Foundational Models of Development,Underlying Assumptions and Critiques

Underlying Assumptions of the Modernist Model

The modernist model of development has the following key underlying assumptions.

Fixed Stages and Routes of Development

In his historical analysis of developed countries (mainly Britain, France, the US and Japan) Rostow (1990) found that all societies had undergone five stages of development: the traditional society, the precondition for take-off, the take- off, the drive to maturity and the age of high mass consumption. Similarly, Parsons (1966, 1971) discussed three stages of development (the primitive, the intermediate and the modern) through which society would pass from ‘ascription to achievement, from particularism to universalism, and from diffuseness to specificity’ (Harrison, 2005, p. 36). Influenced by Rostow and Parsons, this model assumes that all countries have to pass over the preceding stages for entering into the succeeding ones. For example, the fourth stage in Rostow’s projection of development, that is, ‘the drive to maturity’ was achieved by advanced countries at different times: Great Britain in the 1850s, the US in the 1900s, Japan in the 1940s and Canada in the 1950s (Rostow, 1959, p. 8). This implies that societies would progress towards successive stages and follow the same route that advanced countries took in the past, and this is the only route through which development would take place. This idea of development has a strong influence on development policies and practices of many countries of the global South. For example, for Jawaharlal Nehru, Independent India’s first Prime Minister, ‘the transition from a backward agricultural society to a modern industrial one was the only possible road for India to progress’ (Chakrabarti & Cullenberg, 2003, p. 2).

The Law of Comparative Advantage

David Ricardo (1891) stipulated that each country should specialise in the production of goods that have the lowest production cost. Doing this, nations would benefit not only by making an efficient use of their resources but also by exporting their products to the international market. All nations would prosper because the cost of production would be reduced and goods could be made available at cheaper prices. This kind of discourse, which rationalises the logic of capitalism, is a part of a wider and long-run trend of Western societies (Weber, 1930). The idea of rational calculation in which profit motive plays an important role is informed by Smith (1776). In the Wealth of Nations, Smith argued against the obstacles of free trade and claimed that ‘the invisible hand of the market’ would promote both individual freedom and the collective welfare of society. This idea of market freedom has influenced some multilateral trade negotiations (such as the South Asian Free Trade Area and the North American Free Trade Agreement) and the discourse related to foreign assistance for development.

In 1949, Truman proclaimed that the US and its allies ‘must embark on a bold new program for making the benefit of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas’ (Truman, 1949). After few years, Kennedy reiterated the commitment: ‘… to those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required’ (Kennedy & Sorensen, 1988, p. 12). Influenced by such discourses, the modernist model assumes that Southern countries are weak, vulnerable and needy of the special support of developed countries, especially for achieving economic growth. Economic growth would benefit every member of society because of the trickledown effect: when growth reaches the stage of saturation, the income would trickledown ‘so that everyone’s income and standard of living would improve’ (Youngman, 2000, p. 54). This model assumes that a large investment supported by foreign aid would increase employment opportunities and help to alleviate poverty. International development policies of major supranational organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and Rostow’s own brainchild the ‘USAID’ (Wiarda, 2010) are guided by this assumption.

Adaptive Capacity of Traditional Societies

This model assumes that progress made in science and technology, which benefits humans for controlling physical environment, is a necessary condition for modernisation. According to Schumpeter (2003), long cycles of economic growth achieved by developed countries were driven by some major technological breakthroughs such as the invention of steam power, railways, electricity and automobiles. Even if traditional societies are backward in using technology, they can have the advantage of backwardness. The amount of time and money spent by the ‘pioneers in the development of new techno-economic systems have to pay heavy costs’ (Nolan & Lenski, 1985, p. 341). But the ‘latecomers’ in the modernisation process have the chance of avoiding the costs on research and innovation and are free to adopt new technology for their own benefit. In this way, backward countries can outsmart advanced economies. If underdeveloped countries have to prosper they must be exposed to new technologies and allow their adaptive capacity flourish. According to Lin (2013, p. 260), China appears to have had ‘the advantage of backwardness’ because it was able to ‘borrow technology, industry and institutions from the advanced countries at low risk and costs’ after its modernisation process started in 1949.

