THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF ZANZIBAR
(SUZA)
DEVELOPMENT STUDIES (DDS 111)
THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT
Compiled by Nahoda, A.M
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What is the objectives of this DS
Course?
The objective of this course is:• Apply theories as a tool of understanding
developments causes and constraints.
• Demonstrate tolerance on different political
beliefs, and respect other peoples’ perspective
on different social, political and economic
issues.
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What is the objectives of this DS
Course?
The objective of this course is:• Illustrate the importance of technology to the
development of a country.
• Demonstrate awareness on gender issues and
the steps taken by government to improve
gender equality.
• To develop habits of good citizenry and self
awareness so that they can be responsible
citizen.
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What is to be covered?
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
Development: Theories of development
Democracy, Governance and Development
Science, Technology and Development
Gender and development
Ethic and development
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What is development
• Different people have different understanding of
the term. However they all end comparing space
and time because development is a relative term.
• Is a process of economic and social
transformation which is based on complex
cultural and environmental factors and their
interactions.
• Development is a process of improved standard
of living.
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WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT?
• Development was a process in which
‘societies’ defined as nation states pass
through similar stages of development on the
road to an end state.
• Development is a multi-dimensional and
multi-sectoral process, involving social,
economic and political change aimed at
improving people’s lives.
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WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT?
Development refers both to the ends of social change and
to the means employed to reach these: to the vision of
a better life. Development poses value conflicts in four
respects:
● Debates over goals: economic growth, meeting basic
needs, cultural survival, ecological balance, power
transfers;
● competing political systems.
● Contending economic systems: rival claims on
resources and differing rules of access to resources
● Conflicts between modernity and tradition.
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Human Development
• It is the process of enlarging people choices it
has about four aspect:• For people to lead a long and a healthy life
• For people to acquire knowledge
• For people to have access to resources needed
for a descent standard of living.
• People enjoyed self respect and guaranteed
human right.
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Under Development.
• US-President Truman’s ‘bold new program’
announced on January 20, 1949, defined Africa, Asia
and Latin America as ‘underdeveloped areas’ in need
of ‘development’
• Underdevelopment is the absence of modern
economic growth that characterizes Third
world countries by comparison with the
developed nations of the West.
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What is a Theory?
• Definition 1: A specific claim or argument that
leads to empirical predictions
• Example: Economic law of “supply and demand”
• Definition 2: General imageries about how the
world works
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Example: Marxist theory:
Theory is useful because
it generates a rich description of the world
Offers directives to guide research
produces many specific claims to be tested
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DEVELOPMENT THEORIES
Modernization
Dependencia
World system theory
• Alternative development
• Human development
• Anti development
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Modernisation Theory
• Has cultural, political and economic component
• Different authors stress different aspects of the
argument
• After WWII, the poverty and backwardness of
some of the world countries became extremely
conspicuous
• The purpose of development economics has
been mainly to study the phenomenon of
underdevelopment, and to prescribe appropriate
policies to eradicate it.
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Modernization
• Modernization is an encompassing process of
massive social changes, that once set in
motion tend to penetrate all domain of social
life, from economic activities to social life, to
political institutions, in a self reinforcing
process.
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Modernization theory
• Background:
• An evolutionary theory predicting how societies develop
– Argument: All societies naturally pass through certain
stages of development
• All societies start out as “traditional” hunter-gatherers
• Then, they develop agriculture; towns & cities grow
• Eventually, they become “modern” industrial societies
– Movement from one stage to the next is driven by
things like population growth & new technologies
• Society becomes more complex; greater division of labor.
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Modernization theory
• Modernization theory was based on analyses
of European societies
• It was assumed that non-European societies would
have the same experience
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Five stages:
• WALT WHITMAN ROSTOW(1916–2003)
1) traditional society
2) preconditions for change
3) take-off
4) drive to maturity
5) mass consumption
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Traditional Societies
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Extended kinship
Little spatial and social mobility
Primary economic activities
Tendency towards autarchy of social units
Undifferentiated political structures with
traditional elites
• Hierarchical source of authority
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Traditional Societies
• Traditional societies are marked by their preNewtonian understanding and use of
technology. These are societies which have
pre-scientific understandings of gadgets, and
believe that gods or spirits facilitate the
procurement of goods, rather than man and
his own ingenuity. The norms of economic
growth are completely absent from these
societies.
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Preconditions for Take-off
• The preconditions to take-off are, to Rostow,
that the society begins committing itself to
secular education, that it enables a degree of
capital mobilization, especially through the
establishment of banks and currency, that an
entrepreneurial class form, and that the
secular concept of manufacturing develops,
with only a few sectors developing at this
point. This leads to a take off in ten to fifty
years.
