70-23,27-S BOWLING, John William, 1920- A CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY. i The American University, Ph.D., 1970 Political Science, international law and | relations i j • University Microfilms. A XEROX Company. Ann Arbor. Michigan © Copyright by John William Bowling 1970 A CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY by John William Bowling Submitted to the Faculty of the School of International Service of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Studies Signatures of < Chairman: ^ Deapi of the School Date: 1970 THE A M E p p tfljpsiTY The American University Washington, D. C. H U 3 The gentle journey jars to stop; The dreadful dream is done; The long-gone goblins, up ahead Stand waiting, every one. Walt Kelly TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction ............................................. 1 Analytical Propositions................................. 1 Introductory No t e ................................... 8 Chapter I Parallels in World History..................................21 Chapter II The Coming of the Western Culture: The Birthplace and the Borderlands.................... 38 Chapter HI The Coming of Western Culture: Spain....................... 53 Chapter IV The Coming of Western Culture: Eastern Europe.............. 64 Chapter V The Coming of Western Culture: Russia and J a p a n ............ 91 Chapter VI Ideologies: "Democracy, " " C o m m u n i s m , " and "Fascism" . 123 Chapter VII The Theme and the Actors: Nationalism and the Elites .... 148 Chapter VIH The Record in Afro-Asia and Latin Am e r i c a ................. 189 Chapter IX Casting the R u n e s ........................................ 226 Selected Bibliography........................................ 245 Primary Sources ........................................ 245 Secondary So u rces ...................................... 250 INTRODUC TION Analytical Propositions Contemporary theories of political development are based, in whole or in part, explicitly or implicitly, on five assumptions. The central assumption is that the process called "modernization" is unique typologically and specifically, is without historical parallels, and partakes of inevitability. It is further assumed that the foci of decision-making in non-Western polities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America have made, are making, or will make deliberate choices to reject their "traditional" ways of life and to embrace "modernity. " It is assumed that the two prime and consciously sought results of this choice, and the two hallmarks of modernity, are "economic development" and "political participation. " The phenomenon usually described as "national integration" is assumed in almost all contemporary development theory to be an instrumental value/process essential to the attainment of "modernization" as marked primarily by "economic development" and "political participation. " Furthermore, "national integration" is usually assumed to be limited by and dependent upon shared 2. aspirations toward "modernization" rather than shared linguistic, ethnic, and cultural factors. A survey of world history indicates that a succession of great human cultures, most of them developing over a period of centuries, have come and gone in the past. Each of these great cultures has been based on its own unique pattern of values and techniques. There are no transcultural standards by which these cultures m a y be ranked in terms of their inherent value in guiding and ordering the lives of men. What contemporary theorists call "modern" values and techniques represent the totality of another one in this set of world cultures, one which seems to have originated about 300 years ago in northwestern Europe. "Modernization" is a culture- centric description of the process by which that particular culture has developed in northwestern Europe and the process by which it has, like other cultures before it, penetrated and influenced areas outside its native environment. The ma n y historical examples of inter-cultural penetration and interaction prior to the coming of our own great culture -- that of northwestern Europe -- yield certain co m m o n and recurrent features. The most important of these is the emergence of third, hybrid, cultures out of a situation of massive interaction. Another is the extreme differentiation between masses and elites, between the cities and the countryside. The relative capacity of each culture in military and police terms has been the salient element in determining which will be the "male, " dominant, and active culture of any two in a state of interaction, arid which will be the passive, influenced one. Elements have been borrowed from one culture and adapted to another primarily by elites struggling to attain or retain privilege and status in competition with other elite groups. In areas of heavy penetration from an outside culture, existing customs, laws, and constitutions are weakened while new ones are not strong enough to mitigate and channel inter-elite struggles for status and privilege. Elite security disappears and unrestrained struggle between competing elites becomes a salient feature of social life at such times. Finally, cultural borrowing tends to be not from the birthplace of a culture but from a pre­ viously heavily influenced hybrid culture. Our own Western culture has been penetrating strongly into areas outside its native soil for about two centuries, and the record of that interaction to date shows that the general characteristics listed above for the general category also hold good for this specific instance. It appears that the initial exposure of non-Western masses to Western values and techniques in the absence of a local elite mo r e willing and capable than the masses of comprehending and grasping such alien elements re­ sults in a political-social syndrome characterized by the cargo cult. When such local elite elements do exist, however, and serve as a filtration and translation mechanism for such borrow­ ings, the basic and uniquely Western value of the ethnic- linguistic-cultural unit as a basic group identity, along with the techniques used to translate this identity into military, police, and persuasive power tools, has been of primary interest to such elites. They have tended to adapt and utilize this value and these techniques as a uniquely effective weapon in their bitter and con­ stant struggle for privilege and status with competing elites. Both dominant and challenging elites in these circumstances have been motivated by the desire to get and keep status and privilege for themselves and their offspring. They have utilized certain apparently efficacious elements of the alien culture as instruments. They have tried to justify themselves through the modification or destruction of existing political myths and the substitution therefor of new myths or new mythic elements. They have tried to indoctrinate politically conscious elements of their populations with these myths and have convinced themselves of the independent reality of the myths. They have without hesitation destroyed existing laws, customs, and constitutions in the course of establishing such myths, even at the cost of greatly sharpening elite struggles and weakening elite security. Any elite which has not utilized the Western culture in this fashion to the best of its ability has been hopelessly disadvantaged vis-a-vis any elite which has done so. Central to the penetration of Western values and techniques into alien cultures has been ethnic-linguistic nationalism as born in northwestern Europe and modified in central Europe. It has proved itself superior to all competitors as a basic group identity foundation for the mounting of military, police, and propaganda efforts. It has accordingly been siezed by both dominant and challenging elites in non-Western areas as the central thread of their new political myths. The formation and consolidation of such myths has required the existence or fabrication of three elements: a national experience, a national destiny, and an adversary just powerful and malevolent enough to threaten attainment of the national destiny but not so powerful as to be irresistible. These nationalist political myths, operating in societies where pre-existing elite truces based on custom, law or consti­ tutions have been destroyed, have resulted in two prototypical regime forms based on hypernationalist sentiment. One is radical revolutionary totalitarianism of which the paradigms are Jacobinism, European fascism, and Stalinism. The other is consolidating authoritarian dictatorship, exemplified in history by Bonapartism and the nationalist dictatorships of Iberia and Eastern Europe. Nationalism has prevented the formation of solid multi­ ethnic and multi-lingual polities in the sense of a real sharing of power, and has stimulated fissiparous tendencies in such polities. It has rendered those myths based on it highly suscep­ tible to militarization and irredentism. It has provided a neces­ sary, but far from sufficient, framework for the adoption of Western techniques of production, war, police controls, and propaganda. Such techniques can improve the chances for "economic development" and "political participation" but need not necessarily do so. The five assumptions of contemporary development theory listed above are incorrect when measured against the present scene in Latin America, Asia and Africa. "Modernization" is neither without parallel nor inevitable. Neither