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The importance of political participation for sustained capitalist development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Grace Goodell
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Extract

The problem facing most of the Third World today is no longer how to launch development, but rather how to sustain it. Consider the colossal disappointments, after 150 years of independence, of Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Peru — and the debacle of Argentina. Recall the historic leadership which set Egypt, Thailand, and Turkey on their drives to modernization fully a century ago: now, nearly stagnant. Contrast the economic promise inherited from the colonial period and the determination and unbounded elan inspired by independence with today's languor in India, Kenya, and Malaysia, the listlessness of Zimbabwe, Indonesia, The Philippines, and North Africa: indeed, the failures of Ghana and Nigeria. The issue is no longer how to assure political stability — but even with stability, how to foster steady development whose gains will accrue and whose momentum can be sustained.

Type
Nécessité de la vie politique
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 1985 , pp. 93 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1985

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References

(1) Which, by 1930, equalled Canada in leading the world's exports in grain and attracting massive European investment; like Canada, too, it boasted a low population density, very few indigenous peoples of contrasting tribal culture and an influx of hard-working European immigrants.

(2) We use the term rationality in Weber's Ecosense, to refer to the economic calculation of the capitalist.

(3) See, for instance, Adams, Dale, Mobilizing rural household savings through rural financial markets, Economic Development and Cultural Change, XXVI (1978), 547–560CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gurley, John and Shaw, Edward, Financial intermediaries and the saving-investment process, Journal of Finance, II (1956), 37–51;Google ScholarMcKinnon, R., Money, Capital and Economic Development (Washington, D.C., The Brookings institution, 1973)Google Scholar;Patrick, H., Financial development and economic growth in underdeveloped countries, Economic Development and Cultural Change, XIV (1966), 174–189CrossRefGoogle ScholarShaw, E., Financial Deepening in Economic Development (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Gupta, G. Singh and Singh, B., Pattern of voluntary savings in India, Savings and Development, II (1978), 224–234Google Scholar; Pischke, J. D. von, Towards an operational approach to savings for rural development, Savings and Development, II (1978), 43–60Google Scholar; Wai, U. Tun, Financial Intermediaries and National Savings in Developing Countries (New York, Praeger, 1972)Google Scholar.

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(19) Ibid. pp. 265 ff.

(20) Landes, , op. cit. p. 303Google Scholar.

(21) Ibid. pp. 304–5.

(22) Powelson, J., Population growth and unemployment in Africa, Cultures et diveloppement (Louvain, Université catholique, 1978), p. 6Google Scholar.

(23) Landes, , op. cit., p. 344Google Scholar.

(24) Ibid. p. 372.

(25) Mitigating against the early and quite efficacious vitality of the labor movement in the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth were many factors. These included the political system's unresponsiveness to the lower orders' demands, but also: a) the putting-out system which dispersed labor in distant, isolated places, and left workers unfamiliar with commonly-experienced complaints; b)the vast immigration of Irish workers at the peak of the period, to regions of heaviest industrialization; these workers did not bring with them the British farming population's staunch organizational skills and experience, and as foreigners they were much more easily intimidated; c) the century-long persistence of paternalistic measures such as the Poor Laws, etc.; d) the generally high wages (which in fact served as a stimulus for the invention of machinery).

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(28) Op. cit. p. 106.

(29) Allen, , op. cit. pp. 206 ffGoogle Scholar.

(30) This should explain why the current political science concept of ‘corporatism’, by which the State coopts intermediate structures into its orbit, cannot in the long term provide the requisite underpinnings of development. The State cannot carry out its mandate to ‘coordinate’, as referee, if it is also a major player. Though technostructures crats despise it, the tension between center and periphery is essential.

(31) The important role of religion, law, and of participating checks and balances Haragainst centralized power is dramatically documented in Berman's, Harold new volume, Law and Revolution: the formation of the Western legal tradition (Cambridge, Haragainst vard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.