Modernization/Development Theory, CORDS, and FM 3-24?
I didn't realize this thing times out on you and lost a huge post (my fault for not saving it elsewhere and cutting and pasting.)
So, because I don't have time to recreate it now, I'll just post a few articles and return to the thread at a later date. Sorry, moderators, I am absolutely furious at myself for losing about an hours worth of work:mad:
1. http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/universit...ess-e4cRc8JEqg
The Illusion of Progress: CORDS and the Crisis of Modernization in South Vietnam 1965-1968
2. Jacqueline Hazelton:
Quote:
The mechanism at work is gaining the support of most of the populace. The HAM understanding of the solution to insurgency grows from the Cold War literature on modernization theory.
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta.../p498775-6.php
3. Bernard Finel blog:
Quote:
Instead, they just assume that legitimacy is a function of the provision of goods services and government accountability. I have no idea where this comes from. It ignores, among other things:
(1) The role of shared foundational myths;
(2) The presence of an external enemy;
(3) The importance of charismatic leadership;
(4) The role of coercion (yes, coercion can contribute to legitimacy);
(5) Traditional power structures;
(6) Distributional policies;
(7) Local autonomy;
(8) Ethic, religious, and sectarian connections;
(9) The presence of “escape” mechanics to supplement “voice.”
http://www.bernardfinel.com/?p=1400
4. Reframing the Historical Problematic of Insurgency: How the Professional Military Literature Created a New History and Missed the Past, Gumz Jonathan E.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00004/art00003
5. Tony Corn: COIN in Absurdistan: Saving the COIN Baby from the Afghan Bathwater (and Vice-Versa)
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...p/479-corn.pdf
6. Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, Austin Long:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP200.html
(So what I lost were the various passages on modernization theory that I had culled, but you all can search for yourself....)
Sorry, everyone, I'll add more when I have a chance and try and tie the different strands together.
Modernization Theory is not dead, but ...
Modernization Theory was largely the creation of Seymour Lipset in a 1959 article "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy"(Seymour Martin Lipset,The American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Mar., 1959), pp. 69-105. Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=000...3E2.0.CO%3B2-D ). It was a synopsis of a research symposium conducted to try to determine what conditions were necessary for democracy to flourish. Out of that article came a number of ideas, most of which were centered on the structural/functional aspects discussed above. But there were other ideas that were tossed around.
The most resilient one has been built on the idea of the economic capacity for a country to transition to and maintain a democracy. Work is still ongoing into this idea. The most vocal advocate of this idea is Adam Przeworski. (See for example "Modernization: Theories and Facts" http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&typ...rzeworski.html or dss.ucsd.edu/~mnaoi/page4/POLI227/files/page1_13.pdf ). Przeworski's work ties a minimum per capita GDP to functional democracies of about $6,000 in 1985 dollars; about $12,800 in today's dollars. Below that level a democracy cannot survive. It might be worth noting that the CIA World Fact Book lists China's per capita GDP at only $8,400. Well below what Przeworski postulates is require to transition to democracy.
Another idea dealt with values. Certain values, particularly individualistic ideals, were tied to the transition to democracy. The cheerleader of that idea has been Ronald Inglehart. You can see some of his work at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/. Of particular interest is his use of secular/rational values vs traditional values and survival vs. self-expression values to map world cultures with specific clusters for "modernized" democracies. A more in depth version of his theories can be found in "Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence" (http://www.amazon.com/Modernization-.../dp/0521846951).
Modernization Theory is not dead but the structural/functional version of it has been largely discredited. You cannot simply build democratic institutions and expect democracies to spring up. There must be a fundamental change in the society. This change seems to begin with a general increase in the opportunities available to the citizens due to an increase in their income level (per capita GDP) that is followed by a change in attitudes from a traditional, communal value set that is interested in surviving to an individualistic value set that is interested in personal self-expression and fulfillment. Those types of changes do not happen overnight and certainly do not happen because you built a school in a town where there is no disposable income.
To see more check out http://www.foreignaffairs.com/featur...ization-theory
Army Aviation Named After Indian Tribes
Link to US Army Big Picture histroy of Army Aviation....very differant concept from all the others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpFg9...eature=related
a theory byu any other name ....
