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From Social Darwinism to Current Theories of Modernization: A Tradition of Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Ali A. Mazrui
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Extract

Much of the most interesting work in political science in the last decade or so has been concerned with processes of modernization, institution-formation, and sociopolitical change at large. In fact, modernization and political development have been, along with system analysis, the most important themes of the new political science. In this article we are addressing ourselves to this developmental revolution in political science. We propose to argue that the idea of analyzing and classifying nations on the basis of the stage of modernization reached has long-standing historical connections with a tradition that goes back to social Darwinism and beyond. But it must be emphasized from the outset that this argument is not intended as a criticism of the new political science.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , October 1968 , pp. 69 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 White, Charles, An Account of the Regular Graduations in Man (London 1799), I.Google Scholar See also Lovejoy, A. O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936Google Scholar).

2 Lovejoy, 233ff.; also Lovejoy “Some Eighteenth-Century Evolutionists,” Popular Science Monthly, LXV (1904), 327.Google Scholar

3 The Image of Africa (London 1965), 38–39Google Scholar. We are indebted to Curtin's book for bibliographical guidance and for some insights.

4 See , Arnold, Introductory Lectures on Modern History (New York 1842), 46–47Google Scholar; consult also Curtin, 375–77. See also Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (London 1845Google Scholar), esp. 435, 438. This notion of a moving center of civilization is also discussed in , Mazrui, Ancient Greece in African Political Thought (Nairobi 1967Google Scholar).

5 Library, Everyman's ed., Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government, with introduction by A. D. Lindsay (London and New York, 1948), 198–201Google Scholar, 382–83.

6 Everyman's, 361. More recently Carl Rosberg, G. Jr.Google Scholar, for example, makes a similar point when he argues that “the dangers to stability presented by ethnic and other parochialisms are magnified in most African states by a lack of that fundament of common values and widely shared principles of political behaviour generally termed 'consensus.' Typically, the terms of a consensus prescribe that the pursuit of group interests be conducted peaceably and within established institutions of the constitutional framework” (“Democracy and the New African States,” in Kirkwood, Kenneth, ed., St. Antony's Papers on African Affairs, No. 2 [London 1963], 26Google Scholar). Comparable arguments abound in the literature on democracy in new states.

7 See , Packenham, “Approaches to the Study of Political Development,” World Politics, XVII (October 1964), 115Google Scholar. The italics are original. For subsequent additional insights we have benefited from conversations with Gwendolen Carter, William O. Brown, and James S. Coleman.

8 See esp. Shils, Political Development in the New States (The Hague 1965Google Scholar), 10ff.

9 Gabriel Almond has shared such a vision of political development, especially in his earlier work. A more cautious but related formulation is that of Eisenstadt, who says: “Historically, modernization is the process of change towards those types of social, economic, and political systems that have developed in Western Europe and North America from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth and have then spread to other European countries and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the South American, Asian, and African continents” (Modernization: Protest and Change [Englewood Cliffs 1966], 1Google Scholar). Consult also the series of books entitled “Studies in Political Development” sponsored by the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council of the United States. Of special interest as a study of value-systems is Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton 1965CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

10 See , McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago and London 1963Google Scholar).

11 “Evolutionary Universals in Society,” American Sociological Review, xxix (June 1964), 356Google Scholar. See also in the same issue of the journal, S. N. Eisenstadt, “Social Change, Differentiation, and Evolution,” 375–86.

12 “Political Development, Political Systems, and Political Goods,” World Politics, XVIII (April 1966), 424Google Scholar.

13 434. Pennock cites an appendix to Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960Google Scholar); and Cutright, Phillips, “National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis,” American Sociological Review, xxvn (April 1963), 253CrossRefGoogle Scholar–64. A more recent discussion by Almond of some of these issues is his article “A Developmental Approach to Political Systems,” World Politics, xvn (January 1965), 183–214Google Scholar.

14 , Greg, “Dr. Arnold,” Westminster Review, xxx (January 1843Google Scholar).

15 Almond and Coleman, 533, 536. In his introduction to Education and Political Development (Princeton 1965Google Scholar), Coleman defines political development more neutrally in terms of enhancing “political capacity.” See esp. 15–16.

16 Frey, Frederick W., “Political Development, Power and Communications in Turkey,” Pye, Lucian W., ed., Communications and Political Development (Princeton 1963), 301Google Scholar.

17 The Civic Culture (Princeton 1963), 4Google Scholar.

18 Origin of Species, 1st ed. reprinted (London 1950Google Scholar), chap. 8.

19 The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (London 1871Google Scholar). Stanley Edgar Hyman has rightly remarked, “The Descent of Man is wrongly titled, at least in that its dominant mood is onward and upward. Man fell into the savage state, but he is rising out of it and he will abolish it.” See , Hyman, The Tangled Bank (New York 1966), 56Google Scholar.

20 “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, XVII (April 1965), 392Google Scholar–93. But see also Eisenstadt, S. N., “Breakdowns of Modernization,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, xn (July 1964), 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar–67. For another “hardheaded” analysis of unpredictable change see Whitaker, C. S. Jr., “A Dysrhythmic Process of Political Change,” World Politics, xix (January 1967), 190–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 “Political Systems and Political Change,” American Behavioral Scientist, vi (June 1963), 6Google Scholar.

22 393. Eric Dunning, a sociologist, makes a similar point when he appeals to fellow sociologists to feel less inhibited about using the t e rm “development.” Sociologists have been more aware than have political scientists that theories of development tend to echo social evolutionism. But Dunning argues that the concept of development is an improvement over the concept of “social evolution.” “‘Development’ avoids the taint biological reduciionism. Societies are sui generis and contain their own mechanisms change. Social development, furthermore, is reversible; organic evolution is not." Dunning goes on to point out that “nineteenth-century errors are not unavoidable concomitants of the study of social development” (“The Concept of Development: Two Illustrative Case Studies,” in Rose, Peter I., ed., The Study of Society [New York 1967], 891Google Scholar–92).

23 See Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought 1860-1915 (Philadelphia 1944CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See also Schneider, Herbert, “The Influence of Darwin and Spencer on American Philosophical Theology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vi (January 1945), 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Hyman has a perceptive discussion on Marx's enthusiasm for Darwin and of the relationship between historical materialism and the theory of natural selection (121–26).

25 390. Among more systematic and influential conflict theorists in related disciplines are George Simmel (see his Conflict and the Web of Group-Affiliations, trans, by Wolff, Kurt H. and Bendix, Reinhard [New York, 1964Google Scholar]) and Max Gluckman (see his Custom and Conflict in Africa [Oxford, 1963Google Scholar]). Within a related persuasion may be placed Mazrui's paper “Pluralism and National Integration,” Proceedings of the Colloquium on Pluralism, University of California, Los Angeles, 1966.

26 See Eisenstadt, Modernization; and , Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago 1965Google Scholar). See also , Apter, “The Role of Traditionalism in the Political Modernization of Ghana and Uganda,” World Politics, xiii (October 1960), 45–68Google Scholar. Consult also Anderson, Charles W., Von der Mehden, Fred R., and Young, Crawford, Issues of Political Development (Englewood Cliffs 1967Google Scholar).