Kofi Annan
E. Napp
“Gender equality is more
than a goal in itself. It is a
precondition for meeting
the challenge of reducing
poverty, promoting
sustainable development
and building good
governance.”
Once independence was achieved for the former
Asian and African colonies, new challenges
emerged
 The former colonies were joined by already
independent and nonindustrialized countries and
regions
 Together they formed the bloc of nations known
previously as the third world, the developing
countries, or the Global South
 In the second half of the twentieth century, these
countries represented perhaps 75 percent of the
world’s population
 They also accounted for almost all of the fourfold
increase in human numbers during the twentieth
century

E. Napp
E. Napp
All across the developing world, efforts to create
political order had to contend with a set of
common conditions - populations were exploding,
expectations after independence were very high,
newly independent nations were often culturally
diverse, and in many places one kind of political
system followed another.
The political evolution of postindependence
Africa illustrates the complexity and the
difficulty of creating a stable political order in
developing countries
 Although colonial rule had been highly
authoritarian and bureaucratic with little
interest in African participation, during the
1950s the British, the French, and the Belgians
attempted, rather belatedly, to transplant
democratic institutions to their colonies
 It was with such institutions that most African
states greeted independence
 And by the early 1970s, many of the popular
political parties that led the struggle for
independence lost mass support and were swept
away by military coups

E. Napp
E. Napp
When the army took power in Ghana in 1966, no
one lifted a finger to defend the party that had
led the country to independence only nine years
earlier. Other states evolved into one-party
systems, sometimes highly authoritarian and
bureaucratic and sometimes more open and
democratic. Still others degenerated into
personal tyrannies or dictatorships. Freedom
from colonial rule certainly did not automatically
generate the internal political freedoms
associated with democracy.
Yet in India, Western-style democracy, including
regular elections, multiple parties, civil liberties,
and peaceful changes in government, has been
practiced almost continuously since independence
 But the struggle for independence in India had
been a far more prolonged affair, thus providing
time for an Indian political leadership to sort
itself out
 And the British began to hand over power in a
gradual way well before complete independence
was granted in 1947
 Thus a far larger number of Indians had useful
administrative or technical skills than was the
case in Africa

E. Napp
E. Napp
But creating national unity was certainly more
difficult in Africa where competing political
parties identified primarily with particular
ethnic or “tribal” groups. Similarly, the immense
problems that inevitably accompany the early
stages of economic development may be
compounded by the heavy demands of a political
system based on universal suffrage. Certainly
Europe did not begin its modernizing process
with such a system.
Beyond these general considerations, more
immediate conditions likewise undermined the
popular support of many postindependence
governments in Africa and discredited their
initial democracies
 One was widespread economic disappointment
 By almost any measure, African economic
performance since independence has been the
poorest in the developing world
 Independence leaders were often unable to fulfill
even the most minimal expectations, let alone the
visions of a better life
 Yet for some, independence offered great
opportunities for acquiring status, position, and
wealth

E. Napp
E. Napp
Unlike in Latin America and parts of Asia, those
who benefited the most from independence were
not large landowners, for most African societies
did not have an established class whose wealth
was based in landed estates. Rather they were
members of the relatively well-educated elite who
had found high-paying jobs in the growing
bureaucracies of the newly independent states.
Frequently, resentments born of inequality found
expression in ethnic conflict, as Africa’s immense
cultural diversity became intensely politicized
 An ethnically based civil war in Nigeria during
the late 1960s cost the lives of millions, while in
the mid-1990s ethnic hatred led Rwanda into the
realm of genocide
 Thus economic disappointment, class
resentments, and ethnic conflict eroded support
for the transplanted democracies of the early
independence era
 The most common alternative involved
governments by soldiers, a familiar pattern in
Latin America as well

E. Napp
E. Napp
By the early 1980s, the military had intervened in
at least thirty of Africa’s forty-six independent
states and actively governed more than half of
them. Usually, the military took power in a
crisis, after the civilian government had lost most
of its popular support. The soldiers often claimed
that the nation was in grave danger, that corrupt
civilian politicians had led the country to the
brink of chaos, and that only the military had the
discipline and strength to put things right.
But since the early 1980s, a remarkable
resurgence of Western-style democracy has
brought popular movements, multiparty
elections, and new constitutions to a number of
African states, including Ghana, Kenya, Mali,
Senegal, and Zambia
 It was part of a late-twentieth-century
democratic revival of global dimensions that
included Southern and Eastern Europe, most of
Latin America, and parts of Asia and the Middle
East
 Perhaps the most important factor in increasing
the appeal of democracy was the evident failure
of authoritarian governments to remedy the
disastrous economic situation

