development and dependency theory as concepts. (Handelman, 2013)

Modernisation, they argue, is derived from two main streams, namely a pyscho-cultural perquisite to modernisation derived from Max Weber`s thesis on the relationship between Protestantism and the development of capitalism, and a structural element which focuses on social differentiation as the central datum in social change. The central theses can thus be expressed thus; as society becomes increasingly complex more specialised structures emerge. This approach conceives society as a system made up of a number of parts and subsystems where the integrity of the whole is provided for by the functional interdependence of these subsystems. (p.85-86)

This view also affirms the pattern variables, they argue, where social roles in society are patterned towards five basic behaviours. These behaviours are derived from specific dichotomies that manifest as a preference towards affective neutrality rather than affective decision making, self-orientation rather than collective orientation, universalistic views rather a particularistic view, judging of performance based on achievement criteria rather than ascriptive (based on context) criteria and lastly towards a functional specificity rather than a functional diffuseness.  (p.86-87)

As for political development, the authors show how the rise and demise of the term and concept was closely linked to the role played by funding institutions and how academia naturally sort to couch their research in terms acceptable to the funding institutions. The dubious start notwithstanding, the authors trace the assumptions underpinning political development, and identify three key assumptions. They list these as a preconceived assumption “that political development was desirable and to be encouraged, that it was happening and thus could not be ignored and that developed systems would resemble existing western political systems”. (p.101)

These assumptions, the authors draw from Lucian Pye who tried to introduce some order into the debate and who himself drew out three key themes from more than ten different interpretations.

These themes were a general concern with “equality” and the involvement of the masses in political systems, the importance of the growing capacity of the political system and an increasing differentiation of political roles and structures. (P.101-102)

In the end the authors suggest that the mistake of political development theorists was in “assuming that political development was a concept that could be defined as opposed to a useful political slogan.” It was, they argue, entirely unrealistic and was criticised for its ethnocentricity, its naïve optimism, and its failure to recognise the economic dependence of third world countries on the west.(p.103)

Despite this damning conclusion, the authors saw a reincarnation of political development in the democratisation waves which spread through the developing world during the late 1980`s and 1990`s and its revival of many of the central themes of modernisation and subsequently many of the same criticisms are carried over too. (p.103-110)

The authors pay considerably more attention to dependency theory than the first two essays and consider the example of Brazil in great detail arriving ultimately at the conclusion that “dependency theory has marginalised the political in favour of the macroeconomic.” (p.119) This conclusion echo’s both Huntington and Handelman in the ongoing dialectal battle to determine which element of the interrelated globalising economy and political system should be given preference in analysis.

A brief critique.

In this section I will constrain the critique to briefly attempt to consider the conceptual constraints of the individual essays but also the discourse of political development in general, followed by a consideration of the rejection of dependency theory by the three essays and the overall focus of political development on participation or democracy more generally.

A Eurocentric Narrative.

The three essays appear to broadly cohere around common themes and construct a view of the world deeply embedded in the Western enlightenment tradition. All three authors rely heavily on the assumptions and concepts underpinning what some have termed Eurocentric arguments. It is however the work of Randall and Theobald that best helps to illuminate the deeply implicated Eurocentric strains of a postmodern attempt to reconfigure the old art of indirect rule.

Randall and Theobald`s contention that the three core assumptions of the Political Development movement were that political development was “desirable and to be encouraged, that it was happening and thus could not be ignored and that developed systems would resemble existing western political systems”, lays bare the thread that runs through the project as a whole. The project thus appears as an anti-historical attempt to engineer the functional and structural contours of a global world polity through imposing a Universalist and specifically ethnocentric world view.

At the heart of the discourse on political development, and as Randall and Theobald show, lays the firmly intertwined relationship between funding and academia and how the interests of both the state and private property can be inserted into the academic discourse. Efforts to downplay these interconnected influences do not help the discourse maintain its scientific integrity.

Indirect Rule.

The entanglement and interplay between knowledge and rule is of course an age old relationship and should thus not surprise us that the practise should reinvent itself and redefine itself from time to time. Mahmood Mamdami in his lectures, which he publishes as a book entitled Define and Rule, argues for the concept of an “indirect rule state” which he maintains, is the “quintessentially modern form of rule in colonial settings.” (Mamdani, 2013, p. 1)

Mamdani argues that indirect rule differs from modes of rule in previous Western empires in two important ways. First in that “previous empires focused on conquered elites rather than the mass of the colonised” and second that they aimed to “eradicate differences through a policy of cultural and sometimes political assimilation of colonized elites”. (p.1-2)

This practise was to change with the introduction of indirect rule which sort to go beyond the control of elites in a colonised state to the control of the masses. This control was achieved through the development and reinforcing of new and existing differences in populations. Ethnic, religious and cultural differences were emphasised and institutionalised and it is under this new type of indirect rule, argues Mamdani, that “the definition and management of differences was developed as the essence of governance.” (p.2)

The immediate coherence between Mamdani`s argument and the recognition within the discourse of political development itself of the general thematic consistency towards mass participation is not accidental and correlates Mamdani`s meta narrative with the “scientific” consistency demanded by political development theorists and hopefully shows the relevance and necessity for a deeper historical analyses which acknowledges and incorporates the macro influences on the micro institutions.

