1 The Third World: Definitions and

New Perspectives on Development

Srinivas R. Melkote and Allen H. Merriam

THE TERM Third World represents one of the significant additions to the
vocabulary of the twentieth century. The 1992-1993 edition of Books in
Print contains 143 entries with Third World in the beginning of the title. But
what does this term really mean? And given the dramatic changes in the
geopolitical landscape in recent years, are there better words for naming
various levels of human development?
In traditional usage, the First World referred to the industrialized
democracies, which enjoy a relatively high standard of living. The Second
World contained the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern
Europe, which, until the Gorbachev era of glasnost (openness) and
perestroika (restructuring), were characterized by centralized economic
control and domination by the Communist Party's political apparatus. The
Third World consisted of the remaining 75 percent of humanity, from
Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. This conglomerate, including most of the
nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, generally can be characterized
by relatively low per capita incomes, high rates of illiteracy, agriculturally
based economies, short life expectancies, low degrees of social mobility,
strong attachments to tradition, and usually, a history of colonization.1
Third World is a concept of French origin. William Safire (1978) traced
the term as a label for France's political parties in the 1940s, which were
distinct from de Gaulle's Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) and the
Fourth Republic. W. M. Clegern (1978) compared the idea to the Third
Estate (le tiers état), the rising but underrepresented bourgeoisie contending
with the clergy and the aristocracy in the French Revolution of 1789. Many
scholars now credit the French demographer Alfred Sauvy with coining the
term in 1952.2 Since then the phrase has gained wide acceptance as a
positive concept signifying the new and experimental arena of global
politics bound to neither Western capitalism nor Soviet socialism.
 It is interesting to note that near the end of his life Mao Zedong
formulated a creative if unorthodox theory of three worlds. Mao viewed the
First World as consisting of the superpowers (Soviet Union and United
States), whose imperialistic policies, he felt, posed the greatest threat to
world peace. Mao (1977) placed the middle powers (Japan, Canada, and
Europe) in the Second World. Africa, Latin America, and Asia (including
China) formed the Third World, the peoples whom Mao believed to be the
best hope for revolutionary struggle. Leaders in China since Mao have
reaffirmed this linkage, as in Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping's 1975
declaration that "China is a developing socialist country belonging to the
third world."3
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the attendant
disintegration of the Second World, does it still make sense to speak of the
Third World? Francis Fukuyama, after all, even went so far as to announce
an end to ideological competition. While acknowledging the continuing
challenges posed by religious fundamentalism and nascent nationalism
around the globe, he portrayed the "emergence of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government."4 Despite such
grandiose speculation, Third World remains a useful and desirable term in
contemporary geopolitical vocabulary for a number of reasons. Obviously
considerable competition continues to exist between capitalistic and
socialistic approaches to economic practice, among nations as well as
within individual countries. Moreover, the term allows scholars, politicians,
and development planners a way to describe and analyze commonalties
among nations as diverse as Brazil, Burundi, and Bangladesh.
Easily translatable into other languages such as Spanish (el tercer mundo)
and French (le tiers monde), Third World has proven effective rhetorically
as a rallying point, a persuasive slogan, a source of identity for the peoples
so designated. Whether in the speeches of Fidel Castro, the poetry of Aime
Cesaire, or the economic analyses of Mahbub ul-Haq, the term has assumed
an ideology of its own. More than a mere socioeconomic label, it connotes a
psychological condition, a state of mind encompassing the hopes and
aspirations of three-fourths of humanity.5
Another justification for Third World is that no alternative nomenclature
seems preferable. Certainly many other names have been tried, but all have
deficiencies. For example, developing nations is a commonly used term.
But it seems overly inclusive, for the United States is developing, and Japan
and Russia are evolving. Indeed, the devotion to technological advancement
and social change in Western countries means they may be developing
faster than many Third World nations. Acronyms such as LDCs (less
developed countries) and NICs (newly industrialized countries) suffer a
similar ambiguity and seem limited to a primarily economic perspective.