Critiques of the Modernist Model

Review of literature (Chakrabarti & Cullenberg, 2003; Chakrabarti et al., 2015; Szirmai, 2005; Wiarda, 2010; Youngman, 2000) related to development theories suggests that there are four major critiques of this model. Firstly, the dichotomy between notions of modern and traditional is not true. Everything which is not modern cannot be labelled as traditional, which in itself is a Eurocentric idea that ‘neglects the history of colonialism and the nature of capitalist penetration of pre-capitalist societies’ (Youngman, 2000, p. 63). Secondly, unlike this model’s assumptions the technological breakthroughs made by the West could not benefit southern countries (Chakrabarti et al., 2015). There is no guarantee that ‘all societies have common properties, perform the same function, have the same inputs and outputs’ (Wiarda, 2010, p. 38). Societies differ because they have different social, economic and political contexts. It is not necessary that something the West calls good and modern should be accepted with the same value by people who have different worldviews. Thirdly, the notion of modernity should not be taken as virtue, that means the tendency to identify ‘all good things are modern’ (Huntington, 1971, p. 294) and everything that seems abnormal from a Western perspective is traditional and primitive. Modernist interventions made by the West can destroy communal values and the life-world that southern people have preserved for centuries (Regmi & Walter, 2017). And finally, Rostow’s stages of economic growth is a unilinear notion as there is nothing inevitable about fixed routes or stages of development applicable for all countries.

Exploitative Practices

According to Frank (1969, p. 46), rich countries of the West ‘did not develop by relying on their own effort’, rather their wealth and prosperity came at the expense of the exploitation of human and natural resources of underdeveloped countries. Raul Prebisch (1950) argued that the law of comparative advantage intensified imbalances in import and export mechanism. For example, ‘a nation wants the world market price of its exports to exceed the world market price of its imports’ (Jaffee, 1998, p. 153). Generally, underdeveloped countries export primary goods and import manufactured goods in return because they lack comparative capacity to produce and export manufactured goods. But this exchange becomes costly because they have to pay far higher prices than they get by selling primary goods. Frank (1969) rejected the modernisation idea that underdeveloped countries having close links with the West have the highest chance of development. Development and underdevelopment are two aspects of the same world economy where development of one part comes from the proportionate underdevelopment of the other parts. Bunker (1984) undertook a historical study to test Frank’s claim. He found that,

… despite its long history of supplying valued commodities for the world trade, the Amazon Basin has remained one of the poorest areas in the world, and the economic and social systems on which many of its inhabitants depend are seriously threatened by disruption or extinction (p. 1022).

Frank (1969) stressed that Japan was able to develop because it was not a satellite to any metropolis, meaning it had no significant economic ties with the West. Similarly, in the period between the two World Wars, Latin American countries were able to achieve significant progress because ‘metropolitan nations were preoccupied with two wars’ (Jaffee, 1998, p. 158) and hence had less chance to conduct exploitative businesses.

According to Santos (1970, p. 235), the reason of backwardness of under- developed countries is not the lack of integration with global capitalism; rather, the most powerful obstacle to their full development is their nature of relationship with Western countries. The advocates of the dependency model also dismiss the idea behind advantage of backwardness because underdeveloped countries do not benefit from new inventions: either new technologies are carefully transferred so as to maintain dependence and exploitation, or even if they are diffused, they cannot afford them because of various trade regulations such as patent and property rights. Critiques of the development model, such as Frank (1978), argue that the accumulation of wealth by the West commenced in the mercantile period (1500–1770), carried through into the period of industrial capitalism (1770–1870) and culminated into the period of imperialism (1870–1930). The capitalist system did not allow the equal distribution of global wealth hence the trickledown effect never came to underdeveloped countries. Scholars following this model argue that these countries are ‘much better off in their traditional ways of life, by comparison with what foreign capital is pushing and pulling them into’ (Baran, 1973, p. 330). One of the examples illustrating this conclusion comes from Rodney (1981) who undertook a historical study of Africa and found that African countries were better than Europe at some point in history. Unequal trade relations practised mainly in the colonial period helped European colonisers to achieve ‘modernity’ but Africa got bogged down into a vicious circle of poverty.

