to the extent that its members use inanimate sources of power and/or use
tools to multiply the effects of their efforts’ (Levy, 1966, p. 11). Black asso-
ciated modernization with the adaptation of institutions to ‘the rapidly grow-
ing functions that reflect the unprecedented increase in man’s knowledge,
permitting control over his environment’ (Black, 1966, p. 7). Rustow saw
modernization as resulting from man’s ‘rapidly widening control over
nature’ (1967, p. 3). Moore equated modernization with ‘the process of ratio-
nalisation of social behaviour and social organisation’, defining rationaliza-
tion as the ‘normative expectation that objective information and rational
calculus of procedures will be applied in pursuit or achievement of any
utilitarian goal’, an example being the use of sophisticated technology in
industry (Moore, 1977, pp. 34–5).
Modernization theory requires us to have some sort of perception of non-
modern or traditional society. It also requires us to think about the way in
which traditional social structures and values somehow hinder or present
obstacles to modernization (Higgott, 1978, p. 31). The values and institu-
tions of traditional society are seen as causing underdevelopment and block-
ing modernization. Development policies have been designed to overcome
‘obstacles’ to modernization which take the form of traditional values. For
example, traditional societies are sometimes said to have failed to understand
the problem of over-population and therefore fail to adopt appropriate meth-
ods of birth control. Or they fail to see the dangers of over-urbanization,
leading to the appalling squalor of Third World slums and shanty towns.
These failures of perception are associated with what is seen as a lack of
rationality in the sense of being able to relate means to ends and so produce
policies, strategies and interventions that will deal with problems. So part of
the idea of a society becoming modern is a society which not only develops
the administrative capability to embark upon policies but also develops the
very way of thinking that permits phenomena to be confronted, a mode of
thought which accepts that things can be changed by human agency, by set-
ting goals and working out the means of achieving them.
Cultural modernization
Secularization and rationalization require changes in cultural patterns.
These changes were categorized by Parsons (1951, 1960, 1966) as ‘pattern
variables’; variable patterns of related values with which people make
judgements about other members of their society or the way people orient
themselves within social relationships. He argued that social change was
Modernization and Political Development 47