The term emerging nations is vague, and designations such as
underdeveloped, backward, and primitive clearly are politically incorrect
given their blatantly negative connotations.
Another term often used synonymously with Third World is non-aligned
nations, and the two phrases are closely related both historically and
ideologically. The Non-Aligned Movement grew out of the important Ban
dung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955 where Afro-Asian leaders
asserted solidarity with anticolonialism. The movement was
institutionalized at the first Non-Aligned summit conference in Belgrade in
1961, with 25 countries represented. Impressive growth has marked
successive assemblies, at Cairo in 1964, Lusaka in 1970, Algiers in 1973,
Colombo in 1976, Havana in 1979, New Delhi in 1983, Harare in 1986,
Belgrade in 1989, and Jakarta in 1992 when membership reached 106
nations. But non-aligned suffers inaccuracies: Cuba is a member state
despite close alliances with the former Communist bloc, and Pakistan and
Turkey were not members, due to military ties with the United States
through CENTO and NATO respectively, even though both are clearly
Third World countries. And the fact that non-aligned states are aligned with
each other makes their name misleading if not contradictory.6
Other designations include several two-part names. An East-West
dichotomy is popular, usually to contrast value differences between the
intuitive, holistic, spiritual, group orientation of Eastern (Asian) cultures as
distinct from the individualistic, materialistic, rational, and scientific West.7
But while helpful in delineating Oriental and Occidental philosophical
tendencies (Rosan 1962) (and even this assumption has been challenged),
this term essentially ignores Africa as well as the world's aboriginal and
indigenous peoples. The North-South designation, based on the relatively
advanced economic status of Northern Hemisphere nations, fails to
distinguish between northern countries as diverse as Russia and Canada,
necessitates the awkward placement of Australia and New Zealand in the
"North," and contains the confusing image of South Asia, much of Africa,
and all of Central America and Mexico in the "South" despite their location
in the Northern Hemisphere. And the haves-have nots division is unclear
about what anybody has or even wants; to many Buddhists, for example,
inner peace may be more valuable than a high gross national product
(GNP).
Current geopolitical vocabulary also includes a host of specialized and
regional groupings. Among these are the European Community (EC), the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Association of South-
East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Organization of American States (OAS),
the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Arab League, and the Islamic
Conference. Another designation is the Group of 77, referring to the 77
nations that, at the first meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva in 1964, united to press for more
vigorous international development programs. But this label is cumbersome
and inaccurate since more than 100 nations are now members. More
recently, the G-15 has emerged as a counterbalance to the G-7 (seven
wealthy First World nations consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States). The G-15 consists of Algeria,
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia,
Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. Formed by the
Non-Aligned Movement in 1989 and known officially as the Summit Level
Group on South-South Consultation and Cooperation, the G-15 promotes
sustainable economic development. At its 1994 summit conference in New
Delhi, it called for an expansion of the United Nations Security Council's
permanent membership to include more Third World seats, with India,
Brazil, and Nigeria the most likely nominees. In general, however, the
names given to specialized and regional groupings lack the conciseness,
universality, and emotional power of the term Third World.
Inspired by a desire for global unity and humanitarian concern, some
thinkers have rejected any effort to divide the world into competing
segments. The seventeenth-century Czech educator Comenius affirmed:
"We are all citizens of one world ... Let us have but one end in view, and the
welfare of humanity" (Fersh 1974: 119). The nineteenth-century Persian
mystic Baha'ul'lah shared this sentiment and his disciple Abdul Ba'ha
declared: "All are servants of God and members of one human family ... we
are all the waves of one sea" (Baha'i World Faith 1976). In 1970 Tanzanian
president Julius Nyerere told the United Nations: "We believe that all
mankind is one" (Nyerere 1970: 824). But while such universalism
represents a noble ideal, it seems too Utopian to allow for the political and
economic distinctions that governments, multinational corporations, and
social scientists need for daily decisionmaking.
Thus, as we approach the dawn of the twenty-first century, Third World
remains a viable and important term with which to view emerging
perspectives on human development.

