The Political Approach to Development: From Modernization to Stability

Does economic prosperity automatically produce a stable democracy? For much of the twentieth century, scholars assumed it did. The political approach to development grew out of this belief, treating economic growth and democratic politics as two sides of the same coin. But by the late 1960s, this neat picture began to crack. This post traces how the political approach evolved-from the optimism of modernization theory to Samuel P. Huntington’s sobering argument that order, not democracy, was the real challenge facing newly independent nations.

What is the political approach to development? 🔗

The political approach to development examines how societies build political systems capable of managing change. It asks a deceptively simple question: as countries grow economically and socially, what happens to their politics? Do they become more democratic, more stable, or do they descend into disorder?

In its earliest form, this approach was closely tied to modernization theory, which dominated comparative politics during the 1950s and 1960s. The Comparative Politics Committee of the Social Science Research Council and research centres in the United States actively promoted modernization theory as a scientific framework for guiding the political and economic development of newly decolonised nations. The core assumption was that development followed a predictable path. Traditional, agrarian societies would industrialise, urbanise, and eventually arrive at modern, democratic governance.

The modernization theory: linking economic growth with democracy 🔗

The foundational claim of modernization theory was that economic development creates the social conditions necessary for democracy. As people grow wealthier, more educated, and more urban, they supposedly develop the values and habits that sustain democratic politics. Two scholars stand out as architects of this view.

Seymour Martin Lipset and the social requisites of democracy 🔗

The sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset gave this idea its most influential expression in his 1959 article “Some Social Requisites of Democracy.” He argued that as societies develop economically, they become more democratic as a consequence. Lipset identified specific markers of development-per capita income, urbanisation, levels of industrialisation, and education-and linked them statistically to the presence of stable democracy.

His logic was that economic development nurtures values such as tolerance, moderation, and a willingness to compromise. A prosperous middle class, in particular, was thought to moderate political conflict and resist extremism. This claim became so central to the field that scholars now refer to it as “Lipset’s law”-the proposition that higher income tends to accompany democratic governance. The relationship between wealth and democracy remains one of the most debated questions in development economics to this day.

Gabriel Almond and the civic culture 🔗

Gabriel Almond approached the same problem from the angle of political culture. Together with Sidney Verba, he co-authored The Civic Culture (1963), a comparative study of political attitudes across five nations. Almond and Verba argued that stable democracy rests on a particular kind of citizen orientation-one that balances active participation with trust in and deference to political institutions.

This “civic culture” was neither purely passive nor purely activist. It combined engagement with restraint. Almond’s broader contribution was the structural-functional approach, which treated political systems as performing certain universal functions regardless of their form. In his influential work with G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (1966), Almond insisted that all political systems combine traditional and modern elements rather than fitting neatly into one category. For Almond, economic and social development helped generate the civic culture, which in turn strengthened democracy in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Cracks in the optimistic picture 🔗

By the late 1960s, the real world was not cooperating with the theory. The newly independent states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America were not gliding smoothly toward democracy. Instead, they were experiencing coups, insurgencies, civil wars, and military takeovers.

This gap between theory and reality invited a backlash. Critics charged that modernization theory was too linear, too teleological, and too optimistic. It assumed that all societies would follow the same trajectory the West had taken, and that the social changes unleashed by development would naturally be benign. The experience of the post-colonial world suggested otherwise. Development was generating not order but turbulence.

Challenging the modernization theory: Samuel P. Huntington’s perspective 🔗

The most powerful challenge came from Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard political scientist whose 1968 book Political Order in Changing Societies reshaped the entire field. Huntington did not deny that modernization brought sweeping social change. His disagreement was with the assumption that this change would be smooth or progressive.

His central insight was blunt. He argued that political decay was at least as likely as political development, and that the actual experience of newly independent countries was one of mounting disorder. The “good things” of modernity, he warned, often worked at cross-purposes.

The gap between mobilization and institutionalization 🔗

Huntington’s key concept was the dangerous gap between social mobilization and political institutionalization. Economic and social development-rising literacy, urbanisation, media exposure, industrial growth-mobilises new social groups and awakens their political demands. People want to participate.

The problem arises when this surge in participation outpaces the development of institutions capable of absorbing it. As Huntington put it, in much of the world the rates of mobilisation and participation were high while the rates of organisation and institutionalisation remained low. When social mobilisation runs ahead of institutional capacity, the result is frustration, instability, and violence. Crucially, this reversed the modernization sequence. Rapid change did not strengthen the political order-it threatened to overwhelm it.