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The Take-off
• Transition from traditional to modern
economy
• The economic transitions are accompanied by
the evolution of new political and social
institutions that support industrialization.
• The growth is self-sustaining as investment
leads to increasing incomes in turn generating
more savings to finance further investment.
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The Take-off
• Industrialization increases with workers
switching from the agricultural sector to the
manufacturing sector.
• Growth is concentrated in a few regions of the
country and within one or two manufacturing
industries.
• The level of investment reaches over 10% of
GNP. People save money.
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The Drive to Maturity
• The drive to maturity refers to the need for
the economy itself to diversify. The sectors of
the economy which lead initially begin to level
off, while other sectors begin to take off. This
diversity leads to greatly reduced rates of
poverty and rising standards of living, as the
society no longer needs to sacrifice its comfort
in order to strengthen certain sectors.
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The Drive to Maturity
• The economy is diversifying into new areas.
Technological innovation is providing a diverse
range of investment opportunities.
• The economy is producing a wide range of
goods and services and there is less reliance
on imports.
• Urbanization increases.
• Technology is used more widely.
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Age of High Mass Consumption
• The age of high mass consumption refers to the
period of contemporary comfort afforded many
western nations, wherein consumers concentrate on
durable goods, and hardly remember the subsistence
concerns of previous stages.
• in the age of high mass consumption, a society is
able to choose between concentrating on military
and security issues, on equality and welfare issues, or
on developing great luxuries for its upper class.
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Implication of the theories
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Urbanization
Education
Socialization
Industrialization
Free trade and openness
Property rights and law
Deregulation
Privatization
Democratization
• Key component was to
change culture and
attitudes of individuals
living in traditional societies
so that they are open to
modernization and
development, rationality
and reason
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Major critics
•
modernization theory is criticized as biased and
ethnocentric, that is, the development categories,
stages, and processes involved are all derived from
the Western experience rather than from the
developing countries. There are other paths
available to the Third World countries, and these
alternatives neither have to use democratic
institutions nor do LDCs need to reach a Western
level of development to be considered successful.
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Major critics
• The alleged ‘backwardness’ of ‘underdeveloped’
countries, regions and peoples, was itself a
product of the development of the core,
developed areas.
• Development and underdevelopment could not
be considered in isolation, and nor could it be
assumed that contact with ‘the West’ was a
benign process; indeed, the development of ‘the
West’ rested on the underdevelopment of ‘the
Rest’.
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Major critics
•
modernization theory misinterprets the role
of traditional values and institutions in the
economic development, social coherence,
and political stability. It was often possible
for a Third World country to retain their own
traditional cultural attributes along with a
modern economy;
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Major Critics
•
some radical critics even charge that
modernization theory is a political ideology
that is tended to promote the Western
values and used to justify Western
dominance and to keep the Third World in
control or “in chains” by which they could
resist communist appeals.
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Major Critics
• You cannot simply ignore the structures of the global
economy
• The economic solutions it proposes will exasperate
poverty in the medium term
• Political solutions questionable?
• Does not properly delineate between different
societies
• All cultural explanations of growth pose problem of
hitting the target (Catholicism, Confucianism etc )
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Background
• Dependency Theory developed in the late
1950s under the guidance of the Director of
the United Nations Economic Commission for
Latin America, Raul Prebisch. Prebisch and his
colleagues were troubled by the fact that
economic growth in the advanced
industrialized countries did not necessarily
lead to growth in the poorer countries.
Background
• Poor countries exported primary commodities
to the rich countries who then manufactured
products out of those commodities and sold
them back to the poorer countries. The "Value
Added" by manufacturing a usable product
always cost more than the primary products
used to create those products
What is Dependency
• An explanation of the economic development of
a state in terms of the external influences-political, economic, and cultural--on national
development policies.
• An historical condition which shapes a certain
structure of the world economy such that it
favours some countries to the detriment of
others and limits the development possibilities
of the subordinate economics.
What is Dependency
• A situation in which the economy
of a certain group of countries is
conditioned by the development
and expansion of another
economy, to which their own is
subjected.
Common features dependency
theorists share
• Dependency characterizes the international
system as comprised of two sets of states,
variously described as dominant/dependent,
center/periphery or metropolitan/satellite
• External forces are of singular importance to the
economic activities within the dependent states.
These external forces are means by which the
advanced industrialized countries can represent
their economic interests abroad.
Common features dependency
theorists share
• The relations between dominant and
dependent states are dynamic because the
interactions between the two sets of states
tend to not only reinforce but also intensify
the unequal patterns.
