Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T23:59:42.380Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Underdevelopment and the “Gap” Theory of International Conflict*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

K. J. Holsti*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia

Abstract

A common hypothesis about the sources of international conflict holds that war and turmoil will be an inevitable consequence of the widening “gap” between the developed and underdeveloped states. This view is based on a common Western image of underdeveloped countries which assumes that striving for economic betterment is universal in all underdeveloped countries, and is primarily a grass-roots phenomenon. This essay challenges the hypothesis and the assumptions upon which it is based. It argues that the images of underdevelopment generated by economists using aggregate data are in many cases incorrect or distorted. Studies by anthropologists which are based on micro- rather than macrodata produce quite different impressions of the underdeveloped society. The human costs involved are for the most part overlooked in development schemes, and the wholesale importation of Western economic development strategies has led in many cases not only to a poor allocation of resources, but also to many of the problems the developed societies are now facing, including urban congestion, rising crime rates, higher incidence of mental breakdown, and the like.

The paper concludes with a critical review of common liberal solutions to development problems, and suggests that one strategy possible for some developing countries is increased isolation from the international system. International conflict may result not only because the underdeveloped states wish to close the “gap,” but because some may choose deliberately to reduce their dependency on the West. Conflict may be generated through isolation as well as through increased interaction.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This is a revised version of a paper presented at the IX World Congress, International Political Science Association, Montreal, August 23, 1973. Barbara Haskel, Hal Sarf, and Janice Stein, all of the Department of Political Science, McGill University, and Ole R. Holsti, Duke University, made many useful comments on a draft of this essay. I appreciate their kindness.

References

1 See, for examples, Wolff, Richard D., The Economics of Colonialism: Britain and Kenya, 1870–1930 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar, and Long, Ngo Vinh, Before the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1973)Google ScholarPubMed.

2 This common view is proposed, for example, in Partners for Development: Report of the Commission on International Development, ChairmanPearson, Lester B. (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 7 Google Scholar; see also McNamara, Robert S., The Essence of Security (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 145146 Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Organski, A. F. K., World Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1968)Google Scholar, and Mc-Namara, p. 146; Angelopoulos, Angelos, The Third World and the Rich Countries (New York: Praeger, 1972), p. 7 Google Scholar. For a critique of the statistical biases and fallacies in measuring the “gap,” see Bauer, P. T., Dissent on Development (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), chap. 1Google Scholar.

4 Throughout this paper, the term “Western” includes most of the developed socialist states. The literature on the causes of underdevelopment is expanding rapidly, largely fostered by the pioneering work of André Gunder Frank. See particularly his essay The Development of Underdevelopment,” in Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution? ed. Frank, A. G. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969)Google Scholar. A summary and critique of the underdevelopment-dependency literature is in Cohen, Benjamin J., The Question of Imperialism: The Political Economy of Dominance and Dependence (New York: Basic Books, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Cairns, H. A. C., Prelude to Imperialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965)Google Scholar; Stillman, Edmund and Pfaff, William, The Politics of Hysteria (New York: Harper and Row, 1964)Google Scholar; Sachs, Ignacy, La decouverte du tiers monde (Paris: Flammarion, 1971), chap. 4Google Scholar.

6 See, respectively, Leys, Colin, “Politics in Kenya: The Development of a Peasant Society,” British Journal of Political Science, 1 (07, 1971), 307337 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van der Horst, Sheila T., “The Effects of Industrialization on Race Relations in South Africa,” in Industrialization and Race Relations: A Symposium, ed. Hunter, Guy (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 112 Google Scholar; Long, Norman, Social Change and the Individual (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968), chap. 9Google Scholar; Galtung, Johan, Members of Two Worlds: A Development Study of Three Villages in Western Sicily (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Jacobs, Norman, Modernization Without Development (New York: Praeger, 1971), p. 178 Google Scholar. Nevertheless, the growth of urban population in Africa, even if unstable, has been phenomenal. Most cities doubled their populations during the 1960s. For statistics, see Morrison, Donald G., Mitchell, Robert C., Paden, John N., and Stevenson, Hugh M., Black Africa: A Comparative Handbook (New York: The Free Press, 1972), part 2Google Scholar.

7 The transfer of tribal customs and social relationships into an urban environment is possible. See Gutkind, Peter C. W., “African Urban Family Life and the Urban System,” in Urbanism, Urbanization, and Change, ed. Meadows, Paul and Mazruchi, Ephraim (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), pp. 215222 Google Scholar.

8 This bias is acknowledged in International Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” in World Bank Operations: Sectoral Policies and Programs (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 418 Google Scholar. For a study of the antirural bias of development planners in India, see Lipton, M., “Urban Bias and Rural Planning in India” in Development and Underdevelopment: The Third World Today, ed. Bernstein, Henry (Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 235253 Google Scholar; for Africa, see Heleiner, Gerald K., “Structural Change in Africa,” in The Widening Gap, ed. Ward, Barbara, Runnals, J. D. and D'Anjou, Lenore (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 92 Google Scholar.