Noam Chomsky, renowned historian, linguist and philosopher, has done considerable work on tracing the north-south (developed – underdeveloped/ first world -third world) divides and affirms Mamdani`s contention and brings the meta narrative to contemporary political dynamics when he makes the argument that “after the Second World War, “ for the first time a single state (The United States) had such overwhelming wealth and power that its planners could realistically design and execute a global vision.” (Chomsky, 1997, p. 74)

Chomsky, echoing the dependency theory protagonists, argues that “the basic reasoning (of the US policy of foreign domination and control) is spelled out with particular lucidity in US planning documents and illustrated in practice with consistency.” He goes on to identify two key pillars of the US foreign policy which he identifies as firstly an approach by the US which identifies, independent nationalism as unacceptable to the US state  and where the function of the “ third world is to provide services for the rich offering cheap labour, resources, markets, opportunities for investment and export of pollution.” (p.75)

Secondly, Chomsky argues that any form of “ultra-nationalism” which “appears successful in terms that might be meaningful for the poor people elsewhere is a heinous crime”. This rejection of alternative independent models of success, Chomsky argues, was captured by Henry Kissinger when he warned of the “contagious example” of Allende`s Chile. He also refers to Oxfam`s characterisation of this phenomenon as “the threat of a good example”. (p.75)

To ignore the role of dominant states and to underplay the macroeconomic interconnections of private capital and the state, is to base ones analyses on a deficient contextual underpinning and must result in a sterile argument that may have found some acceptance within a constrained scientific paradigm, but contemporary discourse requires a more authentic holism that is not beholden to narrow ethnocentric social, economic and political science.

Dependency Theory.

On the question of dependency theory, the three essays, with the exception of Randal and Theobald, makes short shrift of the dependency theory. Rejecting the theory more or less out of hand on the tenuous basis that it fails as a theory because of the existence of the East Asian Tigers and the rise of India and China as modern industrialised states and furthermore that dependency theory marginalises the political in favour of the macroeconomic.

As to the first conclusion, which according to the three essayists, disqualifies dependency theory from further and proper consideration is the existence of a new tier of dependent states that have managed to exit the “ third world” and now hovers somewhere in-between the developed world and the underdeveloped world.

This occurrence they argue renders the entire theory moot as the existence of these states disproves that a dependent state cannot influence its own outcomes. As hinted at above, the false dichotomy created by the interlocutors which suggests that one must either be one or the other is symptomatic of the binary discourse which seeks to shut out any dissenting voices and is broadly an attempt to reject alternatives on scurrilous grounds. This false dichotomy also serves to make the case for  reducing the focus on dominant players who may enjoy significantly more influence and power over dependent states than the authors of the essays are willing to concede, less it displaces their own theses completely.

The existence of states in the middle ground between dominant and dependent states could just as easily be explained by the economic outcomes that obtain in any capitalistic society. The existence of a middle class could just as easily be ascribed to the economic outcomes consistent with an economic system that produces working class, middle class and bourgeois classes. The authors unfortunately do not explain why this should necessarily be a dichotomy and do not explain the grounds for such a binary approach. In the absence of such explanations one is left to conclude that the authors create a false dichotomy to obscure the defects of their own analyses.

Furthermore, Randall and Theobald reject dependency theory as it marginalises the political in favour of the macro-economic. To this argument one is aware that the core distinction made by the authors is an ideological one. It is generally accepted that most development theorists arrive at their analyses via a process of Marxist historical materialism. This means in essence that the analyses which produces dependency theory is premised on an understanding that society`s political institutions are shaped in no small measure (in fact it is by this account the dominant measure) by the relations which underpin that society`s economic interactions. Thus for a theorist making the case for dependency theory the economic relations of society are critical to understanding why the political institutions are constructed the way they are.

Thus the fundamental difference which derives from opposing ideological world views is not only a methodological question, but also an ideological one. Modernism and political development derives from a Western enlightenment value system which places Europe and the West at the centre of world development while dependency theory derives from a colonised historiography which recognises multiple epistemologies but which utilises the Marxists tools of historical materialism to arrive at an understanding of world development in which the economic base determines the political superstructure.

