authority and the generation and distribution of wealth; and that effective gov-
ernment needs to be responsive and accountable (Barkan, 1994, pp. 87–9).
Functionalism drew attention to the importance of seeing societies as
consisting of interdependent parts so that one could adopt a dynamic rather
than static approach to the analysis of systems of government. The study of
politics had to a very large extent adopted a rather insular, normative and
legalistic format which functionalism completely changed.
Political development theory inspired the production of a large number of
monographs – over 200 by 1975 – yet many would share Eckstein’s assess-
ment that the result of all this effort was ‘mostly muddle’ (Eckstein, 1982,
p. 451). However, the many criticisms to which functionalism has been sub-
jected have themselves formed an important part of the process of acquiring
a clearer understanding of political change in the Third World. A debt is
owed to functionalists for stimulating so much debate about political
change and for forcing critical assessment of their ideas. Nevertheless,
modernization theory and functionalism have had many detractors. An
assessment exposes a number of theoretical and conceptual weaknesses
which leaves modernization approaches to politics fundamentally flawed.
The problem of ‘tradition’
The concept of ‘tradition’ as deployed by modernization theorists poses
numerous problems. First, there is the emphasis on obstacles to develop-
ment and the way modernization theory drew upon earlier evolutionary
modes of thinking in order to characterize as ‘traditional’ anything in devel-
oping societies which appeared to be such an obstacle. Those who applied
such theories in the field, by devising public policies which they believed
the governments of developing countries would do well to implement, often
adopted a critical stance towards tradition, seeing it as impeding progress.
They decried parochial and primordial values. The key question is of
course: whose progress? This tended not to be asked by the modernization
theorists. Consequently practitioners came away from the field, after visits
as consultants or official aid donors, frustrated that local people could not
see that the introduction of, for example, some new technology would really
make a difference to agricultural productivity or health. Resistance to such
progress was seen in terms of the burden of tradition and an inability to
break with outmoded ways of perceiving the world.
However, the local people directly affected may have been making very
rational calculations about the economic and political risks that are inevitably
Modernization and Political Development 59