9 Nayar, Baldev Raj, “The Political Mainsprings of Economic Planning in the New Nations: The Modernization Imperative Versus Social Mobilization,” paper presented at the conference “Asia in the Seventies,” Carleton University, Ottawa, 11 1971 Google Scholar.

10 Jacobs, , Modernization without Development, pp. 131133 Google Scholar.

11 Goulet, Denis A., The Cruel Choice: A New Concept in the Study of Development (New York: Atheneum, 1971), p. 80 Google Scholar.

12 Jacobs, p. 126.

13 See the paper, Ujamaa—The Basis of African Socialism,” in Nyerere, Julius K., Freedom and Unity: A Selection of Writings and Speeches (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 162–171 and 183188 Google Scholar. The Arusha Declaration of 1967 explicitly rejects a Western consumption-oriented society for Tanzania.

14 Jacobs, chap. 5, and pp. 314–316.

15 Goulet, p. 70.

16 World Bank Operations, pp. 96–97. Until the late 1960s, India's priorities lay clearly with heavy industry. Although 80 per cent of the population was employed in agriculture, only 20 per cent of public development expenditures went to this sector. See Partners in Development, pp. 287–288.

17 Dan Usher describes finding that an early conception of living conditions among the Thais, based on economic studies, was greatly at odds with the reality he experienced living among them. The low per-capita income figures indicated virtually nothing about material welfare or sense of well-being. See his The Price Mechanism and the Meaning of Na-tional Income Statistics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, intro.

18 For an account of the depressing effects of unbalanced urban industrialization on a rural population, and the distortion of government expenditures in favor of the modern sectors, see Bates, Robert H., “The Policy Origins of Migration in Zambia,” paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, 09, 1973 Google Scholar.

19 Among the many examples in the literature, see the attitudes expressed implicitly and explicitly in Guthrie, George M., The Psychology of Modernization in the Rural Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

20 Virtually all commentators characterize nonindustrializing and non-high-growth economies as “stagnant.” For one example, see Fisk, E. K., The Political Economy of Fiji (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Fisk praises the Indian community in Fiji for its aggressive economic advancement, while criticizing native Fijians for their lack of interest in large-scale economic pursuits.

21 Jacobs, Modernization Without Development, chap. 5.

22 For a summary of the debate on characteristics of peasant societies, see Foster, George, “Interpersonal Relations in Peasant Society,” in The Human Factor in Political Development, ed. Palmer, Monte (Boston: Ginn, 1970)Google Scholar.

23 Lewis, Oscar, Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1959)Google Scholar.

24 (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958).

25 Chan Kom, A Maya Village (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1934)Google Scholar; Tepoztlán: A Mexican Village (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930)Google Scholar; and The Little Community, and Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

26 The Little Community, p. 63.

27 Redfield, , Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 132133 Google Scholar.

28 For others, see Greenway, John, Down Among The Wild Men (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972)Google Scholar; Iwanska, Aliczia, Purgatory and Utopia (Cambridge, Mass.: Shenkman, 1971)Google Scholar; Peattie, Lisa, The View from the Barrio (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Turnbull, Colin M., Tradition and Change in African Tribal Life (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1966)Google Scholar.

29 Goulet, The Cruel Choice, chap. 3.

30 Foster, George, Traditional Cultures and the Impact of Technological Change (New York: Harper, 1962), p. 59 Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 The ethnocentrism of analysts of underdevelopment in the socialist countries is remarkably explicit. All local customs which inhibit industrialization and the development of an urban proletariat must be destroyed, no matter at what cost. There is only one route to modernization, namely heavy industry and collective agriculture, based on the Soviet pattern. Solodovnikov, V. G., Afrika vybirat put (Moscow: Hayka, 1970)Google Scholar.

33 For a critique of Myrdal's approach to economic development, see Bauer, Dissent on Development, chap. 5.

34 Foster, , Traditional Cultures …, pp. 3040 Google Scholar; Said, Hafeez M., The Village Culture in Transition (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1970), pp. 140143 Google Scholar.

35 Foster, , Traditional Cultures . .,. pp. 3337 Google Scholar.

36 An FAO study cited in Arensberg, Conrad M. and Niehoff, Arthur H., Introducing Social Change (Chicago: Aldine, 1971), p. 126 Google Scholar.

37 For other costs, see Blumer, Herbert, “Industrialization and Race Relations,” in Industrialization and Race Relations, ed. Hunter, , p. 226 Google Scholar; Joshi, V. H., Economic Development and Social Change in a South Gujarat Village (Baroda: University of Baroda Press, 1966), pp. 101113 Google Scholar; and McKendry, James M. et al., The Psychological Impact of Social Change in the Philippines (Science Park, Penn.: H. R. B. Singer, Technical Report 857-R-2, n.d.), pp. 66, 72 Google Scholar.

38 Goulet, , The Cruel Choice, p. 80 Google Scholar; Redfield, , The Little Community, p. 62 Google Scholar. Quantitative evidence supporting this statement is found in Guthrie, , The Psychology of Modernization …, pp. 90, 96 Google Scholar.

