National Development Paths 1965–1987: Measuring a Metaphor

The path-of-development metaphor registers in language the idea that the conditions of existence of people get better (or worse in the case of underdevelopment) in particular ways. To measure a metaphor, in this paper, a method of moving between the figurative and the literal is used. Development paths for 150 nations are measured for the period 1965–87 by using a methodology that can be described as historical factorial ecology. The measurement of development paths involves analytically combining the social, historical, and geographical dimensions of the development and underdevelopment process, an interpretation of which requires and encourages a combining of the sociological, historical, and geographical imaginations. The findings indicate that the debates within development theory resulted from different theories focusing upon different types of development paths. Development is complexly multidimensional with economic and social development paths resembling the linear and multilinear claims of orthodox modernization theory and with political development paths approximating the antilinear claims of underdevelopment theories. Development and underdevelopment theorists, like the blind wise men encountering the elephant, each described only parts of the beast, assuming that the economic trunk was identical to its political leg.