E. Napp
E. Napp
Also the end of the cold war reduced the
willingness of the major industrial powers to
underwrite their authoritarian client states. But
at the top of the agenda everywhere in the Global
South was economic development. Yet achieving
economic development proved immensely
difficult. Colonial rule had provided only the
most slender foundations for modern
development and at independence, low rates of
literacy, few people with managerial experience,
a weak private economy, and transportation
systems that were oriented to export rather than
national integration plagued many newly
independent nations.
It was also hard for leaders of developing
countries to know what strategies to pursue
 All of this resulted in considerable controversy,
changing policies, and much experimentation
 One fundamental issue lay in the role of the state
 Most people expected that state authorities
would take major responsibility for spurring the
economic development of their countries
 Some state-directed economies had real successes
 China launched a major industrialization effort
and massive land reform under the leadership of
the Communist Party
 A communist Cuba, even while remaining
dependent on its sugar production, wiped out
illiteracy and provided basic health care to its
entire population

E. Napp
E. Napp
Yet in the last several decades of the twentieth
century, an earlier consensus in favor of state
direction largely collapsed, replaced by a growing
dependence on the market to generate economic
development. This was most apparent in the
abandonment of much communist planning in
China and a return to private farming. Western
pressures, exercised through international
organizations such as the World Bank, likewise
pushed developing countries in a capitalist
direction. But as the new millennium dawned, a
number of Latin American countries –
Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia – once again
asserted a more prominent role for the state in
their quests for economic development and social
justice.
E. Napp
Other issues as well inspired debate. In many
places, an early emphasis on city-based
industrial development led to a neglect or
exploitation of rural areas and agriculture. Also
a growing recognition of the role of women in
agriculture led to charges of “male bias” in
development planning and to mounting efforts to
assist women farmers directly.
Women also were central to many government’s
interest in curtailing population growth
 Women’s access to birth control, education, and
employment provided powerful incentives to limit
family size
 But economic development was never simply a
matter of technical expertise or deciding among
competing theories
 Every decision was political, involving winners
and losers in terms of power, advantage and
wealth
 In general, East Asian countries have had the
strongest record of economic growth
 China boasted the most rapid economic growth in
the world by the end of the twentieth century

E. Napp
E. Napp
By the 1990s, Asia’s other giant, India, opened
itself more fully to the world market and
launched rapid economic growth with a powerful
high-tech sector and an expanding middle class.
And oil-producing countries reaped a bonanza
when they were able to demand much higher
prices for that essential commodity in the 1970s
and after. Elsewhere, the story was different.
In most of Africa, much of the Arab world, and
parts of Asia – regions representing about onethird of the world’s population – there was little
sign of catching up and frequent examples of
declining standards of living
 Variables such as geography and natural
resources, differing colonial experiences,
variations in regional cultures, the degree of
political stability and social equality, state
economic polices, population growth rates, and
varying forms of involvement with the world
economy have been invoked to explain the widely
diverging trajectories among developing
countries

E. Napp
E. Napp
The quest for economic development represented
an embrace of an emerging global culture of
modernity but the peoples of the Global South
also had inherited cultural patterns from the
more distant past. A common issue all across the
Global South involved the uneasy relationship
between these older traditions and the more
recent outlooks associated with modernity and
the West. Nowhere was the consequences of
cultural experiments with modernity more
consequential than in the Islamic world. The
experience of Turkey and Iran illustrate two
quite different approaches to this issue.
In the aftermath of World War I, modern Turkey
emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman empire
as a republic, led by a determined general,
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938)
 During the 1920s and 1930s, he presided over a
dramatic national cultural revolution
 Seeking far more than national independence, he
wanted to create a thoroughly modern and
Western Turkish society and viewed many
traditional Islamic institutions, beliefs, and
practices as obstacles to that goal
 Within a few years, the caliphate had been
officially ended, Sufi orders disbanded, religious
courts abolished, and the sharia replaced by
Swiss legal codes

E. Napp
E. Napp
Public education was completely secularized, and
the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic script for
writing the Turkish language. Religious leaders
(the ulama) were brought more firmly under
state control. But the most visible symbols of
Atatürk’s revolutionary program occurred in the
realm of dress. Turkish men were ordered to
abandon the traditional headdress known as the
fez and to wear brimmed hats.
Although women were not forbidden to wear the
veil, many elite women abandoned it and set the
tone for feminine fashion in Turkey
 In other ways as well, women gained new legal
rights
 Polygamy was abolished, as was a husband’s
right to repudiate his wife or wives
 Under the European-style legal codes, women
achieved equal rights to divorce, child custody,
inheritance, and education
 By the mid-1930s, they had been granted the
right to vote in national elections, a full decade
before French women gained that right