Global Capitalism

The dependency model assumes that the capitalist world system is a major cause of underdevelopment. One of the variants of this model, the world system theory, divides all countries into three categories: the core, the periphery and the semi-periphery (Wallerstein, 1974). The core countries are advanced economies, such as North American and Western European countries that specialised in the production of manufactured goods. They are powerful, politically and militarily, so that they can enforce unequal exchange-relations favourable to themselves. The periphery countries include exploited regions that export raw materials and low-wage products to the core countries. They are the weakest of all both militarily and politically. Finally, the semi-periphery countries operate in the middle of the core and the periphery, hence gradually move towards industrial production. Even if they are exploited by the core they benefit by exploiting the countries in the periphery. Therefore, all countries, either willingly or forcibly, are caught up in the global capitalist system. This economic integration is also reflected in the social structurers of peripheral countries. In this respect, this model assumes that ‘the internal class structures of satellite societies are reflections of wider economic structures’ (Harrison, 2005, p. 81) of the global capitalist system. The capitalist class in the periphery maintains a comprador relationship with capitalist counterparts of the core. As the stimulus for economic development in the periphery comes from the core, the latter becomes able to control the socio-economic activities of the former hence development does not become ‘self-controlled and self-sustaining’ (Youngman, 2000, p. 62).

According to Amin (1976), the global capitalist system and the expansion of Western imperialism exist in a symbiotic relationship supporting each other for their mutual benefits. The expansion of capitalism is supported by two ideal types of capacities: ‘capacity to produce’ and ‘capacity to consume’. By capacity to produce, Amin (1976) means that private sector investment must be encouraged for maximising production and supplying of commodities, but to materialise this, the second condition, that is, ‘capacity to consume’ must be fulfilled. For example, if consumers are not capable of buying manufactured commodities then production would shrink. For increasing consumer capacity, commodity prices should be reduced and wages should be increased; however, this will hamper profits unless the number of consumers is not increased. Hence, if production and consumption are limited within Western countries, eventually capitalism would fall because of the fact that the size of the population is shrinking in those countries. For increasing the number of consumers expansion of imperialism is necessary. Through imperialism the expansion of global capitalism continues to create roadblocks towards the independence of underdeveloped countries.

Colonial Legacy

Scholars—those who focussed on the analysis of economic dependency (Amin, 1976; Santos, 1970) and some others who focussed on race and gender (Mamdani, 2001; McClintock, 1995)—argue that colonialism has left a strong legacy in underdeveloped countries even after they got formal independence. They claim that the problem of inequality and discrimination (in terms of gender, race and class) that these countries are facing today were instigated and institutionalised in the colonial period. Santos (1970), who took class structure into consideration, claims that the social structures of dependent countries were shaped by their respective colonisers. Immersed into the colonial trade mechanism, colonised nations became export oriented. The feudal lords of the colonised nations, who enjoyed special authority under the aegis of colonisers, were happy to export their commodities to Western nations. This type of extroverted accumulation (Amin, 1976) created a number of structural distortions preventing sustainable economic development. Underdeveloped countries still follow this trade-related legacy of colonialism. Caught up in the neoliberal market mechanism, many business elites produce raw materials and manufactured commodities for the purpose of exporting to other countries.

