Poli Development
Approach
K KUMAR SINGH
•Political development was seen as a transition
towards democratic politics as reflected in
the growth of interest group activity,
development of bureaucracies and political
parties and development of capacities of
democratic institutions.
• Studies on comparative politics became preoccupied with the
linkages between economic development, social change, and
democratization.
• In the 1950s, Bruce Morris and Everett von Hagen and in the
1960s W. W. Rostow and Robert Heilbroner worked on
economic development in the emerging nations.
• In these studies, the rich and developed countries of the west
(the United States and European nations) became the
reference points.
• It was assumed that the less developed countries would follow
the same trajectory of development and eventually catch up
with the advanced countries. W.W. Rostow’s the Stages of
Economic Growth is illustrative of this thinking on development
• Karl Deutsch (1961), in his Social Mobilization and Political
Development, argued that industrialization and economic
modernization do not necessarily lead to the development
of political democracy as Lipset had argued in 1959.
• Instead, they lead to the erosion of old social, economic, and
psychological commitments and new patterns of
socialization and behaviour in this process, and people may
gradually give up their local rural identities and identify with
the nation.
• Social mobilization generates pressure on the existing political
systems resulting in violence, social disorder or political
stability depending on how the political system deals with
those pressures.
•Seymour P Lipset in his classic work Political
Man (1959) had argued that there was a
direct relationship between economic
modernization (industrialization) and the
development of political democracy.
•Economic modernization, he posited, created
the social requisites for the emergence of
political democracy (a large, vibrant, and
literate middle class and wealth.).
HUNTIGTON AND SAMUEL BEER ON
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
• Huntington, in his writings, especially Political Order
in Changing Societies (1968), Huntington rejected
the notion that modernization was a progressive,
convergent, or inevitable force.
• According to him, economic development did unleash
profound social changes, but these changes were
not necessarily benign or progressive.
•He argued that societies amid economic
development and social change lead people to
have increased expectations for a better life.
•When political institutions are unable to meet
such expectations, there is bound to be
disappointment and frustration at the national
level leading to disorder or even revolution.
• Samuel Beer took a similar, non-democratic approach to development.
He argued that political development is equivalent to the expansion of
the bureaucratic state.
• His book Patterns of Government: The Major Political Systems or
Europe (1973) posited that economic development leads to social
complexity and the need for specialization and division of labour
(which he calls as patterns of interests).
• These patterns of interest create demands for more specialization and
bureaucratization (what he calls patterns of power). The creation of
new patterns of power leads them to generate their own interests,
making new demands for access and representation, creating a new
pattern of power ad infinitum.
• Political development, therefore, results in differentiation and expansion
of the realm of the state activities.
LIMITATIONS OF THIS APPROACH
• The lack of consensus on what ‘political development’ actually
meant made it impossible to posit a theory of change.
• Both the subdiscipline of political development and the scholars
who had contributed to the fi eld came into question.
• In these circumstances, the dependency or “world systems”
theory emerged as an alternative to the modernization
paradigm as a lens through which to interpret political, social,
and economic change in Third World countries.
• Huntington, therefore, defined political
development as the institutionalization of
political organizations and procedures.
• He identified political development with the
strength or capacity of government
institutions--“whatever strengthens governmental
institutions”.
• For Huntington, political order was necessary for
economic development to take place. He thus
prioritized political development or order over
economic development and social change.