Can these be reconciled? The obvious answer for developmental theorists and despite their premature victory chorus of the end of history, for modernists too, lies in how ideas are contested and how the material realities shape and interact with those ideas. Thus dismissing overtly macroeconomic heavy analyses, is perhaps a repeat of the mistake alluded to above. Creating false binaries in which one has to choose one or the other, is not useful for the scientific project and reduces analyses in the complexity and sophistication of its output. That a dialectical relationship exists between the economic base and the political superstructure is generally by now an accepted characteristic of social analysis and each impacts on the other. While a rejection of either characteristic is not useful, the question that begs an answer is how political institutions in the superstructure can be isolated to such an extent that it is immune to the economic logic which underpins its existence. In short it cannot exist outside of the logic and social relations and indeed is more often than not a reflection of the dialectical interplay between the economic and the political.

Mass Political Participation

Lastly we will consider the thematically consistent predilection for political development theorists to manage and define the participatory element of the discourse.

As indicated above, the move from direct to indirect rule in the study of Western Imperial ambitions have produced significant evidence to suggest that the end of formal colonialism did not in fact mean the end of informal neo colonialism. Mamdani makes the argument that the move from direct to indirect rule was well documented and was transmitted through the British and other empires of the late nineteenth century through the works of Sir Henry Maine.

Sir Henry Maine`s well known text, Ancient Law, was used as the basis for colonial services all over the occupied world, to develop policies. The result says Mamdami, was “a mode of rule undergirded by a set of institutions with a racialized and tribalized historiography,(and) a bifurcation between civil and customary law.” (Mamdani, 2013, p. 6)

This rule used benign language according to Mamdami and evolved from “non-interference” post 1857 to one of “protection” by the end of the nineteenth century. This language was of course consistent throughout the cold war period and still persists, even today ala Irag and Afganistan.

The larger point Maine was making Mamdani argues, was that “the West represented an exception in human social evolution”. From the standpoint of world history, only the West could claim to be the site for the devolvement of progress: ‘…the stationary condition of the human race is the rule, the progressive the exception.’” (p.16)

From this logic flowed the central assumptions of political development; “that political development was desirable and to be encouraged, that it was happening and thus could not be ignored and that developed systems would resemble existing western political systems.”

The convergence of these two conceptual pillars of western imperial ambition, namely indirect rule which involves the management of the masses through the definition and management of difference and the exceptional nature of European society that must naturally be transmitted to the rest of the world, is brought to bear on the specific definition of democracy as conceived in Western society.

Samir Amin, in his seminal work, Eurocentrism, argues that the enlightenment thought on which the Western modernisation and political development movement is based, “offers us a concept of reason that is inextricable associated with that of emancipation, yet the emancipation is defined and limited by what capitalism requires and allows.” (Amin, 2009, p. 14)

Emancipating reason, Amin argues, is expressed in the classical triplet: liberty, equality and property and the constituent elements of this triplet is considered to be naturally harmonious and complementary to each other. Thus the claim that the market equals democracy has remained a cornerstone of this ideology. (p.15)

Thus Samin introduces a third element to be considered when evaluating the role of democracy in the political development discourses. It makes a direct link at the philosophical level between democracy and the market.

But this liberty and equality is necessarily limited by what the economy demands and requires. Hence Huntington and Handel are convinced that the existence of democracy or oligarchy is first and foremost dependent on what is necessary for the development of the economy.

The phenomenon of what Randal and Theobald calls the third wave of democracy, Amin also describes as the “Democratic Fraud.” (Amin, 2011) This effort to illuminate the empty procedural nature of representative democracy also finds echo in the work of Alison J Ayers who argues that the “democratisation project seeks to constitute neoliberal polities with a procedural notion of democracy.” (Ayers, 2013, p. 225)

Amin argues that this hollow version of democratic control not only results in the relative de- politicisation of very large segments of society it is also “simultaneously the condition for reproduction of the system without changes other than those it can control and absorb – the condition of its own stability.” (Amin, 2011)

 The Democratic Farce then, according to Amin, displays itself as offering alternatives. The farce is based on “consensus ideology, which excludes by definition serious conflicts between interests and between visions of the future.”

Amin`s contention is consequently that “without the presence of real alternative perspectives democracy is non-existent”.