Similarly, McClintock (1995) claims that ‘imperialism and the invention of race were fundamental aspects of Western industrial modernity’ (p. 5). Looking through a feminist perspective, she argues that patriarchy was a Western practice that shaped gender dynamics in colonised nations. Different laws and policies (such as marital laws, property laws, land laws and supporting policies to implement these laws) were enforced by ‘White men in their own interests’ (McClintock, 1995, p. 6). Such laws and policies not only provided security and maintenance to colonial enterprise, but also left unpleasant traces leading to a perpetual inequality in the colonised countries. According to Mamdani (2001), the fissures and boundaries that separate populace of underdeveloped countries today were drawn during the colonial period. For example, the boundaries within and across African nations, ‘were drawn up with pencils and a ruler on a map at a conference table at Berlin in the 1880s’ (p. 653). After creating such boundaries, also known as the ‘scramble for Africa’, these colonisers were involved in creating hierarchies among races and ethnicities. In the hierarchy, European whites were kept on the top level, ‘followed by Coloureds, then Asians, then Arabs, and then Hemites (the Tutsi)’ (Mamdani, 2001, p. 654). The ethnic groups ranked the lowest in the hierarchies were considered uncivilised even while compared with other native races. An analysis of the social, cultural and political legacy of colonialism in Africa led Mamdani to conclude that ‘colonisation was not just about the identity of governors, that they were white or Europeans; it was even more or so about the institutions they created to enable minority to rule over majority’ (p. 663).

Critiques of the Dependency Model

Despite its radical arguments, the dependency model has been challenged after the 1980s. Critics claim that assumptions of under-development theories are poorly informed and highly romanticised. They argue that rather than obstructing the development of poor countries direct colonialism operated as a powerful engine for progressive transformation. First, they claim that scholars advocating the dependency model overrated the external factors and abandoned the internal analysis, especially of the social classes (Santos, 2010, p. 101). For example, Singer (1961) claims that it is wrong to take the assumption of the world system analysis for granted because there is a high chance of discounting the potential impact of national actors on the functioning of the world system while focusing much on systemic analysis. That is to say, people may ‘allow little room for divergence’ (Singer, 1961, p. 81) when they focus upon the whole. Second, this model is criticised for digressing sharply from Marxism because it silences the issue of class struggle within a country, and treats ‘the process of class formation and class struggle as residual’ (Harrison, 2005, p. 101). Finally, this model falls short in its explanation of how and why former colonies such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were modernised faster followed by the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Some studies (Engerman, Sokoloff, Urquiola, & Acemoglu, 2002) have found geographical endowments such as climate, land topography, soil quality and other factors of production such as availability of labour force, proximity and access to markets as crucial factors for development. Not surprisingly, ‘the societies that were established by Europeans who came late and had to settle for areas considered less favourable have proved more successful economically over the long run’ (Engerman et al., 2002, p. 43). Despite its powerful critiques of the modernist model and radical political agendas, the dependency model has not offered ‘adequate development strategies’ (Szirmai, 2005, p. 97) for policymakers and development planners. Amidst this critique a new question is raised: what kind of development do southern countries actually need? In answering this question and related interrogatives, the post-development model has emerged with an alternative imagination where post-modern, post-structural and post-colonial insights have been crucial.

Western Construct

Post-development scholars argue that some of the concepts such as under-development, backwardness, poverty and illiteracy are Western constructs. These concepts were constructed with some vested interests that benefit wealthy Western nations by obscuring the real problems of the southern populace. This construction of development, in its current manifestation, started only after the Second World War, especially with the commencement of US hegemony in the world economic order as reflected in the speech of President Truman (1949) noted above. This construction of development was institutionalised through the establishment of different ‘apparatuses of knowledge production’—such as the World Bank, the United Nations and USAID—that presented ‘a whole new political economy of truth’ (Escobar, 1992, p. 24) in a more legitimate and authoritative manner labelling many countries as underdeveloped or ‘the Third World’.