Development of the Third World

In the period that followed World War II, most of the Third World achieved
independence from colonization and became the focus of multilateral
development assistance efforts through the United Nations (UN) and its
family of specialized agencies and institutions. In the early postwar years,
the attention of the UN and its most influential member, the United States,
was focused on relief and rehabilitation work in Western Europe through
the Marshall Plan. But starting in the 1950s, attention turned increasingly to
the Third World countries where two-thirds of the world's population
resided. This population was mostly impoverished and received only 15
percent of the world's income (Van Soet 1978).
Bilateral development assistance also played an important role in Third
World development. U.S. President Harry S. Truman proposed the Point
Four program in 1949, thus establishing a model that most of the developed
world embraced. The key to prosperity and peace, said Truman in his 1949
inaugural address, was "greater production" through "a wider and more
vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge"
(Daniels 1951: 11). The outcome of this proposal was termed as
development. Under this program, American advances in agriculture,
commerce, industry, and health care were to be diffused to the Third World
countries. Whereas the Marshall Plan involved mostly capital investment in
Western Europe, assistance to Third World countries consisted of monetary
aid as well as scientific and technological expertise. Thus was bom
Organized Development Assistance (ODA).
The task of modernizing the Third World seemed quite simple at that
time: Determine appropriate innovations that promised development and
then arrange to have them diffused to targeted beneficiaries (Rogers 1976a).
The state of affairs in the Third World countries was attributed to the
inadequate or nonexistent industrial infrastructure on the one hand and the
cultures of these nations and certain characteristics of their citizens on the
other. Native cultures were seen as obstacles to the type of development to
be achieved. Therefore, the strategy for solving the problems of
underdevelopment in Asia, Africa, and Latin America seemed simple and
straightforward: Guide the Third World through the different stages of
development at a rate even faster than the advanced countries experienced
by retracing the development path of the Western countries (minus the
colonization part). This orientation to development strategy is frequently
referred to as the "orthodox paradigm."

Orthodox Paradigm of Development

Theories and concepts that recapitulated the development of West European
and North American nations were used to generate prescriptive models of
development for the Third World. In these modernization theories, the
definition of a developed nation resembled Western industrialized nations in
terms of political and economic behavior, institutions, culture, and attitudes
toward technology.
The approaches in the sociology of development emphasized the theories
of social evolution. Morgan, Comte, Spencer, Kidd, Ward, and others
supported the evolutionary perspective for human societies. These theories
applied Darwin's ideas to the process of modernization of human societies.
In their models, the highest stage of evolution was exhibited by European
nations of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Portes 1976). The
theories of social evolution influenced and gave rise to important concepts
in the sociology of development, including the various bipolar theories of
modernization. The universal stages in the earlier theories of social
evolution were reduced to ideal-typical extremes: gemeinschaft versus
gesellschaft, traditional versus modern societies, and so on. The Third
World nations usually represented the traditional end of the dichotomy and
the industrialized nations of the West signified the modern counterpart. In
summary, the sociology of development theories treated the West as a
model of political, economic, social, and cultural modernization that the
Third World should emulate. The Western nations had a wide range of
systemic autonomy; that is, they possessed an enhanced capacity to cope
with a range of social, cultural, technological, and economic issues in the
process of social change (Eisenstadt 1976: 31). The Third World nations, on
the other hand, lacked the higher differentiation of roles and institutions, the
evolutionary universals (such as democratic association, modern
organizations, markets, and legal systems), and the West's orientation to
secular and universal norms rather than the narrow particularistic goals of
Third World countries (Parsons 1964a,b). These deficiencies were seen as
severely limiting the Third World in their capacity to cope with problems or
crises or to master their environment.
At the microlevel, theories on individual psychological attributes stressed
that attitudinal and value changes among individuals were prerequisites to
the creation of a modern society. Although institutional development in the
Third World was considered necessary for modernization to occur, it was
the character of individuals and not the character of society that was
important. Scholars such as David McClelland (1967), Daniel Lerner
(1958), and Alex Inkeles (1969) described certain value-normative
complexes (e.g., motivation for achievement, capacity to empathize with
the unfamiliar, openness to innovation) that accelerated development in the
Western countries and that individuals in the Third World were lacking.
These scholars posited that modernization of the Third World was
dependent on changing the character of individuals living there to resemble
more closely the attitudinal and value characteristics of people in Western
Europe and North America.
Finally, the economic model presented in the orthodox paradigm was the
neoclassical approach, which had served as an important model for Western
economies. Adam Smith in his The Wealth of Nations (1776) originally
proposed this approach, which was later supported and enriched by other
Western economists such as Ricardo, Schumpeter, Keynes, Hirschman, and
Nurkse, among others. This approach was concerned mainly with economic
growth, as measured by the GNP rates, and encouragement of all factors
and institutions that accelerated and maintained high growth rates, such as
capital-intensive industrialization, high technology, private ownership of
factors of production, free trade, and the principle of laissez-faire (Weaver
and Jameson 1978).
 In this approach, economic growth was the key to development. Most of
the problems confronting the Third World countries were identified as being
economic in nature. Managed plans were launched (for example, five-year
growth plans) in many countries to dovetail development activities of the
state and help bring about orderly and timely economic development.
Bilateral and multilateral institutions were involved in these plans.
Development performance was measured by indicators such as the GNP
rate and per capita income. Capital-intensive, as opposed to labor-intensive,
approaches and industrial, as opposed to agricultural, development were
encouraged in many developing countries.
The role of the mass media in development activities was very clearly
implied in the orthodox paradigm of development. For example, Wilbur
Schramm (1964) maintained that the modernization of industry or
agricultural sectors in developing nations required the mobilization of
human resources. Education and mass media, then, were vested with crucial
responsibility in the process of mobilization of human resources.
Some scholars went further, stating that the major problem in developing
countries was not a shortage of natural resources but underdevelopment of
human resources. Thus, education and mass media were enlisted in the
important task of building human capital (Lerner 1958; Schramm 1964;
Rogers 1976c). Mass media were the vehicles for transferring new ideas
and models from the developed nations to the Third World and from the
urban areas to the rural countryside. Information was considered the
missing link in the development chain. The quality of information available
and its wide dissemination were key factors in the speed and smoothness of
development (Schramm 1964). Adequate mass media outlets and
information would act as a spur to education, commerce, and a chain of
other related development activities.

