Chapter One: Seeking New Lands, Seeing with New Eyes

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Comparative Politics Domestic Responses to
Global Challenges, Seventh Edition by Charles
Hauss
Chapter 11 The Less Developed Countries
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Learning Objectives

• After studying this chapter, students should be
  able to
• Identify primary characteristics of less
  developed countries
• Define dependency in the context of less
  developed countries
• Explain why the label less developed countries
  is controversial
• Describe how less developed countries are
  affected by global influences
• Define imperialism
• Explain how the experience of imperialism affects
  less developed countries today
• Describe methods used by less developed
  countries to overcome the heritage of
  imperialism
• Explain why legitimacy is a major issue in less
  developed countries
• Identify examples of political participation in
  less developed countries that are less common
  in other countries
• Identify and define types of regimes in less
  developed countries
• Identify the major international institutions
  that impact politics and economics in less
  developed countries
• Describe how those international institutions
  impact politics and economics in less developed
  countries

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Thinking About the Third World

• Dependent on wealthier countries for their
  well-being
• Tremendous diversity
• People in the West live on average 30 years
  longer and make almost 20 times more money than
  many developing countries
• Poverty wrenching even before financial collapse
  in 2007 and 2008
• Thomas Friedman Hot, flat, and crowded
• Most countries have weak or failing states
• Election of Barack Obama has had tremendous
  support throughout developing world
• Sites of Western resources and battles

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Thinking About the Third World

• The Basics
• Poverty
• The worlds poorest states, 3/5 of the worlds
  population, ¾ including China.
• Least effective health care
• Lowest literacy level
• Highest infant mortality rates
• Lowest life expectancy
• Lack of access to safe drinking water
• Impact of AIDS epidemic
• Resource-dependent economies
• High levels of national debt

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Thinking About the Third World

• The Basics
• Environmental threats
• Rapidly growing populations
• Exploitation of environments for any possible
  material benefit
• Slash and burn

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Thinking About the Third World

• The Basics
• Ethnicity and conflict legacy borders divide
  cultural groups and force others into
  cohabitation
• Rwanda 1994
• Globalization
• Developing countries being integrated into the
  global economic and cultural systems, though not
  as equals
• Dependency theory
• Multi-national corporations
• Structural adjustment

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Key Questions

• Why are global forces more influential in LDCs
  and how do they contribute to their poverty?
• Why are Third World societies so deeply divided?
• Why are so many of their states weak if not
  failed?
• How can the author accurately represent the
  diversity in well over 120 countries?

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The Evolution of Politics in the Third World

• Imperialism and Its Legacy
• Three waves of colonization
• 16th and 17th centuries The Americas
• 19th century Africa and Asia
• After World War I Ottoman Empire
• White mans burden
• Subsistence economies pre-colonization
• Commercial agriculture
• Cash crops and natural resource exploitation,
  money went back to imperial power
• Slavery and ruling of native peoples

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The Evolution of Politics in the Third World

• Independence
• Unity of nationalist movements faded
• Lacked trained leadership and unity
• Three waves of decolonization
• 18th and 19th centuries in Americas
• Early-20th century in Middle East
• Post-World War II in Asia and Africa

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The Evolution of Politics in the Third World

• Postcolonial Problems
• Appearance of military, single-party, or
  authoritarian rule
• Civil wars and Big Power proxy conflicts
• Little sense of national identification
• Lack of experience of new leaders and shortage of
  resources
• Growth of cleavages between elites and others

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Political Culture in Less Developed Countries

• Identity
• Lack of national identities, people identify with
  ethnic groups
• Patron-client relations
• Fundamentalism
• Political cultures that resent the West
• Islamic Revolution of 1979
• Rapid change can be a disruptive force and places
  growing demands on the government
• Caste system in India
• 9/11 attacks

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Political Culture in Less Developed Countries

• A Lack of Legitimacy
• Little trust in governments and regimes
• Demands nearly impossible to meet

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Political Participation in Less Developed
Countries

• Political Participation
• Less of a balance between supportive
  participation and participation that places
  demands on the state
• Supportive Patriotic exercises, civic actions
  (voting)
• Coerced participation Iraq before and after Gulf
  War
• Mass campaigns like CCP
• Demanding
• Patron-client relations
• Communal groups
• Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

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Weak States

• Types of States
• Democracies (India, Costa Rica)
• Single-party regimes (Baathist Iraq, PRI Mexico)
• Military regimes
• Protect the country from external threats and
  civil unrest
• Power often leads to corruption

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Weak States

• Types of States
• Personal dictatorships (Iraq, Nicaragua)
• Built on political and patron-client networks
• Sometimes outgrowth of military rule
• Impact on countries linger long after dictator is
  gone
• Failed states Government has lost the ability to
  exercise the most basic functions (Sierre Leone,
  Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Somalia)

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Weak States

• States and Power
• Few countries have been able to do more than
  maintain law and order by suppressing dissent
• Weakness is by-product of poverty
• Short of human resources
• Democracy happened in West over several centuries
• Weak institutions
• Widespread corruption that extends far into the
  bureaucracy

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Public Policy The Myths and Realities of
Development

• No consensus on what development means
• Development has benefited only tiny proportion of
  population, decision making power in foreign
  hands
• Import substitution produce domestically what
  otherwise would be imported
• Erecting tariff barriers
• Countries growing more slowly than those that
  opened up their economies
• Foreign debt

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Public Policy The Myths and Realities of
Development

• Structural Adjustment
• Open economies to market forces
• Integrate economies into the global market
• Countries that traded the most grew the fastest
• South Korean example

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Public Policy The Myths and Realities of
Development

• International Financial Institutions
• World Bank Loans money to developing countries,
  some humanitarian efforts
• IMF Loans based on conditionality, acceptance of
  structural adjustment
• WTO Further free trade and resolve commercial
  disputes, supporter of structural adjustment

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Public Policy The Myths and Realities of
Development

• Foreign Aid
• Need recognized since WWII
• International agencies have become more involved
• Colombo Plan of 1950, 0.7 goal
• Usually tied to strategic interests of donor
  nations
• Strings attached require purchases from donor
  nations

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Public Policy The Myths and Realities of
Development

• Microcredit
• Muhammad Yunis, Bangladesh Grameen Bank (Nobel
  Prize)
• Small loans to poor people with community support
• Model followed in 110 countries

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Feedback

• Lack or absence of Western-style independent
  media
• Hand crank affordable radios
• Michael Negroponte MIT attempts to build
  hand-crank laptop in this decade
• Used to foment ethnic conflict

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Conclusions Democratization a Hopeful Trend

• Democratization an exciting trend
• Political attitudes and behaviors of citizens
  have been key components of change
• The state has to be reasonably effective for
  pragmatic support to build
• Regime survival through a few election cycles
  establishes momentum for success
• Democracy, rule of law, and capitalism all
  contribute
• Global factors are important
• Regimes that develop might look different from
  Western democratic ones