The Western construction of development reflects its own geopolitical imagination that not only neglects the non-Western epistemologies but also subordinates and assimilates southern countries into the capitalist system that celebrates Western culture and benefits its economy (Slater, 1993). Slater (1993) argues that both modernist and dependency models express geopolitical imaginations of the West and shapes the form and function of development. The dependency model cannot be separated from the Latin American geopolitical imagination that has particular relevance and reference to their socio-economic problems. Dependency writers, in fact, ‘did not challenge capitalism per se but argued that Western capitalism was blocking capital accumulation in formerly colonised nations’ (Preece, 2009, p. 56). The Western construction of development is based on its intellectual tradition of European Enlightenment that relied on instrumental rationality and followed technical procedure for understanding and solving social problems. And the personnel who could perform this task are not peasants working for their subsistence farming in the local villages of the South (Regmi & Walter, 2017) but development professionals trained by supranational organisations led by the West such as the World Bank, who hold the authority to analyse the problems of ‘others’ and impose readymade models of development embedded in modernist rationality.

As the construction of development stems from the Western capitalistic geopolitical imagination the approach taken so far in the name of developing southern countries has been ‘top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic’ (Escobar, 1995, p. 44). This approach treats their people as backward, uncivilised and traditional. It attempts to measure their progress and regress in technical units such as level of poverty, literacy percentage and economic growth. Such units are presented in statistical figures so as to devise so-called evidence-based scientific development plans. This technical and rational discourse has a hallucinating effects on the southern populace who happen to ‘think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped, and ignorant’ (Escobar, 1995, p. 52). In this construction, southern people represent some homogenous groups standing in binary opposition with their superior, developed and educated counterparts of the Western world.

Alternative of Development

Post-development theorists argue that the active participation of people at the grassroots level provides solutions to the development problems faced by southern countries. For example, recognition and inclusion of alternative epistemologies has resulted in the emergence of Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a valid research methodology for finding pragmatic solutions of problems faced by southern countries. For post-development scholars, PAR has been a crucial epistemological breakthrough to form an endogenous methodology that combines some important issues such as ‘techniques of adult education, social science research and political activism’ (Escobar, 1984, p. 391). The value of participatory and inclusive approaches lies in its aim to restore peoples’ capacities. For example, the recognition of peasants’ traditional knowledge and experience on farming are considered as both a sustainable and ecologically appropriate approach in the context of climate change and global warming. Hence, knowledge useful for bottom-up development ‘had to begin with peoples’ self-understanding and build a system of communication involving peasants’ (Peet & Hartwick, 2009, p. 225). If people at the grassroots do not regard Western knowledge useful for them, then its expansion to the South is not required. When peasants’ knowledge and experiences are given due recognition, they could become protagonist to defend against the colonisation of their lifeworld and act towards the advancement of their society. The idea of an inclusive approach is further elaborated by Gupta, Pouw and Ros-Tonen (2015) with an appeal for developing (a) relevant epistemic communities, communities of practice and social movements; (b) transforming governance into interactive governance to enable empowerment; and (c) adopting appropriate governance instruments for the true implementation of inclusive and participatory approaches.

One of the examples illustrating the protagonist role of community people comes from the Chipko movement of India in which rural women stood against the government when it started logging trees from their village. This initiative steered a global movement and led to the emergence of a new theory called eco-feminism. The participatory and inclusive development approaches have changed the orthodox view of development. Experts working in modernist and neoliberal institutions, such as the World Bank, have ‘begun to recognise the importance of popular participation’; and government and development institutions no longer see peoples’ participation as a threat (Peet & Hartwick, 2009, p. 217). Consequently, some traditional notions such as, ‘Experts know best’, ‘West is best’ (Wiarda, 2010) and ‘technical-rational’ approaches to development are challenged. A recent study conducted by Tripathy et al. (2010) in the two Indian states of Jharkhand and Odisha found that participatory intervention led by local women’s group was more effective than a traditional approach of health-worker-led interventions for improving birth outcomes and reducing maternal depression.

