Sunday, November 18, 2001		Books

The dialectics of development
Review by Ashutosh Kumar

Politics and development: A critical introduction by Olle Tornquist. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 197. Rs 245.

THE post-World War II period saw the emergence of Afro-Asian countries as independent nation-states. At the time of decolonisation development became the foremost concern as well as the basis of the legitimacy of an "over-developed" state entrusted with the task of achieving it in an overarching sense. Colonialism had ravaged the economy and society of the colonies for nearly 200 years and deprived them of any opportunity to participate in the processes of modernisation taking place in western societies.

Apart from extreme poverty, illiteracy, ruined agriculture and lop-sided industrial growth, the long-term structural distortions created by colonialism in the economy and society of the colonies made any future transition to self-sustained growth much more difficult. It was natural, then, that social scientists concerned with the study of the politics, economy and society of the so-called Third World primarily engaged themselves with "the problems of development". For the purpose, development studies acquired solid empirical character without losing track of comparative and theoretical perspectives.

The book under review is an attempt to provide "a clear and comprehensive introduction to the main analytical approaches to the study of Third World politics and development. The book is structured around three key sections. Part one of the text "aims to identify what the study of politics and development in the Third World is about". It also "outlines the difficulties in the various analytical approaches to the study of development".

Part two presents a "small-scale survey" of each of the "main schools of thought, from the politics of modernisation theories to the more recent new institutionalist and post-Marxist perspectives". Part three introduces the "key contemporary issue of democratisation to illustrate how students can apply a framework for research and critically develop a perspective of their own" within the "framework of Third World development". Tornquist concludes the text with his "critique of the civil society and social capital paradigm and advances new insights into democratisation in the Third World."

The book opens by focusing on "how politics affects (and is affected by) development". Development, the author argues, refers "to a process in which resources are put to better use — in a country, a region, or a sector of society". Any meaningful study of development problems thus involves "identifying and analysing the difficulties people encounter in their efforts to make — on the basis of their varied interests and ideas — the best possible use of the potential of their country, region or sector of society".

In this sense the problems of development — and the differing theories about them — are universal. The author, however, takes up the Third World as the focus of his study. He argues that the Third World states’ historical specificities emanate from their colonial past and their experiences of anti-colonial struggles of different nature distinguishing them from the western advanced capitalist world. Notwithstanding the argument that "many of the development alternatives from the cold war and the anti-imperialist struggles are now history", the overarching "structures, institutions and organisations created by colonialism and anti-imperialism are still important" in the Third World.

Moreover, unlike the First World, the belated process of development and modernisation in the Third World, the ASIAN Tigers included, has "led to great suffering and adjustment difficulties for extremely large number of people, even in cases where the successes have been and are considerable". However, there is need to add a note of caution. The Third World countries differ increasingly from one another in social, economic and cultural spheres despite or maybe due to the processes of globalisation.

Thus the focus on universalistic grand theories, concepts and norms in the study of development within the liberal modernisation, development and neo-Marxist dependency paradigms have come under attack "from scholars of actual Third World politics". These comparative political theorists prefer to compare and study the "actually existing political institutions, functions and issues". The emerging trend is to explore the specific contexts of concrete situations "to bring about distinctiveness, rather than slot the specific within the field of grand narratives".

Furthermore, the advent of "new" globalisation, the democratic transition from authoritarian regimes in southern Europe, Latin America and, finally, in Eastern Europe in the last quarter of the 20th century have been instrumental in the rise of neo-liberal models and assumptions regarding the study of Third World politics and development. The emergent dominant view has been that "politics and the state hinder rather than promote development". The individual and the market, therefore, have to be liberated. The state and the special interests are to be "disarmed". For strengthening the civil society (not including the special interests) constitutionalism and freedoms, especially the freedom of information, have to be protected by the "new" democracies. Aid from the advanced capitalist democracies is now to be reorganised to promote structural adjustment and civil rights and freedoms. For this purpose the primacy is accorded to institutions. Among the institutions are "Constitutions, forms of government, cooperative arrangements, rules and ordinances, and the organisations and modus operandi of the state administrations".

The second tendency in contemporary debate on Third World politics and development is encapsulated in what the author calls post-Marxist alternatives. The post-Marxists come from two directions. "Revisionist Marxists" tend to "abandon their determinist perspective on politics and ideology, recognising instead the explanatory power of politics and ideology. They insist, however, on the continued need to take fundamental material factors, different interests and conflicts into account". At the same time, "revisionist institutionalists" argue that "politics in general and the state in particular must be analysed in the context of the conflicts and social forces in society".

The above differing analytical approaches to the study of development have emerged from differing contexts and, therefore have distinct emphases (for instance, under-development /dependency/world systems theories in the context of Latin America, or institutional theories in the context of developmental states in East Asia). In this limited sense "they complement each other".

It follows that "that grand substantive theories and schools — whether with Marxist or non-Marxist roots are on the wane". The two contemporary schools, namely the institutionalist and the post-Marxist, are "more in the manner of analytical frameworks" than of substantive "grand theories". Since they offer no simple overarching explanations of a general nature in a closed manner, but do provide conceptual and analytical contexts, they pave the way for the researchers to argue in favour of "sketching and testing theories and hypotheses which may be more or less applicable to the developing world as a whole, but which must in any event be relevant to the country or area on which one has focused".

Accordingly a comparative theorist "must start with the issues one personally finds to be most interesting and important, proceeding from a knowledge of the various schools of thought to a perspective and study of one’s own". The author himself chooses to explore the "processes of democratisation within the framework of Third World development". Drawing from his concrete studies of Indonesia, the Philippines and Kerala, the author argues that "we should go beyond the preoccupation with the middle class, the rational elite and good governance, and focus instead on the problems of democratisation from below".

What can be the use of such a "textbook" for students, journalists and development assistance workers. The author hopes that the book would be used in three intellectual contexts: first, "as an introduction to the special study of politics and development... an introduction which may be accompanied, then, by more extensive materials on special themes (such as democracy, the state, the civil society, gender or ethnicity) in different Third World regions". Second, "as a regular or self-study introduction to general perspectives before students probe into specialised thematic or area studies". Third, as an overview of the discourse on various perspectives, theories and approaches".

The book stands out both for providing a wide-ranging critique of the literature on development and for emphasising the symbiotic relationship between politics and development.