Criticism of the Orthodox Paradigm

The decade of the 1970s was a period of ferment in the field of Third World
development. Many areas of development, such as economics, family
planning, population, culture, and communication, were researched heavily.
There were also many scholars from Asia and Latin America interested in
development, and as they became important contributors to this field, many
of the ideas and assumptions that had guided research in the preceding two
decades were increasingly questioned and criticized. The process of
development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America did not exactly follow the
stages that the Western European or North American countries had passed
through. Thus, the development of the Third World did not fit all the
assumptions implicit in the orthodox paradigm. The orthodox paradigm
seemed to work better as a description of what had happened in Western
Europe and North America than as a predictor of change in the Third World
(Eisenstadt 1976).
The criticism of the sociology of development theories addressed several
core issues. The bipolar theories were essentially post hoc analyses of
development in the First World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries and did not provide insight into the determinants of change in the
Third World in the post-World War II period (Portes 1976). The
developmental process in the Third World often ran counter to some of the
empirical relationships espoused by the orthodox paradigm. For example, S.
N. Eisenstadt (1976) points out that in Asia, Latin America, and Central and
Eastern Europe, many nations exhibited negative correlations between
demographic variables—such as literacy, spread of mass media, formal
education, and urbanization—and the ability to sustain economic growth or
develop libertarian or Western-type institutions. On the other hand, a
country such as India was able to evolve a stable and a modern Western-
type libertarian democratic political system while nevertheless exhibiting
all the characteristics of underdevelopment.
Criticisms were also directed at the orthodox paradigm by several neo-
Marxist scholars from Latin America, including Gunder Frank, Dos Santos,
and Cardoso, among others. They argued that underdevelopment and
development were not separate and autonomous processes as
conceptualized earlier but constituted two facets of the same process. They
contended that the development of underdevelopment in Third World
nations was and is related to the economic development of Western Europe
and North America.
The sociology of development models invoked a very limited time
perspective of 25 to 100 years at most. If the time frame for an analysis of
Third World development were to go back in history, it would be seen that
countries such as Egypt, India, Iraq, China, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico,
among others, had been centers of sophisticated civilizations, The
underdevelopment of countries in Asia, Africa, or Latin America was not
necessarily by choice. Due to their colonized status much of the Third
World was forced to remain unindustrialized or was kept in a state of
relative underdevelopment so that colonies could provide raw materials to
factories in Europe and serve as captive markets for European finished
goods. The critical stimulus to investment that spurred economic growth in
England was provided, to a great extent, by the surplus appropriated from
the slave-plantation colonies by the British (Williams 1964). It was the
unlimited overseas market captured by British commerce through empire
and superior naval power that fueled the industrial revolution in England
(Hobsbawn 1968).
The neoclassical economic model that predicted a trickle-down effect
from development efforts started losing its credibility in the 1970s among
administrators in the Third World. The trickle-down of development
benefits did not meet the expectations. Many developing countries showed
impressive growth in their GNP rates. However, unemployment, poverty,
and income inequality (when compared to rates in the 1960s) were
increasing as well (Weaver and Jameson 1978). Quite often, a substantial
part of domestic funds, foreign aid, and investment was directed at capital-
intensive projects. This made capital relatively cheap compared to labor.
However, most developing countries were labor-rich and capital-poor
(Weaver and Jameson 1978). The economic model in the orthodox
paradigm was found wanting in several respects. It was criticized for
defining development only in terms of quantifiable characteristics such as
the GNP and per capita income, for encouraging capital-intensive
techniques in capital-poor developing nations and neglecting labor-
intensive strategies, and for supporting a top-down approach to planning
and development.