39 McKendry et al., p. xii.

40 Boultwood, George, “Danish Plan for Greenland Too Fast,” The Montreal Star, 10 12, 1972 Google Scholar.

41 Statement of Fiji minister of tourism to a meeting in Djakarta, reported in The Sun (Vancouver), Sept. 4, 1974, p. 34 Google ScholarPubMed; Civilization Brings Grief to Aborigines,” The Sun (Vancouver), Sept. 19, 1974, p. 42 Google ScholarPubMed; McKendry et al., p. 18.

42 Possibly this assumption is being questioned more frequently today. See, for example, the testimony of U. Alexis Johnson, former Under-Secretary of State in the United States, before the House Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Development. Johnson claimed that the concept of development needed to be redefined to eliminate the worst effects of industrialization as experienced in the advanced countries. U.S., House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Development, National Security and Changing World Power Alignment, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., 1972, pp. 362394 Google Scholar.

43 Noted in Wood, Robert C., “The Future of Modernization,” in Modernization, ed. Weiner, Myron (New York: Basic Books, 1966), p. 49 Google Scholar.

44 The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 08 18, 1971, p. 8 Google ScholarPubMed. The rising figures on child abuse may be accounted for, on the other hand, by new legislation requiring physicians to report incidents to police authorities.

45 A study by W.M.S. and Claire Russell demonstrates the positive correlation between urban density and crime rates, reported in The New York Times, 08 16, 1970, sec. 1, p. 53 Google ScholarPubMed. Care must be taken in interpreting crime and mental health statistics, as these may be manipulated for political purposes, or they may reflect better detection methods.

46 National Security and Changing World Power Alignment, Johnson's testimony on August 7.

47 Woodhouse, Edward J., “Re-visioning the Future of the Third World: An Ecological Perspective on Development,” World Politics, 25 (10, 1972), 9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 For example, Rummel, Rudolph J., “The Relationship Between National Attributes and Foreign Conflict Behavior,” in Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence, ed. Singer, J. David (New York: The Free Press, 1968), pp. 187214 Google Scholar. See, however, the chapter by Michael Haas in the same volume.

49 Lanternari, Vittorio, The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults (New York: Knopf, 1963)Google Scholar.

50 Other forms of protest that have been linked to the disruptive effects of modernization are social banditry and some guerrilla movements. See Hobsbawm, Eric J., Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

51 Cooper, Richard N., “Economic Interdependence and Foreign Policy in the Seventies,” World Politics, 24 (01, 1972), 172173 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Vernon, Raymond, Sovereignty at Bay: The Multinational Spread of U.S. Enterprises (New York: Basic Books, 1971)Google Scholar.

53 Evans, Peter B., “National Autonomy and Economic Development: Critical Perspectives on Multinational Corporations in Underdeveloped Countries,” International Organization, 25 (Summer, 1971), 678 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 For a discussion of some of the negative consequences of American firms operating in the Canadian economy, see Levitt, Kari, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1970)Google Scholar. See also Ajami, Fouad, “Corporate Giants: Some Global Social Costs,” International Studies Quarterly, 16 (12, 1972), 511529 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 World Bank Operations, p. 418.

56 Illich, Ivan, “Outwitting the ‘Developed’ Countries,” New York Review of Books, 13 (11 6, 1969), 20 Google Scholar. For a more general discussion of the negative cultural consequences of multinational firms operating in underdeveloped countries, see Osterberg, David and Ajami, Fouad, “The Multinational Corporation: Expanding the Frontiers of World Politics,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 25 (12, 1971), especially 461468 Google Scholar. Concerned with the problem of distorted consumption, the government of Tanzania has prohibited the importation of automobiles for private use. See Woodhouse, , “Re-visioning the Future of the Third World,” p. 28 Google Scholar. In February 1973, Tanzania began prohibitions against effectuation of certain Western dress habits, such as long hair for males and short skirts for females.

57 For a discussion of the negative cultural impact of American television advertising in Latin America, see Barkenbus, Jack N., “Communication and Cultural Change: Experience in Latin America,” paper presented to the meeting of the International Studies Association, New York, 03 1973 Google Scholar.

58 Disenchantment among some non-Marxist economists with many of the liberal solutions to underdevelopment is discussed briefly in Cohen, , The Question of Imperialism, pp. 169, 218 Google Scholar.

59 The net foreign exchange earnings brought by tourism vary greatly from country to country. But in many of the underdeveloped countries, the foreign-owned tourist industry must bring in management, building supplies, and many operating items, including food and beverage. In these countries net foreign exchange earnings are usually from 45 per cent to 60 per cent of gross receipts.

60 Race Relations and Industrialization in the Caribbean,” in Industrialization and Race Relations, ed. Hunter, , pp. 3945 Google Scholar.

61 Huntington, Samuel P., “Foreign Aid for What and for Whom?Foreign Policy, No. 1 (Winter, 19701971), 186188 Google Scholar.

62 Griffin, Keith, Underdevelopment in Spanish America (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 124 Google Scholar.

63 Alschuler, Lawrence R., “Satellization and Stagnation in Latin America,” paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research, Mannheim, West Germany, 04 1973 Google Scholar.

64 For example, Burton, John, Systems, States, Diplomacy, and Rules (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Modelski, George, Principles of World Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.