Political Development: A

Theoretical Framework
By
Iftekhar ahmed Ansari
The Beginning:

• Karl Polanyi (1944) has labelled 19th century as an age of great transformation for western
civilization but 20th century proved to be even greater era of transformation for newly
liberated nations of Asia, Africa and South American countries.
• The level of difficulty posed by understanding the nature and political behaviour of these
third world countries was rendering western models ineffective. System theory and
structural functional models were insufficient in predicting the political behaviours of these
newly independent nations.
• In such testing times, scholars like Lucian Pye, Colemen, Almond, Riggs and Myron Weiner
propounded Political developmental model to comprehend nature of politics in these
countries.
• It proposes to factor in various developments in various fields like- cultural beliefs, feeling
of nationalism, role of bureaucracy, economic backwardness, level of mobilization and
participation, stability and orderly change etc. in predicting the stage of political
development of a country
Introduction
• Political development theory, which is thought as a branch of comparative political
science disciplines, came into prominence after the Second World War,
• as new nations/states of Asia, Africa and Latin America began to appear on the
international scene and American scholars began to take a new interest to study the
political dynamics of these newly emerging countries.
• In the decades that followed, political scientists postulated a number of theories to
explain how and why societies change and develop as
• they come in contact with industrialization and the modern world. Scholars working
in this field rarely agree on what constitutes political development.
• Political development has been taken to mean different things to different persons.
• It has usually been defined in terms of the presence or absence of certain identifiable
conditions and institutions.
Cont’d…
• the many attempts to define political development and conceptualize
it in a systematic manner, perhaps the most significant are those
• by Lucian W. Pye, G. Almond and Powell, Kenneth Organski, Alfred
Diamant, Samual P Huntington, James Bill, A.H. Somjee, Greenstein
and Polsby, Ferre, Jaguaribe, Leonard Binder, F.W Riggs, and S.N.
Eisenstad.
• However, with the change of time, the study of political development
underwent certain changes.
Lucian Pye’s analysis
• Lucian W. Pye is the first political scientist who analyses the concept of
political development in department, clear and precise manner. Pye in
his work, ‘Aspects of Political Development’, highlights some of the
important characteristics of political development,
• that are generally associated with Economic Development,
Modernization, the operation of Nation state, Administrative and Legal
development, Mobilization and Participation, the building of
Democracy, Stability or orderly change; Mobilization power, Social
change, and the sense of National respect in International affairs
• Pye offers three important aspects of political development which
create deep impact on the governance of the state,
Three levels:
• , i) Equality: i.e., mass participation, universalistic laws, equality of opportunity;
• ii) Capacity: i.e., the capacity of the political system to manage public affair, to
control controversy, and cope with popular demands; and
• iii) Differentiation: i.e., the process of greater structural separation, specialization
and integration of all participating institutions and organizations.
• These aspects of Pye could be stressed at three levels viz., with respect to the
population as a whole;
• with reference to the level of governmental and general systemic performance
and
• with reference to the organization of the policy.
Six crisis
• Pye further says that there may be tensions between the demands for equality,
the requirements for capacity, and the processes of greater differentiation.
• Thus, a pressure for greater equality can challenge the capacity of the system,
and differentiation can reduce equality by stressing the importance of quality
and specialized knowledge.
• He identifies political development in terms of six crises that a political system
has to face in the process of political development.
• They are: identity crises, legitimacy crises, participation crises, organizational
crises, penetration crises; and distribution crises.
• The nature of these crises determines the sequence of political development
in different countries of the world.
Almond’s analysis
• Almond and Powell in their joint venture work, ‘Comparative Politics: a
• Developmental Approach’, defined political development as “the consequence of
a cumulative process of role differentiation, structural autonomy, and
secularization. And all are related to system capabilities and system maintenance.
• It is a consequence of challenges which may emanate from the international
environment, the domestic society, or the political elite within the political
system”.
• Their study was based on structural-functional analysis of political system which
identified three characteristics of developing political system
• -structural differentiation, secularization of culture and the expansion of
capabilities.
