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intervene in the economic and social life of nations.
By the 1950s, development was becoming a special
topic for study.
Generally regarded as an increase in material
prosperity and measured in the growth of gross
national products, development preoccupied governments
of developing countries, the big powers
on opposite sides of the Cold War, and a
burgeoning number of academic experts and aid
advisers. However, the nature of development was
increasingly contested. The tensions of the 1920s
and 1930s were mirrored in the theoretical debates
of the 1960s, and definitions of development and
how it was to be achieved fell broadly and often
simplistically into two main camps, with procapitalist,
bourgeois, modernisation theory �MT)
pitted against anti-capitalist, neo-Marxist underdevelopment
theory �UDT). There were other
voices: Barrington Moore showed that the poor
had always paid the price of modernisation,
irrespective of the dominant political ideology,
and Dudley Seers was prominent among those
emphasising the social and cultural aspects of
development, especially the need for self-reliance
and social justice. Such writers are not easily
categorised. However, for MT, led by such theorists
as Parsons, Hoselitz and Rostow and including
classical Marxists, internal constraints blocked
progress in developing societies. These could be
countered by emulating Western economic policies
and social norms, dispensing with elements of
tradition that prevented modernisation and, if
necessary, importing capital, technology, skills and
values from the West.
While MT was being developed, an alternative
view was being formulated. Based on the work of
Paul Baran, Latin American dependency theory
and the world systems perspective of such writers as
Wallerstein and Amin, and popularised by Andre
Gunder Frank, UDT denied virtually every tenet of
MT. It considered underdevelopment a consequence
of colonialism and structural inequality in
the world trading system. Close links with the West
prevented development from occurring, led to
internal inequality and inappropriate production,
especially by transnational firms, and perpetuated
economic, social and cultural dependence. Nevertheless,
both theories saw development as a process
of autonomous structural economic change, with
development 149
major social, cultural and political ramifications,
that vastly increased the material prosperity of
developed countries and which could occur in
`developing' or `underdeveloped' societies, if they
followed the appropriate policies. For MT, which
favoured capitalism, these involved closer links with
the West. By contrast, UDT rejected capitalism and
sought autonomous economic growth through
import substitution and self-reliance, and socialism,
either in one country or through co-operation with
other like-minded states.
Such theoretical debates had practical and
political implications. Often despite a stated
hostility to theory, activists at more empirical levels
of development �in aid agencies and planning, for
example) inevitably entertained their own views on
development processes. Depending on the perspective
held, they sought change agents and elites to
lead the diffusion process or progressive individuals
and vanguard parties to direct the revolution.
Indeed, since the Second World War, entire
societies have served as temporary role models
for one side or the other. Puerto Rico, Kenya,
Brazil and Mexico have been among those
admired by advocates of MT, and Cuba, Eritrea,
Tanzania and China have figured in the UDT
pantheon. However, by the end of the 1980s the
arguments between UDT and MT had exhausted
most of their vitriol and much of their relevance. It
had become evident that both internal and
external factors affected less-developed countries,
and blinkered concentration on one or the other
was and had been simply unrealistic. In addition,
no role model seemed to be of lasting value.
Furthermore, the collapse of the Eastern bloc
seemed to suggest that organised socialism had
failed, at least in Europe, while the rise of such
Asian `tigers' as Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea
and Taiwan, with their combination of egalitarian
and capitalist attributes, confounded all who
hankered after simplistic formulae for producing
development.
The questions raised by these theories remain
important, but their contributions have been
incorporated into globalisation theory, which
focuses on the economic, social, cultural, political
and environmental ramifications of a world in
which national barriers sometimes seem redundant.
As a consequence, although development