Politics: Classifications

What was the Three World Typology?

For greater understanding of politics, it is necessary to group common governmental

policies into political systems. Heywood (2007) defined a political system as “A network

of relationships through which government generates ‘outputs’ (policies) in response to

‘inputs’ (demands or support) from the general public.” Whilst an Aristotelian system

subjugated the world view for 2500 years, the 1950s saw the introduction of the ‘three

worlds’ classification. The dimensions for this included the financial, political and

ideological policies of each country. (Heywood, 2007)

Thus, the first world consisted of the wealthy “advanced industrial capitalist West”

(McLean & McMillan, 2009) including Japan and Australia; the second world were

communist governments such as the Soviet Union and China; and the third world were

the developing economies that were poor but not communist (Almond et al, 2000).

Africa, the Middle East, Latin and Central America made up this final group.

However, there are dissenters who claim there is little need for this categorisation in the

modern world. This system only highlights the political divisions of the Cold War, namely

liberal democracies versus the communist regimes. Factors, which include the

conclusion of the cold war, the collapse of communism as second world countries are

now “countries in transition” (Kegley &Wittkopf, 1999) towards capitalism, the

development of many third world countries towards increased economic prosperity and
liberal democracy (Baylis & Smith, 2005), and how vastly different third world countries

are from each other, signifies its limited relevance in the modern society. Thus, the

classification loses its feasibility; though the ‘first world’ remains unchanged.

Written by Nicanne Evans

References

Almond, G. et al. (2000) Comparative Politics: A Theoretical Framework. New York:

Longman.

Baylis, J. & Smith, S. (2005) The Globalization of World Politics: An introduction to

international relations 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Heywood, A. (2007) Politics 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Kegley, C.W. & Wittkopf, E.R. (1999) World Politics: Trend and Transformation 7 th ed.

New York: Worth Publishers Inc.

Mclean, I. & MacMillan, A.(eds.) (2009) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.