Question

What are the major approaches to political development? Analyze critically different approaches to political development as well as the relationship between development and post-colonialism.

Answer 1

Interest in the politics of the developing areas has increased steadily since World War II, and scholars have now produced a sizable collection of single-country monographs, several regional studies, and at least one attempt at a global synthesis.1 This literature has tended to stress various conditions as the primary correlates or determinants of political development. This research note offers a taxonomy of five approaches to the study of political development. The taxonomy draws upon both traditional and contemporary sources, and studies of both “developing” and “developed” areas, to derive a framework for ordering the literature on political development produced in the past two decades. The five approaches are (I) “legal-formal,” (2) “economic,” (3) “administrative,” (4) “social system,” and (5) “political culture.”

Nations exist in a very similar way. In general, we refer to the building and growth of a nation's institutions and systems as its political development. The goal of any nation is to develop into a strong, healthy country, (and to continue developing throughout time) but political development can occur or be influenced in a variety of ways. As we all learned from being kids, development is never as simple as we expect.
While there are many approaches to political development, today we're going to talk about three of the most commonly debated. For this first approach to political development, imagine the following scenario:

There's a kid. His uncle owns a car repair shop and doesn't trust new workers. So, the uncle trains the kid to become a mechanic, pays for him to finish mechanic school, and then hires him to fix cars. The kid developed a trade and a skill, but had no say in what that skill would be. It was determined by someone else, someone with something to gain.

That same theory can be applied to political development through the dependency approach. Instead of a kid and his uncle, imagine a colonial empire and its colony. Traditionally, an empire uses its colonies to extract resources (say, diamonds), which the empire then turns into products it can sell on the global market.

The colony gains institutions like governments and infrastructure, but they're all focused on the singular role of extracting resources for the empire. Political development occurs, but is controlled by someone else.
While the dependency approach is easy to apply to colonial empires, that's actually not what it was originally used to describe. This same model applies to any relationship in which a stronger power benefits from controlling the development of a weaker state.

Specifically, Latin American scholars noted that American and European investors were building up industries and institutions in Latin America for their own gain. Political development was occurring, but it was not in a way that was ultimately beneficial to Latin America. The development was exploitative.
Let's imagine another scenario: a kid wants to be wealthy and successful when they grow up. So, that kid studies hard, gets good grades, goes to college, graduates, and gets a job. Why did the kid do this? Because that's the expected path.

This scenario equates to our next model: the evolutionary approach, which basically states that political development occurs in a step-by-step progression focused on achieving a specific end. In our scenario, that end was a good job. In terms of political development, that end is assumed to be an industrialized economy.

The evolutionary approach is most often used to describe the assumed patterns a nation will go through in order to develop a fully industrialized economy. There are actually several theories built around this, describing the expected social, political, and economic changes that accompany each step.

Many see this approach as reliably predicting the behaviors and experiences of nations trying to guide their own political development. However, it's also based on the notable assumption that all nations will eventually develop along an industrial model.

You'll notice that we call it the 'evolutionary approach', as in a non-optional system of change necessary for survival. That assumption has made some scholars concerned about Western biases being cast over the rest of the world.In this thesis I will evaluate the applicability of three
general models of political development to a case study. The
three models are those known as the dependency approach, the
evolutionary approach, and the institutional approach. The case
study is the Mexican state. I will divide my discussion into
three parts.
In the first part I will discuss the three approaches in
various ways, and will attempt to reduce their general premises
to common denominators. This will facilitate discussing their
relative merits--or demerits--in connection with the. case study.
In the second part I will discuss the Mexican state from
various points of view and in various periods of time, in order
to provide an overall picture that can later be examined from
the perspective of each of the three approaches.
Finally, in the third part, I will assess the adequacy of
the three approaches to the study of political development by
analyzing their applicability to the political development of a
nation such as Mexico.

. Theoretical Approaches
Modern political development theory came into prominence
after the Second World War, as new nations began to appear on
the international scene and American scholars began to take a
new interest in international politics. 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.
Eventually, several of these theories fell into three general
categories which today seem to represent the most commonly used
approaches to the study of political development. These three
categories, or approaches, can be described as follows:
1. Dependency. This is the approach which studies the
development of society from the viewpoint of economic and
political dependence. This approach argues that the process
of development of certain countries created the
underdevelopment of others, leaving the underdeveloped ones
with distorted economies incapable of self-sustained growth,
and of political self-determination.
2. Evolutionary. This approach maintains that the developed
nations of Europe and America went-through a long process
which eventually took them, stage by stage, to
industrialization and development. According to this view,
all societies must foilow a similar movement from
traditional to modern industrid1 state before they can be categorized as economically, politically, and socially
developed nations.
3. Institutional. This approach is concerned chiefly with
political systems and government. It holds that development
consists of being able to establish institutions that can
.adequately handle new problems that are created as social
and economic changes overtake a society.
The basic premises of these approaches, with multiple
variations, have been applied to numerous political development
studies in the past three or four decades, in the attempt to
analyze the degree and quality of development of various nations
around the world.
Although much interesting information has been gleaned from
such studies, there has been a great deal of controversy in
academic circles about the results obtained. Questions have been
raised about the ability of these three approaches to explain
the many contradictions that are found in most developing or
underdeveloped nations. For instance, can the dependency
approach adequately explain the capacity for self-sustained
growth shown by some nations classified as underdeveloped? How
does the evolutionary approach account for the fact that some
otherwise still backward nations have reached a highly
industrialized stage without first fulfilling the prescribed
preliminary stages? Does the institutional approach consider the
fact that external demands and pressures, rather than internal
ones, can topple a capable md stable government?

