others prefer ‘underdeveloped’, a concept that has taken on a very specific
meaning and which, as we shall see later, denotes a particular kind of inter-
relationship between countries and a particular process of change.
No one has come up with a label that claims universal acceptance. The
search is fraught with difficulties, not least ideological ones. As Goulbourne
points out, the terminology of comparative politics, particularly as far as
the Third World is concerned, is largely expressive of attitudes rather than pre-
cise analytical concepts (Goulbourne, 1979, p. xii). Cannot all countries be
described as ‘developing’ in some direction or another? If we reserve ‘devel-
opment’ for movement in a particular direction, then it has to be made explicit
what path should be regarded as development and what should not.
‘Modernization’ similarly risks all the dangers of ethnocentric evolutionism,
though as a conceptualization of social and political change it has had an
enormous impact on development studies and comparative politics.
The concept of the ‘South’ reflects some of the frustrations felt when try-
ing to differentiate between countries in terms of meaningful indicators that
show why grouping countries is helpful to analysis. It is also possible to talk
about rich and poor countries, but this draws a boundary between countries
which many people interested in the Third World wish to treat as a single
grouping. It is easy to understand the appeal of ‘underdevelop’ as a transi-
tive verb in distinguishing those countries whose exploitation made possi-
ble the development of their exploiters. The idea that advanced societies
secured their own advancement by underdeveloping poor countries is at the
heart of dependency theory.
Such difficulties form the substance of the rest of this chapter. The purpose
of examining the concept of the ‘Third World’ is that one can gain a prelimi-
nary insight into some of the problems experienced by such countries by exam-
ining the validity of using a single category for such an amorphous group.
Meanings and objectives
To be able to evaluate the different positions adopted by those who have
entered into dispute about whether ‘Third World’ is a meaningful concept it
is necessary to separate out the different perceptions that people have about
the countries which they think deserving of the label.
The original meaning of the term ‘Third World’ referred to a group of
non-alignedcountries outside the great power blocs. There has been a lot of
discussion as to who used the term first, but it is generally accepted that it
was the French demographer and economic historian, Alfred Sauvy, who
The Idea of a ‘Third World’ 11