Cont’d…
• They identified four types of challenges of political development, viz.,
• state building, referring to the requirement of increased integration
and penetration of the system;
• nation building, referring to the requirement of greater loyalty and
commitment to the system;
• participation, referring to pressure from groups to have a part in the
• decision-making process; and pressure to ameliorate unequal
distribution of wealth and income among the people by the state.
Alfred Diamant’ analysis
• Alfred Diamant defined political development as “a process by which a political
system acquires an increased capacity to sustain successfully and continuously
new types of goals and demands and the creation of new types of
organization”.
• This process requires a centralized and differentiated government structure.
Furthermore, the government must have control over the extraction of
resources from society, as well as the ability to influence most of society.
• Thus Diamant suggests that a government’s ability to cope with a number of
goals and demands at the same time is the ‘mark’ of modernity.
• Diamant’s definition of political development emphasizes on the previously
acquired capabilities of centralized and differentiated government structures,
as well as the persuasive and extractive abilities of the state
Huntington’s analysis
• Huntington’s concept of ‘Political Development and Political Decay’ is
an Important contribution to the theories of political development.
• He assumes that “Political Development is associated with the
strength or weakness of Political organizations and Processes”.
• He develops four concepts while attempting to generalize the concept
of political development viz. adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and
coherence.
• The level of institutionalization of any political system can be defined
by these four concepts.
Cont’d…
• According to Huntington, “the most common notion of political development is
that of movement towards democracy.”
• Samuel Huntington (1965) finds political development to be a process that
involves three stages one after another in a sequence to be a positive force. The
break in the sequence and simultaneous occurrence or intermixing may result in
political decay. These stages are-
• a. Rationalization of Authority wherein central authority subsumes other local or
regional alliances.
• b. Development of specialized differentiated structures to deal with new political
challenges.
• c. Expansion of political participation that results in slow and steady
amalgamation of local groups into single central authority.
Cont’d…
• Huntington argues that Political development is not unilinear, but is
governed by a range of problems that may arise separately or
concurrently.
• According to him, Political development can be reversible. It should
define both political development and the circumstances under which
political decay occurs.
• Huntington develops the idea of political decay which he connected
and interlinked with the process of political development.
• Institutions, according to him, decay and dissolve as well as grow and
mature with time.
Marxist Analysis:
• The Marxist theory of political development emerges as a major alternative to
liberalism or the capitalistic model of development. It advocates classless and stateless
society wherein the principles of equality reign supreme.
• It believes in the creation of a people’s democracy controlled by peasants and the
industrial proletariats. Marx says that the basis of whole economic system was the
system of production and change of products. It was regular and continuous process
and a historical fact which cannot be denied.
• The mode of production of the material means of existence condition the whole
process of social, political and intellectual life. So, the economic system is the
foundation on which the political legal, ethical and intellectual superstructure exists.
• The theory of development is based on the materialistic interpretation of history,
wherein the forces of production (tools of production and technology) determine the
relations of production
Cont’d…
• According to Marxian approach political development involved movement from
a discredited bourgeois order to a fully socialistic system in which the state is
required during the transitional phase so as to accomplish the ideal of a
classless society that would eventually culminate in a stateless condition of life.
• Agents of development- Bourgeois class in first instance and working class in
the second.
• Crucial middle element in the pattern of development is the Bourgeoisie. In
other words, Marxian position holds three assumptions 1. Social class structure
follows distribution of economic forces. 2. Socialism Can not emerge until the
working class exists. 3. As a result, socialism must emerge out of conflict with
the middle class. When applied to 3rd world countries, development signifies a
switch from liberal democracy to genuine people ‘s democracy.
A.H Somjee:
• . In his book, ‘Political Capacity in Developing Societies’, A. H. Somjee claims that
political system is sensitive to changes in society’s political environment.