These types of contradictions will be examined in
evaluating these three approaches with regard to Mexico's
political development. But there are also some basic differences
to contend with. For one thing, the three approaches differ in
their respective inter-relationships between political, economic
and social variables. In this connection, the first approach,
dependency, posits that external economic forces exerted by
developed nations are the cause of economic underdevelopment and
consequently of social and political backwardness. The second
approach, evolutionary, claims that advanced political
development is the result of a long historical process of
interrelated social, political, and economic change. And the
third approach, the institutional, postulates that only
well-established political institutions can guarantee social and
economic development.
Furthermore, there are differences in the language and
interpretation of each approach, as there are in many fields of
the social sciences. In the present case, not only do the three
approaches come from different backgrounds and postulate
different theories, but there is controversy, even among
scholars who postulate the same approach, as to the meaning of
political development and its terminology.
However, there is one similarity that seems to bind the
three approaches. This could be referred to as the European
bias, because the developed nations of the Western World, i.e.
Europe and North America, are present, implicitly or explicitly,
in all three, either as the model of development to be followed
(as in the evolutionary and the institutional approaches), or as
the cause of underdevelopment of other nations (as in the
dependency approach).
Because of the underlying European values and ideologies
that color the three approaches, this bias has some significance
in studies of political development. This would especially be
true where non-European nations are the focus of study. In
studies concerning the political development of Latin American
nations such as Mexico, which are themselves products of a
European system, the effects of the European bias would be less
significant, unless, as is often the case in such studies, the
structural Europeanness of these nations is ignored..
I will examine this and other similarities and differences -- -
in this thesis. But more important, in order to discuss the
relative merits of the three approaches, I will locate and
examine some of their common denominators. For example, I will
discuss the fact that there seems to be implicit or explicit
recognition in the three approaches of a dynamic interaction
between social, political, and economic factors, in that the
strength or weakness of one can affect the development of the
others.
In sum, in this thesis I will examine some of the general
aspects of three approaches to the study of political
development, as well as the more salient characteristics of
their respectite premises, in order to determine how each one.can explain the political development of the Mexican state.

“Colonialism and development do not, at first, sit together easily, or lend
themselves to comparison” (Duffield & Hewitt 2009, p. 9). Despite the
recognition of the historical trajectory that links colonialism to development,
development’s colonial legacy has often been concealed in order to distance the
work of development from the negativity surrounding colonialism (Kothari 2006,
p. 97). However, upon a closer look, there are hidden similarities and common
discourses.
The similarities and differences between colonialism and development can be
identified through institutional histories, analyses of the origins of development,
and the colonial ancestry of developmental thinking and practices (Kothari 2006,
p. 93). These continuities and divergences will be generally discussed below to
give a background on colonialism and development’s similarities and thus
motivate our hypothesis that they share similarities.
Colonialism provided the means for capitalism to achieve global expansion
(Loomba 2005, p. 107). Similarly, it can be argued that development provides the
means for capitalist entrepreneurs to have access to new and expanding markets
and cheaper production means.
A liberal problematic of security is a shared view of both colonialism and
development strategies (Duffield & Hewitt 2009, p. 10). For example, the
consensus highlights the need for long-term peace and security in number 37 and
40 rather than a more realist desire for a balance of power. It states that security is
essential to accomplish poverty eradication (EU 2006, p. 7). The concept of
security was internal to the colonial state, whereas today, it is internationalized.
However in both cases, states of insecurity call forth similar mechanisms of
trusteeship or external intervention.
Colonialism involved a confrontation with or disapproval of practices ‘repulsive
to civilization’. These practices included bride price, female circumcision,
polygamy, and widow immolation – the forced suicide of widows after their
husbands have died (Loomba 2005, p. 182; Williams & Young 2009, p. 104).
Today, development policy has similar goals and is known to work to combat
these practices. Number 19, referring to gender equality, in the consensus (EU
2006, p. 4) aims to combat violations of women’s rights such as bride price and
female circumcision. Number 12 also promotes equitable access to sexual and
reproductive health services. This can be seen as a way to ensure that women
receive support should the aforementioned practices occur.
Elements of civil society began to appear in the more advanced colonies
(Williams & Young 2009, p. 104) as institutions arose. Today the consensus
encourages civil society to develop in stating that it plays a vital role as a promoter
of democracy, social justice, and human rights (Number 18, EU 2006, p. 4).
Although the consensus shares this similarity with colonialism, it may not have
promoted civil society for the same reasons.

Lastly, colonial administration functioned largely through existing local
authorities and power structures (Loomba 2005, p. 97). Modern development also
often goes through the existing structures of local administration to facilitate the
delivery of aid.
In order to more closely analyze the consensus and its colonial ties, we will use
the aid of two operational indicators to transform our work from theory to practice,
outlined in the next chapter.

The definition of colonialism is the act of one nation controlling another for economic gain. An example of colonialism was England's control over India