The famous distinction: degree of government over form of government 🔗

One of Huntington’s most quoted claims captures his entire argument. He held that the most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government. In other words, whether a country was democratic or authoritarian mattered less than whether it was effectively governed at all.

A stable communist state and a stable democracy had more in common, in this view, than either had with a state collapsing into chaos. This was a deliberate provocation aimed at the modernization theorists, who had treated democracy as the natural and desirable endpoint of development. Huntington insisted that order itself was the prior and more urgent goal.

Institutionalization: the heart of Huntington’s theory 🔗

If institutions were the answer to instability, what made an institution strong? Huntington defined institutionalization as the process by which organisations and procedures acquire value and stability over time. He proposed four measurable criteria for judging how institutionalised a political system was.

These four benchmarks, drawn from his analysis of political organisations and procedures, are worth understanding individually:

Adaptability versus rigidity: The more an institution has survived challenges and adapted to new circumstances, the more institutionalised it is. Adaptability tends to grow with age and with the variety of pressures an organisation has weathered. A rigid institution that cannot adjust is fragile.

Complexity versus simplicity: Institutions with multiple, differentiated, and specialised structures are more robust than simple ones. Complexity allows a system to perform many functions and to survive the loss of any single component.

Autonomy versus subordination: Institutions that exist independently of particular social groups are more institutionalised. When organisations are captured by narrow interests, Huntington noted, they are commonly described as corrupt. Autonomy insulates institutions from disruptive external pressures.

Coherence versus disunity: The more unified and disciplined an institution, the more institutionalised it is. Huntington compared this to an army, where superior coherence and discipline can offset deficiencies in numbers or weapons.

Praetorianism: when participation has no home 🔗

Huntington described societies with low institutionalisation and high participation as praetorian. In such societies, social groups become mobilised into politics without becoming socialised by politics. There are no accepted rules or institutions to channel competing demands.

The consequences are predictable. Without institutions to mediate conflict, each group pursues its interests through direct action. Students riot, workers strike, and the military stages coups. In a well-institutionalised system, by contrast, institutions absorb new conflicts and prevent them from escalating into unrest that could weaken the legitimacy of the state. The strength of a political system, for Huntington, lay precisely in this capacity to convert raw social energy into orderly political activity.

Political development versus economic growth 🔗

The deeper significance of Huntington’s intervention was that it separated political development from economic development. The modernization theorists had bundled the two together, assuming economic growth would carry political progress along with it. Huntington argued that political development followed its own logic.

This had a striking policy implication, especially for poor countries. Rather than treating democracy as a luxury that wealth would eventually produce, Huntington suggested that political order and competent institutions are a precondition for economic growth in low-income contexts. Build the institutions first, and stable development can follow. Reverse the order, and rapid economic change may simply tear society apart.

For students of comparative politics, this debate maps neatly onto questions about post-colonial states. Many newly independent nations inherited the trappings of democratic constitutions without the underlying institutional depth to sustain them. The challenge was rarely a shortage of participation; more often it was a shortage of institutions strong enough to manage that participation.

Assessing the political approach 🔗

Where does this leave us? The political approach to development moved from optimism to realism over roughly a decade. Modernization theorists like Lipset and Almond identified a genuine correlation between wealth and democracy that continues to interest scholars. There is, after all, evidence that long-term economic growth makes democratic institutions less vulnerable over time.

Yet Huntington exposed the danger of assuming this relationship was automatic or smooth. His emphasis on institutions, order, and the risks of rapid change anchored him among the founders of neo-institutionalism and influenced how both academics and policymakers thought about development for decades. His framework was not without critics-some accused it of justifying authoritarian rule in the name of stability-but its analytical power is hard to deny. The political approach, taken as a whole, reminds us that economics and politics develop on different tracks, and that managing the relationship between them is the central task of any developing society.

What do you think? If you had to advise a newly democratic country, would you prioritise building strong institutions or expanding democratic participation first? And is Huntington’s claim-that the degree of government matters more than its form-a wise insight or a dangerous excuse for unaccountable power?

References

1. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_4
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305750X14002976
3. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12295.pdf
4. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/what-read-modernization-theory
5. https://carnegieendowment.org/2011/01/05/samuel-huntington-s-legacy-pub-42242
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Order_in_Changing_Societies
7. https://cluelesspoliticalscientist.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/political-development-and-political-decay-samuel-huntington-summary/
8. https://lsempa.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/political-order-in-changing-societies/
9. https://www.miskatonian.com/2025/02/24/visions-of-chaos-crafting-stability-in-a-restless-age-i/
10. https://elib.manas.edu.kg/book/8008-Political_Order_in_Changing_Societies.pdf