Read about the Human Development Index, a project of the UN Development Program

Points to ponder

• Terminology—systems are sometimes classed in one of several alternative groups, and it’s useful to know the lingo
  • By world number
    • First world (US, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Israel)
    • Second world (the former Soviet Union, eastern European states; perhaps China)
    • Third world (low income countries in Africa and Asia; perhaps Latin American states as well)
  • Hemispherically
    • North (advanced industrial states, most of them north of the equator)
    • South (economically less developed states, most of them south of the equator)
  • MDC, LDC
    • MDC = More Developed Countries (roughly the North)
    • LDC = Less Developed Countries (roughly the South)
• Political systems change over time, and these changes involve political changes, economic changes (which underscores Danziger’s emphasis on political economy), and social changes
• Though Danziger is not very keen on the term, these changes can be described generally as modernization
• Modernization has conventionally been thought to involve an interrelated set of changes
  • Urbanization
  • A decline in agriculture as the foundation of the economy, toward industrialization and then development of the service sector
  • Secularization—the weakening influence of traditional religious authorities
    • The rise of religious fundamentalism not only in certain Muslim counties but also in Hindu India and Jewish Israel and in the US is a helpful reminder that conventional wisdom may be wrong
  • Increases in mass media production and use
  • Increases in literacy
  • Broadening of social relations from family and clan to a wider network of contacts involving more impersonal relations
  • The trend toward greater use of achievement norms (what you know) rather than ascriptive norms (who you are) in social exchanges
  • A breaking down of village life and increasing exposure and mobilization to the larger community
• The identification of these modernizing trends was initially done on an analysis of the US and Britain, but they seem to apply pretty generally
  • On the other hand, late modernizers can sometimes “leap-frog” some phases
    • For example, mass communications in many LDCs skipped over broadcast media (radio and TV) and telephone to take advantage of satellite and cellular technology
• Things can sometimes get worse:  The UN Development Report 2005 (Table 1.1) found 18 states that had lower Human Development Index scores in 2003 than they had in 1990 (Russia is one; and 13 of them are in Africa where HIV and civil wars have wreaked havoc)
• A purely economic measure of development is Gross Domestic Product per capita PPP (standardized to take into account differences in purchasing power)
• Contrary to the hopes of many, modernization does not necessarily result in  democracy
  • Though there has been a recent trend, in the last 25 or 30 years, towards democratization, this only came after a very long and depressing period of authoritarian rule and political instability after 1945 when some former colonies secured their independence (another batch got their independence around 1960) and the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe were communist states
    • Even so, as George Bush likes to remind us, the only stable democratic states in the Middle East are Israel and Turkey (and there are issues in Turkey)
  • Consider the Freedom House report and its map of freedom
• Increasingly, development trends are affected by global processes
  • LDCs are dependent for capital (finance) on MDCs
  • MDCs are dependent on LDCs for natural resources, petroleum in particular
  • World-wide epidemics--HIV-AIDS, of course, but also avian flu--can have widespread disastrous effects
  • To the extent that development means greater consumption of fossil fuels, which traditionally has been the case, development may be increasingly impacted by environmental threats (global warming)
  • China is now the second-largest state economy, largely based on its low cost production of consumer goods for the First World
  • The largest economy, not a state economy but a common market, is the European Union which was formed in large part as a counterbalance to the United States and the combined power of Pacific Rim economies; the US response to the EU was NAFTA
  • The outsourcing of jobs from the US, for example, to India has implications—some obvious, some not so obvious—for development in both states
• An issue separate from the level of economic development is how equally income (or wealth) is distributed; skipping the way in which it is calculated, look at the concept of the Gini Index and how various states score on inequality

Questions to consider

• If the central hallmark of a failing or weak state is the inability of the state to enforce its laws, can you point to things that may suggest the US is a weak state?
• Comparatively, how well developed is the US?  In Gross Domestic Product per capita (PPP)?  In terms of human development (the Human Development Index)?  In terms of income distribution (the Gini Index)?  In terms of the Freedom House indices of political rights and civil liberties?

Assignment  Since all systems change, let us consider together, in an on-line discussion, how what we call the United States has developed, modernized, changed economically, socially and politically over the last 220 years and what contemporary political significance these changes have had.  Take note that you are asked to identify the poltiical consequences of economic and social changes. A special DB forum, "Change, change, change" has been created for the purpose.  Your contributions, which will be graded as an exercise, can be posted from now through noon on Monday 7 November.