SOME KEY IDEAS REGARDING DEVELOPMENT

Some years ago, verging on fifty, Samuel P. Huntington wrote a fairly influential book, Political Order in Changing Societies (POCS).[1]  In that book, he offered an analysis of what factors affected the aims and goals of lesser developed countries (LDCs).  With the conflicts in southeast Asia of that time (the sixties), there seemed to be a bit of interest over the challenges LDCs faced – challenges that still exist today. 

Communist attempts to spread their influence among those nations probably spurred a lot of interest here in the US.  With the fall of communism, at least that communism that emanated from the Soviet Union and a more virulent Red China, concern in the US has waned a bit.  But it is felt here that what Huntington wrote about those countries, does seem to have relevance today.  It gives one not only understanding of what can or should happen to LDCs, but perhaps what is happening or should happen in the US.

          This posting and, at least, the next posting will review Huntington’s book and draw from it what might give one understandings over current American realities and their significance.  At first, the review will describe that book’s content as it dealt with the LDCs’ issues.  Overall, POCS is a systems analysis of what Huntington saw was the most pressing problem LDCs faced; i.e., their ability to govern.

          His study assumes that any analysis of an LDC should be contained within the boundaries of that LDC.  It should also question that nation’s political system’s ability to meet the social/political/economic requisites necessary to stave off decay, that could eventually lead to systems failure.  In other words, for LDCs that are in the midst of developing, their efforts are on a time clock; can they accomplish sufficient development before their system fails bringing its efforts to a crashing end?  It turns out, development unleashes disruptive forces.

And what are they aiming to develop?  That would be becoming a society with a self-sustaining economic system, sufficient equalization of economic distribution, and sufficiently democratization of political processes.  In other words, how much like the Western democracies of North America and Europe can they imitate or resemble. 

So far, a more current reading of this study suggests two criticisms one can lodge against the book:  one, it “unwisely” limits its view to only internal factors – perhaps paying an unjustified blind eye to the manipulation external elites and powerful nations have on the politics of LDCs – and using capitalist nations of the West to be the model for these nations to follow – irrespective of their varied cultures, geographic conditions, or historical narratives.  But with that in mind, one should move on.

What Huntington seemed to be after was his hope that subsequent emperical studies of LDCs would identify those factors that lead to political conditions in which polities can govern.  In that, he made a further assumption:  development or (another proWestern term) modernization creates new social forces within societies and, in turn, they cause disruptive influences which makes necessary adaptations hard to accomplish.  It was Huntington’s observation that success in adaptation, at that time, was rare.  Instead, one could expect, in those nations, instability.

So much so, that Huntington saw stability as the essential prerequisite to development or modernization.  Stability was his measure of a polity’s ability to govern, and, therefore, he held it as his major focus – his major dependent variable or condition.  He seemed to be warning:  get this wrong and all else is a waste of time; development will not happen. 

Yet, both on the part of developed nations who are playing a role in LDC development and indigenous parties involved in that process tend to be insensitive to or not sensitive enough to the implications of Huntington’s advice.  These players, Huntington judged, were missing the mark for they were not addressing the essential requisites and that neglect landed up only furthering disruption.

He identified a complex social fabric.  Events that on the surface seem prudent and positive, prove not to be; while, events that intuitively seem dysfunctional, turn out to be essential.  For example, what usually is disruptive, violence, at times proves unavoidable and useful.  Where economic development, seen as an independent goal, can be of obvious use, but at the same time proves to be disruptive.  And then there is corruption – at times, believe it or not, a potential substitute for revolution or rebellion – is almost synonymous with instability.  Complexities abound.

The central argument posed by Huntington was that relatively high modernization (development) progressions, which can be measured by rates of social mobilization and economic development, but is accompanied with relatively slow pace in the development of political institutions leads to political instability.  To digest what Huntington meant, one needs a clear understanding of his major ideas.

An understanding of modernization or overall development calls one to appreciate what its essential attribute is:  social mobilization.  The term, social mobilization, refers to a process.  That process is felt or observed when traditional economic, social, and psychological commitments no longer hold, forcing people to attach themselves to new values, attitudes, and most importantly to higher economic expectations. 

In other words, it is large scale transformative change at a national level.  Readers of this blog, hopefully, can appreciate, from past postings, how difficult that is to accomplish at the level of an organization, much less a nation.  Yet, Huntington claimed that that needs to occur for a nation to modernize.

As for the other ideas:  Huntington saw the idea of higher economic development as mainly a nation being able to produce higher quantities of material output, usually manufactured goods.  LDCs usually already produce high quantities of agricultural goods and/or minerals.  The problem is:  the land used for those activities are owned by the elite few who tend to be very rich and as such have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. 

Political institutions are organizations and procedures which routinize political behavior into accepted forms.  People accept these forms and they are usually referred to as political norms.  An example of this could be when two cars happen to run into each other, the police come out, ask questions, perhaps take pictures, make sure everyone is alright, and so on.  That is what is expected in, say, the US; a policeman taking a bribe from the luxury car driver is not expected and defies a political norm, as well as a law.  Laws, in turn, are expected to be upheld.  These are not universal norms; in many, if not most nations, elite privileges are the norm.

Where corruption is common, priveliege is expected to go to those who own or control desired assets – money, land, property, power (both legitimate and illegitimate forms), etc.  The point is:  to establish stability – i.e., high levels of expectations and their realization – a nation needs well-ensconced political institutions that are counted on to counter disstabilizing events and conditions.

And that leads to the last of these ideas, political instability.  It can be characterized by violence, social group conflicts, corruption, and bureaucratic inefficiency.  It also leads to the tie-in to current political concerns in the US.  No, America is not an LDC.  It is a developed country – some might consider it the most developed.  But can Huntington’s concerns cast any light on what is happening in the politics of America today?  This blog will pursue this question in the upcoming postings.