This model assumes that southern countries should find alternatives to development, which means that a rejection of the entire paradigm of development by critiquing the discursive practices of the last six decades: from the time when ‘incredibly irresponsible policies and programs’ (Escobar, 1995, p. 217) were started in the name of developing the underdeveloped world. There could be at least four strategies through which we can find alternatives to development. Firstly, it can be done by ‘going local’ instead of ‘going global’ that is suggestive of a shift in our praxis from ‘think globally, act locally’ to ‘think and act locally’ (Esteva & Prakash, 1997) because peoples’ thinking at grassroots levels are more important than the expertise of the development practitioner at the global level. Restoring local autonomy through the recognition of local culture and knowledge and taking a defensive stance in favour of localised, pluralistic grassroots movements (Escobar, 1992). Secondly, alternatives to development can be achieved by creating environments conducive for minority cultures to flourish. As argued by Escobar (1995, p. 225), minority cultures have the ‘potential for resisting and subverting the axioms of capitalism and modernity in their hegemonic form’. Thirdly, it can be achieved by learning from grassroots social movements rather than following traditional approaches to development that suppress alternative thoughts required for ‘the creation of alternative vision of democracy, economy and society’ (Escobar, 1992, p. 22). And fourthly, alternatives to development can be achieved by altering the rising level of consumption pattern, that is, reducing consumption to the level that is just sufficient for them to live: also called sufficiency revolution. Insights of sufficiency revolution can be found in new social movements such as green revolution and sustainability.

Critiques of the Post-development Model

Despite its ambitious aim for creating an alternative discourse of development and a growing support from southern scholarly communities, the post-development model has faced a number of criticisms. First, there is no real ground to confirm its arguments that development is a Western construct. For example, the basis of this argument comes from the Foucauldian interpretation of discourse but critics (Peet & Hartwick, 2009; Pieterse, 2010) argue that if reality is constructed through discourse then what reality is constructed by the discourse of the post-development model itself? Moreover, if we believe that Western scholars constructed the discourse of development, questions can be raised, what discourse did Foucault himself construct and why we do not call his discourse a Western geopolitical imagination? Secondly, it is not clear whether the post-development model is a new paradigm or just a bunch of criticisms raised against dominant development theories. According to Kuhn (1962), a new paradigm emerges when an existing paradigm does not provide an adequate explanation of a given phenomenon. Does this model meet sufficient conditions to be a distinctive paradigm? Does it have any successful practice? According to Pieterse (2010, p. 88), rather than giving an alternative to development, this model ‘sustains the overall rhetoric of development while suggesting the ability to generate something really different within its general aura … all good things put together do not necessarily add up to a paradigm’.

In a sense, some assumptions of a post-development model overlaps with ideals of capability approach (Sen, 1999). As claimed by Sen, peoples’ capability can be enhanced by ensuring a number of substantive freedoms such as freedom to participate in politics, education and healthcare and reducing sources of unfreedom such as poverty, tyranny and social deprivation. If the rhetoric of the post-development model is similar to the capability approach, how one can draw the line between the two? It leads the critics of this model to conclude that the post-development model has provided some crucial insights to critique the ideals of developmentalism but has failed to present itself as a separate paradigm. Hence, this model is too unstable and narrow to serve as a new paradigm. Thirdly, there is a danger in valorising all local practices. Mohan and Stokke (2000) argue that overrated valorisation of local practices may ‘underplay both local inequalities and power relations’ (p. 247) that could, in some instances, be more detrimental than exogenous economic and political forces. Furthermore, its initiative to find alternatives at the local level by learning from grassroots social movements and the knowledge and expertise of peasants make little sense in the context of an increasingly globalised world. And fourthly, while providing an alternative to the mainstream model of development, it proposes PAR as the best strategy to increase inclusion but critics (Chakrabarti et al., 2015) fear that ‘while the stated agenda of development is inclusion, people at the grassroots could be experiencing exclusion and marginalisation’ (p. 289).