New Perspectives on Development

Although the newer approaches in the 1970s and 1980s did not necessarily
discard the quantitative approach, there was a strengthening of the
qualitative and normative modes of inquiry. Development priorities and
standards became more contextual to needs and problems of individual
countries or regions within them. Although economic growth and
industrialization were still considered important goals of development,
attention was now given to other objectives as well: meeting specific needs
of particular poverty groups; fulfilling people's basic needs, such as health
care, nutrition, sanitation, and shelter; placing emphasis on nonmaterial
indicators of development, such as self-reliance and cultural autonomy; and
putting the spotlight on human rights, such as the right to free expression
and the right to equitable employment and wages.
Thus, the concept of development itself was broadened. Everett Rogers
(1969), who was criticized for his earlier definition that stressed only
industrialization and economic growth and neglected other human factors,
summarized the newer concept of development as "a widely participatory
process of social change in a society, intended to bring about both social
and material advancement (including greater equality, freedom, and other
valued qualities) for the majority of the people through their gaining greater
control over their environment" (Rogers 1976b: 133).
Wang and Dissanayake (1984: 5) emphasized the protection of nature and
culture. They defined development as "a process of social change which has
as its goal the improvement in the quality of life of all or the majority of
people without doing violence to the natural and cultural environment in
which they exist, and which seeks to involve the majority of the people as
closely as possible in this enterprise, making them the masters of their own
destiny."
Other definitions of development (Hedebro 1982; Rogers 1976c) stressed
the following:

1. Equity in distribution of benefits of development. The emphasis was

placed on the very poor, those living in urban shanty towns, and
backward rural areas. "Growth with equity" rather than trickle-down
was the favorite slogan of the 1970s.
2. Active participation of people at the grassroots. The objective was to
involve the input of people at the grassroots in development-related
activities concerned with their welfare. It was argued that this ensured
that development plans and decisions were more relevant and
meaningful to the recipients.
 3. Opportunities for local communities to tailor development projects to
their objectives. To the extent that reliance would be on local human
skills and material resources this fostered a greater degree of self-
reliance in development.
4. Integration of the endogenous and exogenous elements to constitute a
unique blend suited to the needs of a particular community. This
approach would place emphasis on local ideas as well as exogenously
diffused ideas and would consider the local culture and its native
wisdom as an asset, not a detriment, to achieving a unique
syncretization best suited to the tasks at hand.

Socialistic Approach

In the early 1970s, the opening of China to the rest of the world showed that
it was possible for a country to achieve its development goals using its own
unique model of development. The People's Republic of China had made
tangible gains in the areas of agriculture, health, and family planning and
had achieved some degree of equity among its citizens in the distribution of
the benefits of development. In addition, Tanzania and Cuba, who also
chose not to follow the Western model, were hailed as examples of
successful development. Cuba had achieved impressive gains in spreading
and increasing literacy among its people, whereas Tanzania had embarked
on decentralized and popular participation of the people in rural
development activities through its Ujamaa program.