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[1] Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1968).

THE MEANING OF “UNALIENABLE”

This posting picks-up on a theme – Jefferson’s belief in a moral sense – that was described and explained in the last posting.  If not read, to make fuller sense of what follows, the reader should look it up.  In this posting, it develops a notion:  people seek to be moral in order to induce a pleasure; being good feels good.  That last posting investigates this claim and lands up accepting it, but in a nuanced way. 

But the point here insists that Thomas Jefferson believed it and that belief plays an important role in his use of the term, “unalienable,” in the Declaration of Independence.  As the last posting ends:  “Turns out, how most students are led to understand this term is not exactly right.”

One of the factors reviewed in the last posting was reason.  That account described reason as the human faculty that serves to aim moral thought and action.  It calculates.  It provides the “means” for what a moral “drive” might determine an “end” should be.  But as with describing or understanding the moral sense, many competing desires, many murky facts, many possible rationalizations can be felt or thought of.

Reason might point a person – using Jefferson’s language – toward being vicious (it might not), but the moral sense always points that same person toward being virtuous.  That sense can be ill served by reason, but its unwavering aim – hence making it a drive – is to be good toward others. 

Of course, this and other drives are subject to forces, such as cultural forces, within a given social landscape.  And this includes how events and the particulars of those events are defined or otherwise understood.  All of this can be complicated, but it does provide a useful context for related issues. 

And with the above as context, one can address the notion of rights, a related issue.  Often in this blog, this writer has pointed out that the natural rights view of rights has to do with having the social and legal prerogative to do what one wishes to do.  Yes, this is constrained by others having the same legal standing, but this sense of rights opens a vast array of options for individuals to pursue. 

With the use of the term, “unalienable,” in the Declaration of Independence, one senses a very liberal take on an unfettered life, unfettered and only subject to one’s self-restraints in most cases.  But the above context hints at a different feel for this quality.  And one aspect of this reason to reflect, is that the whole Lockean notion of rights – the natural rights view – was a relatively new idea in the late 1700s, at least on these shores. 

There had not been much philosophic, theoretical, or political reflection what exactly this meant.  According to Gary Wills, earlier use of the term, “right,” was reserved to mean “right order.”  The sense was that “its earlier use was as a power exercised in the name of the state.”[1]  And ideally – presumably – that was to advance the interest of the nation or other jurisdiction (like a fiefdom, a city, a parish, etc.). 

The ruler had the necessary powers to so rule – in accordance with those jurisdictional interests – and he/she administered it or alienate it to the subjects.  That is, he/she gave the power or benefit to those ruled.  To alienate meant to give away, to make alien from the giver – usually for a given reason.

Jefferson gives his readers a hint at his meaning by not using the term, property, in his list of unalienable rights.  He writes “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” not “… and property.”  They are unalienable not because the fear is a state might deprive a person of these “rights,” but that the individual cannot give them away. 

A person’s life, liberty (to do good), and happiness are part of his/her nature.  The individual has a sense for morality, a sense that that is not subject to being alienable.  Therefore, they are unalienable.  In all this, according to Wills, Jefferson was highly influenced by Francis Hutcheson and this latter writer explains this distinction, between rights over one’s person and the right to pursue the moral sense.  Wills writes:

Rights arises in, and because of, society; it is a power over others so long as benevolence or innocence are directing the powers.  The test is public good.

          Hutcheson then divides rights into perfect and imperfect.  The perfect, as essential to the public good, can be defended even with private force.  The first example he gives is the right to life.  The basis of the societal bond is benevolence, and no society can undermine its own fundamental value.  Yet security in the possession of life is not only the basis for all goods one can bestow on others; it is, more important, the necessary precondition for doing good – no man can be benevolent unless he is first alive…

          He asserts the right of liberty on similar grounds:  “As nature has implanted in each man a desire of his own happiness and many tender affections toward others in some nearer relations of life, and granted to each one some understanding and active powers, with a natural right exercise them for the purpose of these natural affections, it is plain each one has a natural right to exert his powers, according to his own judgment and inclination, for these purposes, in all such industry, labor, or amusements as are not hurtful to others in their persons or goods, while no more public interests necessarily require his labors or require that his actions should be under the direction of others.  This right we call natural liberty.”[2]

Sorry for the overly, philosophic language; here is this writer’s understanding:  Liberty seems key, but the meaning of it takes on an unaccustomed turn.  The term, natural liberty, today has been coopted by natural rights advocates, a la an altered Lockean view, by his current devotees. 

Under that more recent sense, unalienable refers to the state not being legally or legitimately able to take away rights.  But that according to Jefferson, is impossible, as impossible as negating any other part of one’s nature.  Hence, a better term today for a Jeffersonian sense of liberty is federal liberty – a liberty that advances a citizenry able and willing to be federated among its membership.

In securing rights, therefore, governments do not have the option of taking them away, but they can interfere with their exercise.  They can make it harder to exercise, they can distort them, they can minimize them, but they are unalienable; i.e., they cannot be taken away or given up, they are part of everyone’s nature and is as likely to be taken away as taking away one’s sense of humor.

And, in turn, this sense of liberty, while it is unalienable, introduces duties.  Yes, one can pursue self-interest, but the duty is not to arrange such interests to be contrary to the common good.  Because, as with humor, one’s pleasure in benevolence or doing good toward others is also part of that nature.

Instead, to varying degrees, the duty is to advance the common good.  Rights are not, according to Hutcheson, to be treated as a form of property; they are instead to be seen in their correlative relations to duties.  Or, duties are seeing rights from another perspective.

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[1] Gary Wills, Inventing America:  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1978/2018), 213.

[2] Ibid., 216-217.  Emphasis in the original.