• He advocates an ethno-political approach to the study of political development,
emphasizing the human dimension - the particular social, cultural and historical
forces of the countries under study where the people themselves need to be
involved in their own development process. For Somjee, political development is
viewed as the growth of a people’s ability to hold their rulers accountable for their
political actions.
• Somjee has called this ability, ‘political capacity’. With this definition changes in the
political attitudes of traditional societies can be examined. If a society’s attitude
toward political authority changes from submission to active participation, then
both political capacity and political development have increased.”
Greenstein and Polsby:
• According to Greenstein and Polsby, the term political development has positive connotations,
and hence political scientist tended to apply it to things they thought are important and/or
desirable.
• They suggested four ways in which the term was generally used: geographical, derivative,
teleological, and functional.
• Geographical refers to the politics of developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and
Latin America.
• In the derivative sense a study in political development is a study of the political aspects and
consequences of the broader process of modernization.
• Teleologically, political development was defined as a movement towards one or more goals or
states of being of a political system like democracy, stability, legitimacy, participation, capability,
identity, integration, bureaucratization, security etc.
• In the functional sense, it was thought of as a movement towards the politics of modern
industrial society.
 Jaguaribe’s analysis:
• Helio Jaguaribe, in his book, ‘Political development: A general theory and a
Latin American case study’, try to find out the structural characteristics of a
society,
• After an extensive review of literatures on political development, he reaches
the synthesis that “political development entails both modernization and
institutionalization (or, as he expresses it mathematically, PD = M + I).
• According to this theory, Political modernization is a process of increasing the
operational variables of a polity namely rational orientation, structural
differentiation and capability.
• Political institutionalization on the other is the process of increasing political
participation variables of polity namely mobilization, political integration and
political representation.
Binder et al:
• In their edited series, ‘Crises and sequences in political development’, Binder
et al. define political development as a multidimensional syndrome of
governmental capacity, differentiation and equality.
• Binder argues that these three developmental dimensions of political
development are necessary to cope with five crises: legitimacy, identity,
participation, penetration and distribution.
• The concept of equality has three components: national citizenship, universal
legal order, and achievement norms and capacity refer to the ability of a
system to innovate, to manage continuous change, to adapt, and to create.
• He specially referred governmental capacity as the ability of governing elites
and crises were therefore seen from the perspective of the threats to their
position and the necessity of elite for the maintenance of changing order.
Cont’d
• Political development is describe as a “process of admitting all groups, including
newly recognised interests as well as new generations, into full political
participation without disrupting the workings of the political system”.
• Leonard Binder has referred five attributes to political development
• (1) change of identity from religious to ethnic and from parochial to societal;
• (2) change In legitimacy from transcendental to immanent sources,
• (3) change in political participation from elite to mass and from family to group;
• (4) challenge of distribution from status and privilege to achievement, and
• (5) change in the degree of anti legal penetration into social structure and out
to remote regions of the country.
Fred Riggs’s Analysis :
• Riggs main work was based on the interpretation of Lucian W. Pye’s
concept of political development. He utilized the concept of
differentiation and specialization with a specific concentration on “key
governmental technologies”, relating these to two additional aspects
of political development, equality and capacity.
• Riggs analyses equality in terms of members participating in the
formulation of policies and capacity in terms of the ability of political
and· administrative system to deal with the goals.
Cont’d…
• Riggs maintains that there should be a balance between the two attributes
of development; otherwise there would be a “developmental trap”.
• It is evident that Riggs considered these four variables as the collective
aspects of political development. He defines key government technologies
as bureaucracies, political parties, and legislatures.
• In addition to these, Riggs added a host of minor technologies, one being a
test for recruitment. Riggs suggested that judicial procedures exist for the
settling of disputes, and the creation of private associations and
corporations, such as labour unions.
• When Riggs theory is applied to the third world, the political systems seem
to be externally languishing in developmental traps’.
Eisenstadt’s analysis:
• Eisenstaedt takes political development to mean a rise in the output level of a political
system. He has used the concept of political development “as the economist uses self-
sustained’ growth to mean a continuous process of growth which is produced by forces
within the system and which is absorbed by the system.”