• Dependency is a very deep-seated historical
process, rooted in the internationalization of
capitalism
The Central Propositions of
Dependency Theory
• 1. Underdevelopment is a condition
fundamentally different from undevelopment.
The latter term simply refers to a condition in
which resources are not being used.
• Underdevelopment refers to a situation in
which resources are being actively used, but
used in a way which benefits dominant states
and not the poorer states in which the
resources are found.
The Central Propositions of
Dependency Theory
• 2. The distinction between underdevelopment
and undevelopment places the poorer countries
of the world is a profoundly different historical
context.
• South is poor because it was coercively integrated
into the European economic system only as
producers of raw materials or to serve as
repositories of cheap labour, and were denied the
opportunity to market their resources in any way
that competed with dominant states.
The Central Propositions of
Dependency Theory
• 3. Alternative uses of resources are preferable to
the resource usage patterns imposed by
dominant states.
• 4. There exists a clear "national" economic
interest which can and should be articulated for
each country. that this national interest can only
be satisfied by addressing the needs of the poor
within a society, rather than through the
satisfaction of corporate or governmental needs.
The Central Propositions of
Dependency Theory
• 5. The diversion of resources over time is
maintained not only by the power of
dominant states, but also through the power
of elites in the dependent states.
• These elites are typically trained in the
dominant states and share similar values and
culture with the elites in dominant states.
hence, a dependency relationship is a
"voluntary" relationship.
The Policy Implications of
Dependency Analysis
• The success of the advanced industrial
economies does not serve as a model for the
currently developing economies.
• Market alone is not a sufficient distributive
mechanism. It does not allocate the rewards
of efficient production in a rational and
unbiased manner.
The Policy Implications of
Dependency Analysis
• Their is a very important distinction between
economic growth and economic development.
Dependency theorists clearly emphasize social
indicators far more than economic indicators
hence greater attention is paid to indices such
as life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality,
education, and the like than the GDP or trade
indices
The Policy Implications of
Dependency Analysis
• Dependent states, therefore, should attempt
to pursue policies of self-reliance. i.e.
endorsing a policy of controlled interactions
with the world economy: pour countries
should only endorse interactions on terms
that promise to improve the social and
economic welfare of the larger citizenry.
Policy difficulties
• The internal markets of the poorer countries
were not large enough to support the economies
of scale used by the richer countries to keep their
prices low.
• The political will of the poorer countries as to
whether a transformation from being primary
products producers was possible or desirable.
• The extent to which the poorer countries actually
had control of their primary products, particularly
in the area of selling those products abroad.
Criticism of Dependency
• See economic growth as the main component
of development
• Maintain the idea that Tradition is the main
obstacle to development
• If Western colonialism and Imperialism is the
main reason for underdevelopment in the
Third World, What aboout China, Ethopia
were colonies of western Europe and are
developed.
Criticism of Dependency
• Impractical ideas: If Third World Countries
totally dissociate themselves from First they
will not gain development. The relationship
between Third world and First World is not
dependent but interdependent. Globalization
• Undermines the ability of the States to charter
development: (Russia and Germany)
• Does not explain the relevance of the
Situation of the New International Division of
Labour.
World Systems Approach
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Builds on Dominance – Dependence Theory
Countries don’t go through stages – the
“system” does
Also believes that countries are poor because
they are stuck on the “periphery” or edges of
the world economy – and kept there by “core”
countries
Uses the term “Core” instead of “Centre” for
the Dominant states
World Systems Approach
•
Late 18th / early 19th centuries marked a turning
point in capitalism – capitalists achieved power in
key countries which furthered the industrial
revolution (eg Britain).
• Believes there are three types of countries
1. Core = Centre / Dominant
2. Semi-periphery = Cores on the way “down”,
or Peripheries on the way “up”!
3. Periphery = Dependent
World Systems Approach
1. Core countries:
• The most economically diversified, wealthy, and
powerful (economically and militarily)
• Have strong central governments, controlling
extensive bureaucracies and powerful militaries
• Have more complex and stronger state institutions
that help manage economic affairs internally and
externally
• Have a sufficient tax base so these state
institutions can provide infrastructure for a strong
economy
World Systems Approach
1. Core countries:
• Highly industrialized; produce manufactured goods rather
than raw materials for export
• Increasingly tend to specialize in information, finance and
service industries
• More often in the forefront of new technologies and new
industries. Examples today include high-technology
electronic and biotechnology industries. Another example
would be assembly-line auto production in the early
twentieth century.
• Has strong bourgeois and working classes
• Have significant means of influence over noncore nations
• Relatively independent of outside control
World Systems Approach
1. Core countries: gain • Access to a large quantity of raw material
• Cheap labour
• Enormous profits from direct capital
investments
• A market for exports
• Skilled professional labour through migration
of these people from the periphery to the
core.