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Madhu
So, my question to the probably two whole people that are interested in the topic, is how much did the general intellectual climate of our larger foreign policy intelligentsia find representation in current COIN doctrine?
I am not really sure about COIN doctrine in general, but American Coin doctrine that supports the policy objective of spreading democracy does not have to many other choices. Modernization Theory is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to exogenous (externally imposed) democracy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Madhu
If these theories are discredited, why do we continue to interact with nations based on such theories?
Two points here. The first is that there are no alternatives. There are really no other competing theories out there to explain how a state becomes a democracy.
The second point has to do with Modernization Theory itself. It is not really a complete theory. It is more a group of observations about what conditions have existed in a society when a country became or successfully continued to remain a democracy. There is really no coherant explination of why these things happen, just a lot of tables and charts that show that these things (education and literacy, wealth and a capitalist economy, egalitarian values, political activite citizenry, etc.) tend to coincide with democracy. It is kind of like claiming a theory of percipitation that states that when it is cloudy it rains. It is a largely accurate observation. But the theory does not explain why sometimes it is cloudy but it still does not rain or why, in places like Hawaii, it can rain from a largely cloudless sky.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Madhu
Is what I am postulating even true, and is it contributing to our current problems in A-stan?
I would say that it is contributing to our problems in A-stan, but that question is larger than I can answer here. I would suggest you go back and read the original article if you can find it. You will see how Lipset discussed various ideas. He also concludes that democracy is only one possible consequence of the various social requisites. Others since, like Larry Diamond, have tried to push this idea as a simple causal relationship. It is that kind of thinking that can be damaging.
BTW, I am very interested in this topic and have spent the about four years now working through it. So you are not alone ... (insert theme from"The X-Files" here)
Thank you for the replies!
This is a fantastic thread. I am definitely going to follow-up on some of the posted links.
@ TheCurmudgeon - I think you're right about the democracy bit. I've got more to post on that, but for now, more quotes on modernization that might be helpful to this discussion:
From a paper I linked above (History of Insurgency - How PME forgot history, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2009, JE Gumz)
Quote:
Another glaring historically transcendent assumption in the current COIN literature is its reliance upon mobilization, modernization, and development leading to democratic forms of governance and free market economies as the answer to insurgency. In this sense, we are truly returning to the Vietnam War yet as with most modernization theories, history is jettisoned to the side as an obstacle to be overcome. As many have argued, modernization theory tends to flatten difference and place countries on a universal trajectory of develoment. Thus, in the section on logical lines of operations in FM 3-24, some of the goals include 'support and secure elections,' 'support broad-based economic opportunity (micro to macro development) and 'support a free market economy.
And yet more, I love looking for papers....
....it's writing things up that I don't like very much. For all the fun I tend to make of "writing up papers instead of doing the hard thinking first", I actually respect scholarly research of value.
Hard Hearts and Open Minds? Governance, Identity and the Intellectual Foundations of Counterinsurgency Strategy, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 2008 M Fitzsimmons
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...024692#preview
Quote:
The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of "modernization theory" in western academic and policy communities (also known as "political development theory"), a theory of development that emphasized a teleological convergence of societies through several stages of modernization from primitive "traditional" forms toward western style industrialization, secularization, and political pluralism. Legitimacy in this framework was earned by whoever could most reliably guide the society along these hypothesized paths of modernization, with their characteristic signals of good overnance - economic growth, political representation and efficient administrations.
From Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen (page 21)
Quote:
The RAND corporation established an Insurgency Board that brought together external researchers, along with RAND analysts, to examine the new environment through the lens of RAND's work on counterinsurgency since the 1950s. In some ways, RAND acted as an institutional memory bank for the new counterinsurgency movmement, in part because some veteran researchers, Steve Hosmer among them, had been present at the creation - in the 1950s, when RAND had played a crucial early role in developing classical counterinsurgency theory.
I started reading about all of this about 2009 on Abu Muqawama's blog. The comments section there sometimes spiralled out of control and the conversation on this topic became very bad-tempered at times. I do not wish to recreate those feelings and I have no interest in playing intellectual "gotcha." I simply want to learn. I don't regret that I was critical on that board, but the tone that I sometimes took was terrible.