• In this respect Eisenstandt argued that the political system can assure its own continuity
in the face of continuous new demands and new forms of political organization. Political
development, according to Eisenstadt, has three general traits:
• 1) the development of a highly differentiated political structure;
• 2) extension of the scope of the central, legal, administrative and political activities and
their permeation into all spheres and regions of the society; and
• 3) the continuous spread of political power to wider groups in the society. Eisenstadt
equates political development with the ability of a political system to meet changing
demands and then to absorb them in terms of policy making
Nature:
• There is a lack of an agreed-upon conception of the core concept: political development. According to
Pye, the framework of analysis remain somewhat loose because there “is still considerable ambiguity
and imprecision in the use of this term”.
• Political Theorists have often disagreed not only on the appropriate approach to use when studying
political development, but also on the actual nature of political development itself. For instance,
Samuel Huntington suggests that a country’s level of political stability is an indication of its degree of
political development.
• In contrast, Huntington and Nelson consider mass political participation as an important element of
the political development process. As a result of these disagreements, scholars have constructed
several approaches to the study of political development. Initially, Gabriel Almond and James Coleman
offered a Structural- Functional approach in order to facilitate comparison of different political systems.
• Then, Barrington Moore Jr. suggested that a class analysis would allow for an understanding of the
direction political development would take. Later, Binder et al. claimed that a country’s development
was the result of its government’s reaction to specific types of crises. The term is still in the process of
evolution
Approaches:
• In the study of political development generally two approaches are
used.
• First approach considers it as a dependent variable, i.e dependent on
level of modernization, system of political democracy as a guiding
principle of day today affairs, industrialization, literacy and education,
spread of apolitical cultural values etc.
• Second approach considers political development as independent
variable, i.e, aligning it with resolute leadership, development of
bureaucracy, formation of political parties, political participation,
mobilization of resources, capacity, equality, differentiation and
feeling of nationalism.
Models:
• There are two types of conceptual models for the study of political
development, namely,
• a. Continuum Model
• b. Stages Model
• The conceptual model aims to study series of developmental
processes as separate variables like level of Gross National Product,
percentage of educated individuals in a population, percentage of
dedicated beds in a hospital along with other facilities, level of
electoral participation etc. This model was found to be deficient in the
absence of an elaborate theory that can include all the aspects of
development.
Stage Model:
• The stages model has been useful in the study of political development as
it seamlessly studies various stages involved in political development.
Besides, one stage after another it also involves study of transitional phase
and all the relevant factors influencing development under single broad
idea. The three stages are-
• Traditional stage- characterized by rural society and agricultural economy.
• Transitional stage- characterized by mixed economy having rural society
and primary stage of industrialization.
• Modern stage- a developed stage of political development identified with
high mobility of citizens and increased capacity of system confront new
challenges through differentiated specialized structures and roles along
with enhanced capacity of the citizens to accept changes.
Agents:
• Some of the prominent agents of political developments are as under-
• 1. Revolutionary Leadership- generally evolves during crisis
situation. It can overcome challenges and foster development through
long term policy decisions and steely and resolution implementation
of decisions. It should traverse middle path in tackling crisis and seek
amicable reconciliation between traditional and revolutionary
changes.
• 2. Political Party- it works as a catalyst in enhancing process of
political development. It acts as an leader making platform through
democratic decision making, expansion of franchise to marginalized
sections of society and generalizing political participation.
Agents:
• Army- In a country where stable government and just administration
fails to form roots, army wrests power from civilian government. It
promotes modern and efficient administration before handing over
the reins of power to democratic system of governance. In the
bargain, fostering political development.
• Modern Bureaucracy- works as an agent of progressive change from
traditional to modern society through framing of effective, efficient
and future oriented policy measures.
• Feeling of Nationalism and political participation- strengthens state-
building and nation making by promoting trust and loyalty among
citizens towards system. Participation promotes trust and efficacy
towards system and encourages political development.