World Systems Approach
1. Core countries:
• Sometimes one core country or region will
become a “hegemon” or “super-core”
• Portugal / Spain in the 16th century
• North-West Europe (France, Holland, Britain)
in the 18th / 19th centuries
• USA in the 20th century
World Systems Approach
2. Semi-periphery countries:
• Part way between the core and
periphery.
• Usually countries moving towards
industrialization and a more
diversified economy
• But can come from declining cores.
World Systems Approach
2. Semi-periphery countries:
• They may be dominated by core countries,
but may also partially dominate periphery
countries
• Spain and Portugal: - fell from their early
core position, but still manage to retain
influence in Latin America. They imported
silver and gold from their colonies, but then
had to use it to pay for manufactured goods
from core countries such as England and
France.
World Systems Approach
3. Periphery countries:
• Least economically diversified
• Relatively weak governments
• Relatively weak institutions with little
tax base to support infrastructure
development
• Depend on one type of economic
activity, often on extracting and
exporting raw materials to core nations,
cash crops etc
• Least industrialized
World Systems Approach
3. Periphery countries:
• Targets for investments from multinational
corporations. Come into the country to
exploit cheap unskilled labour for export
back to core nations
• Small bourgeois and large peasant classes
• High percentage of people poor and
uneducated.
• Inequality very high - a small upper class
(elite) owns most of the land and has
profitable ties to multinational corporations
World Systems Approach
3. Periphery countries:
• Extensively influenced by core nations
and their multinational corporations.
Many times they are forced to follow
economic policies that favour core
nations and harm the long-term
economic prospects of periphery
nations.
• Historically, peripheries were found
outside Europe, for example in Latin
America, Asia, Africa.
World History According to the World Systems Approach
• 15th century – Spain and Portugal lead the way but
overextended themselves with empire building
• Gained huge wealth from colonies but fell behind in
industrial production
• 17th century – Holland with its new financial system
based on global capitalism (which others copied eg
Britain)
• Holland also had many colonies eg East Indies
• As the Dutch economy grew and standard of living
rose its costs of production went up! Began to
invest overseas eg British industry
World History According to the World Systems Approach
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19th century – Britain became the “hegemon”
Highly industrialised, capitalism thriving
Massive growth in colonisation eg NZ
This cost a lot of money so their clear dominance
ended
• By 1900 the old European “core” claimed 85% of
the world’s territory!
• The only way to gain land was through war against
other “core” nations – eg Germany, Japan, Italy
• A truly “global economy” emerging
World History According to the World Systems Approach
• Post World War 1 – the “American Century” – USA a
“hegemon”
• Rapid industrialisation after the 1860’s Civil War,
helped by investment from Britain, Holland
• After World War 2 the USA had over ½ the world’s
industrial production, 2/3 of gold reserves, 1/3 of
world’s exports
• Since the 1990’s USA “hegemony” has been
eroding.
World History According to the World Systems Approach
• The “core” is now Europe + USA + Japan
• Others approaching eg South Korea, China
• Semi – periphery = states that have been long
independent but have not yet reached Western
levels of influence eg Brazil, India? NZ and
Australia?
• Periphery = poor former Western colonies eg
Southeast Asia, Africa
Major Critics
(1)The above discussion has shown that
both world-system and dependency
theorists, while somewhat different
from each other, share the same
methodology – “looking outward” and
attributing underdevelopment to its
external relations in the world market
and international system that are
governed by the interests of dominant
nations and of certain classes and
groups in them.
Major Critics
(1)However, both dependency and
world-system theorists overlook the
impact of the internal constraints of
the underdeveloped countries -- the
economic, political, social, and
cultural characteristics and structures
of these countries -- upon the
development of the underdeveloped
areas and countries.
Major Critics
(2)
For the policy implications under this
category, breaking-up of the old system
is seen as necessary before the
establishment of “an equalitarian
world-system;” in the meanwhile, the
periphery states should cooperate to
offset the power of the core.
Major Critics
(2)
However, this involves them in a
problematic relation with the global
economic dynamics that underlies the
change of the world-system and the
possibilities in the direction of
development at every occurrence of
upward and downward turns in the
world-economy.
References:
• Clark, D.A (2006)The Elga Companion to Development
studies. Elga: USA
• Deneulin,S. and Shahani, L (2009) An Introduction to
Human Development capability approach. Earthscan. NY
• Pieterse, J.N (2004) Development Theory. Vistaar: New Delh
• Rapley, John. (2002) Understaning development, theory
and practice in the third world. Lynne Rienner. London
• Simon, David. (2006) Fifty Key Thinkers in Development.
Routledge. London
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