CONVERGENCE THEORIESindustrial society, they argued, include rapid
changes in science, technology, and methods of
production; a high degree of occupational mobili-
ty, with continual training and retraining of the
work force; increasing emphasis on formal educa-
tion, particularly in the natural sciences, engineer-
ing, medicine, managerial training, and adminis-
trative law; a workforce highly differentiated in
terms of occupational titles and job classifications;
the increasing importance of urban areas as cen-
ters of economic activity; and the increasing role
of government in providing expanded public serv-
ices, orchestrating the varied activities of a large
and complex economy, and administering the ‘‘web
of rules’’ of industrial society. Importantly, Kerr et
al. envisioned these developments as cutting across
categories of political ideology and political systems.
Although the ‘‘logic of industrialism’’ argu-
ment is often cited as a prime example of conver-
gence theory (see Form 1979; Moore 1979;
Goldthorpe 1971), Kerr et al. never explicitly made
this claim for their study. While mentioning con-
vergence at various points in their study, the au-
thors pay equal attention to important countercur-
rents leading toward diverse outcomes among
industrial societies. The concluding chapter of
Industrialism and Industrial Man is, in fact, entitled
‘‘Pluralistic Industrialism,’’ and addresses the sourc-
es of diversity as well as uniformity among indus-
trial societies. Among sources of diversity identi-
fied are the persistence of existing national
institutions, enduring cultural differences, varia-
tions in the timing of industrialization (late versus
early), the nature of a nation’s dominant industry,
and the size and density of population. Counterposed
against these factors are various sources of uni-
formity, such as technological change, exposure to
the industrial world, and a worldwide trend to-
ward increased access to education leading to an
attenuation of social and economic inequality.
The critique of convergence theory in the
study of modernization recalls critiques of earlier
theories of societal evolution advanced under the
rubric of social Darwinism in the nineteenth cen-
tury and structural functionalism in the mid-twen-
tieth century. The use of convergence theory to
analyze modernization has been attacked for its
alleged assumptions of unilinearity and determin-
ism (i.e., a single path of development that all
societies must follow), its teleological or historicist
character (Goldthorpe 1971), its Western ideo-
logical bias (Portes 1973), and for ignoring the
structurally dependent position of less-developed
countries in the world economy (Wallerstein 1974).
Yet a careful review of the literature suggests that
many criticisms have often tended to caricature
convergence theory rather than addressing its ap-
plication in actual research studies. Since the 1960s
few if any researchers have explicitly claimed con-
vergence theory, at least in its unreconstructed
form, as their own. For example, Moore (1979), an
exponent of the ‘‘conventional’’ view of moderni-
zation, subtitled his book, World Modernization,
‘‘the limits of convergence,’’ and went to great
pains to distance himself from the ‘‘model mod-
ernized society’’ position associated with early ver-
sions of convergence theory (see Moore 1979, pp.
26–28, 150–153). And Parsons (1966), whose name
is virtually synonymous with structural functional-
ism, concluded one of his later writings on com-
parative sociology with the statement that ‘‘any
linear theory of societal evolution’’ is ‘‘untenable’’
(p. 114). As Form (1979) observes, convergence
theory passed through a cycle typical of social
science theories: a burst of initial interest and
enthusiasm, followed by intense criticism and con-
troversy, finally giving way to neglect. The major
challenge to those wishing to revive convergence
theory and rescue it from its critics is to specify its
theoretical underpinnings more precisely, to de-
velop appropriate empirical studies, and finally
account for variation as well as similarity among
observed cases.FORMS OF CONVERGENCE AND
DIVERGENCEIn recent years Inkeles (1980, 1981; also Inkeles
and Sirowy 1983) has made the most systematic
attempt to reformulate convergence theory and
respecify its core hypotheses and propositions.
Inkeles (1981) argues that earlier versions of con-
vergence theory failed to distinguish adequately
between different elements of the social system,
which is problematic because these elements not
only change at different speeds, but may move in
opposite directions. He proposes dividing the so-
cial system into a minimum of five elements for
purposes of assessing convergence: modes of pro-
duction and patterns of resource utilization; insti-
tutional arrays and institutional forms; structures