The democracy project is thus deeply implicated with an elite driven representative and procedural form which broadly disempowers the masses from direct participation in the affairs that directly affects them. The focus on democracy is also implicated by its direct relation to the definition and management of difference as first articulated by the intellectuals of the British Empire in their endeavours to foster new forms of rule and also contemporaneously implicated in the neoliberal political development tradition`s efforts to link democracy to the concept and control of the markets,  

Thus modernising political development theory, as much as it might wish to converge towards an Aristotelian marriage of democracy and oligarchy, is implicitly tied to the enlightenment liberalism which must speak to an emancipatory discourse if it wishes to remain consistent. The discourse thus seeks to overcome this contradiction by foregrounding a version of democracy which is hollowed out of its content and formalised as a procedure, thus reconciling its contradictory tendency towards oligarchy by providing the masses with a mask of democracy while maintaining oligarchical control in practise.

Conclusion

To answer the question posed as to whether political development and modernisation has provided sustainable solutions to the problems of Third World States, we look to the three essays once again to consider how the discourse itself set up the answer to this question.

Huntington held out that a strong political party as the foremost institution of the modernising state should preceded the development of other institutions. The kernel of his proposed solution is thus the effective political organisation, whether this is achieved through military juntas, strong personalities or free elections was irrelevant to his considerations. What mattered most was organisational strength.(p.44-45)

Handelman, on the other hand vacillates and concedes that  both sides (modernising and dependency theories) “presents a reasonable argument with accurate statistics”, but he claims that the answer in terms of which is more correct is to be found in the “statistical interpretation”.(p79-80) In his prevarication on making any assertive claim to the correct path required for political development of third world states, Handelman nonetheless concedes in his conclusion that the “current global economic crises will worsen the socioeconomic conditions in many parts of the developing world for years to come, especially in the world`s poorest nations”. (p.80)

For Randall and Theobald, the critique of the dependency theories revolves around either the lack of attention to the degree of diversity at the periphery and, second and relatedly, a tendency to concede too little impact to these forces and especially to the state. From a dependency perspective the fundamental weakness of the modernisation approach was its total neglect of the economic dimension, particularly its international aspect. Unfortunately the reader does not include the conclusions reached by the authors but one can assume by their assessment of both strands that they did not believe that either was sufficient to provide sustainable solutions.

The United Nations in its effort to provide a sustainable solution has confirmed the need for sustainable solutions are now more critical than ever before. They conform that;

Billions of our citizens continue to live in poverty and are denied a life of dignity. There are rising inequalities within and among countries. There are enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth and power. Gender inequality remains a key challenge. Unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, is a major concern. Global health threats, more frequent and intense natural disasters, spiralling conflict, violent extremism, terrorism and related humanitarian crises and forced displacement of people threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades. Natural resource depletion and adverse impacts of environmental degradation, including desertification, drought, land degradation, freshwater scarcity and loss of biodiversity, add to and exacerbate the list of challenges which humanity faces. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development.

The World Employment and Social Outlook – Trends 2015 report provides a forecast of global unemployment levels and explains the factors behind this ever worsening trend, as including continuing inequality and falling wage shares, affirming the interrelated nature of the global market. (ILO, 2015)

With the extent of the world economic and structural unemployment crisis becoming ever more difficult to deny, even the IMF, the main institutional driver of neoliberal economics over the last 4 decades, now admits that neoliberal economics has failed. In their recently released paper  “Neoliberalism: Oversold?”, the IMF note that the economic growth that neoliberal policies are designed to foster is difficult to discern, but that the inequality caused by austerity and lassez-faire policies is palpable. “The evidence of the economic damage from inequality suggests that policymakers should be more open to redistribution than they are.” (Geier, 2016)

The argument dismissing the importance and even centrality of economic considerations on the ability of “developing” nations to deal with the political and economic development necessary to achieve “developed” status, has lost its veneer of credibility in the face of the overwhelming evidence pointing to the interlinkages and dependency of the political and social on the economic conditions. This is not to say that the political and social do not play a role or that they do not indeed impact on the economic conditions, but rather that the fundamental analysis which starts with the economic has proven to be a much more useful starting point than the cultural or social.

Sufficient evidence exists to show that from its earliest conception during the colonial period, where Amin argues that by the 1800`s there existed “capitalist centres and peripheries” (Amin, 2009, p. 244) and further shows that others such as Ramkrisha Mukherjee and Amiya Kumar Bagchi have offered a history of the beginnings of an autonomous capitalist development in India, supplemented by a history of its systematic destruction by British colonization.” (Amin, 2009, p. 246)

These early beginnings are re-emphasised in the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the latter part of the 20^th century which served mainly to further impoverish dependent states, as recently admitted by the IMF.

If this assertion is true, then the answer to the question posed in this essay has to be that political development and modernisation has not provided a sustainable solution to the problems faced by the “ third world” and instead has been shown to be a grand , though generically useful, distraction to the core problems facing the world today.

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