E. Napp
E. Napp
These reforms represented the most ambitious
attempts at cultural transformation in the
Middle East. Like Japan in the late nineteenth
century, it was a “revolution from above” led by
military and civilian officials unburdened by
close ties to traditional landholding groups. Yet
despite the imitation of Western European
parliamentary politics, the Turkish government
remained authoritarian. Despite the attacks on
Islamic symbols, Turkish society at the local level
remained firmly attached to Islamic traditions.
Turkey underwent a cultural revolution in public
life not a social or economic revolution.
After Atatürk’s death in 1938, some of his more
radical decrees were moderated, and a
multiparty parliamentary system was allowed to
develop
 And in early 2008, the Turkish parliament voted
to end the earlier prohibition of women wearing
headscarves in universities
 Nevertheless, the essential secularism of the
Turkish state remained an enduring legacy of the
Atatürk revolution
 In answer to what it meant to be modern in an
Islamic setting, Atatürk’s answer was to fully
embrace modern culture and Western ways in
public life and to relegate Islam to the sphere of
private life

E. Napp
E. Napp
A very different answer emerged in Iran in the
final quarter of the twentieth century. Iran
became the epicenter of Islamic revival in the
1970s as opposition mounted to the modernizing,
secularizing, American-supported government of
the shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (reigned
1941-1979). Some resented his close relationship
with the Americans and the British as well as the
heavy-handed brutality of his secret police. His
land reform program had alienated landowners
and upset traditional village life. Furthermore,
the shah had provoked the Shia religious
establishment by attempting to redistribute
religious lands; by initiating reforms that offered
women greater rights and a literacy program
that threatened to replace religious schools; and
by permitting the growth of Western influences
in the country.
His decision to replace the Islamic calendar with
one derived from Persian imperial history further
alienated his subjects, as did the building of a
Hyatt Hotel, which served foreign wines and
liquors, near a religious sanctuary in the city of
Meshed
 In a politically repressive Iran, opposition to the
shah’s regime came to focus on the mosque
 Unlike their counterparts in Turkey, the Shia
ulama in Iran had maintained their
independence from the state and had often
criticized both the shah’s government and
Western intervention in Iranian affairs
 Thus the Shia leaders increasingly became the
voice of opposition

E. Napp
E. Napp
One elderly cleric in particular, the Ayatollah
Ruholla Khomeini, organized opposition from
exile in Paris and became the center of a growing
movement demanding the shah’s removal. In the
late 1970s, his taped messages, which were
distributed through a network of local religious
leaders, triggered massive urban demonstrations
that paralyzed the government and strikes that
shut down oil production. As the nation revolted
and slipped into anarchy, the shah abdicated,
and in early 1979 he and his family fled the
country. The Ayatollah Khomeini returned to
Iran and appointed his own government.
Khomeini believed that the purpose of
government was to apply the law of Allah
 Thus the sharia became the law of the land, and
religious leaders themselves assumed the reins of
government
 Widespread purges ousted secular officials, who
were replaced by Islamic activists
 Actions of parliament had to be approved by a
clerical Council of Guardians
 Culturally, the new regime sought the moral
purification of the country under state control
 Discos and bars were closed, and alcoholic drinks
were forbidden
 Boys and girls could no longer attend school
together

E. Napp
E. Napp
An Islamic dress law required women to wear a
veil and loose-fitting clothing to conceal their
figures. In the early years, revolutionary guards
patrolled the streets, while Islamic societies were
established in many organizations. But in other
respects, the new regime was less than
revolutionary. No class upheaval or radical
redistribution of wealth followed; private
property was maintained, and a new privileged
elite emerged. Nor did an Islamic revolution
mean the abandonment of economic modernity.
The country’s oil revenues continued to fund its
development, and by the early twenty-first
century, Iran was actively pursuing nuclear
power and perhaps nuclear weapons, much to the
consternation of the West.
STRAYER QUESTIONS




E. Napp

Why was Africa's experience with political democracy
so different from that of India?
What accounts for the ups and downs of political
democracy in postcolonial Africa?
What obstacles impeded the economic development of
third world countries?
In what ways did thinking about the role of the state
in the economic life of developing countries change?
Why did it change?
In what ways did cultural revolutions in Turkey and
Iran reflect different understandings of the role of
Islam in modern societies?