Basic Needs Approach

The basic needs approach arose as a consequence of the disenchantment

with the trickle-down concept of development. It was supported by several
organizations such as the World Bank, the International Labour
Organization, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and the
United States Congress and many other national governments. The basic
needs approach focused on essentials such as adequate food, clean drinking
water, decent shelter, adequate education, security of livelihood, and
reliable transportation (Streeten 1979).
Environmental Approach

Environment, both as a concept and as a concern, became a central issue

starting with the historic United Nations Conference on Human
Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. The relentless pursuit of
development through economic and technological growth was recognized
as a threat to the future availability of natural resources and the viability of
growth itself (Oakley and Marsden 1984). Nature, as a broader notion of
environment, received little mention in early literature other than as
something to be exploited for growth. However, in the past decade several
scholars have incorporated environmental and ecological factors in their
definitions of development. The current quest for sustainable development
recognizes that the relentless destruction of nature jeopardizes global
ecology, the balance of which is essential for the health of our planet.

Free Enterprise System

Curiously, there has been a rebound of this concept from its heyday in the
late eighteenth century. The virtues of unrestricted commerce and free
markets are emphasized in this approach, and in many ways, it discounts
much of the criticism of the orthodox paradigm discussed earlier. A definite
link is made between market capitalism and democracy/human rights. Thus,
the free enterprise system is offered as the best system to the Third World
countries (Berthoud 1993). It is being touted as the most viable path to
development, and with the collapse of the centralized economies of the
former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, Third World
countries are being encouraged to adopt liberal capitalist ideas and to let the
free market regulate the society. The rewards for embracing the free
enterprise system include greater individual freedom and collective
prosperity (Berthoud 1993).

Criticism of the Newer Perspectives to

Development
Although economic growth may not be the sine qua non of development, it
is nevertheless still an important objective for Third World countries to
strive for. Without steady economic growth it may not be possible for a
Third World nation to afford entitlement programs for the poor, called for in
the basic needs approach. Providing education to all children, ensuring
adequate health care for all citizens, and providing a home to all people
requires an enormous financial outlay and a strong political will, both of
which are in short supply in many Third World nations.
Schemes to help the poorest of the poor, the powerless, and the
disadvantaged have simply not worked. Slogans such as "growth with
equity/' and "empowerment" have been reduced to empty phrases. This is
not to say that development of the poorest sectors of the population is
unimportant. From both a moral and economic point of view, it was right
for the United Nations, USAID, the World Bank, and several Third World
governments in the 1970s and 1980s to stress the importance of
development programs tailored to the poor and powerless. It is the
implementation of these programs that is being criticized here.
Paradoxically, the argument used by the critics of the orthodox model may
be used against the newer approaches. The critics of the orthodox paradigm
pointed out that poverty and inequality had increased in the Third World
since the 1960s. The same is the case at present. The newer approaches
have not brought about any significant change in the lives of millions of
people in the Third World living in underdeveloped rural areas or urban
slums. The rigid social and economic structure that prevented a trickle-
down of benefits to the poor has also stalled newer programs such as
growth with equity.
The nature of the political, economic, and social structure in many Third
World countries makes development difficult regardless of which
development paradigm is used. State government officials in several
developing countries are extremely corrupt, inefficient, and arrogant.
Government structures are unnecessarily large, taxes are usually high, and
public money is routinely misused to benefit political elites. Accountability
to the people is woefully lacking.

Unequal Development
Neo-Marxist scholars and other critics of the orthodox model pointed out
the unequal status accorded to Third World nations vis-a-vis the First
World. Although there is some merit in that criticism, it is also the
inequality of regions and groups of people within individual Third World
countries that may retard growth with equity or fail to empower the
powerless. Development programs at the macro-level, such as hydroelectric
projects, roadways, railroads, and telecommunication links, are unequally
distributed within individual Third World countries and usually favor
regions that have ties with politically powerful groups; similarly people
belonging to certain dominant language, ethnic, or racial groups are favored
over other less-dominant groups in the distribution of development benefits.
Thus, the concept of center and periphery defined by the dependist scholars
is evident within individual Third World countries, making development
progress uneven and unequal. This calls into question the relevance of terms
such as self-reliance and cultural autonomy that were used by the critics of
the orthodox paradigm.

The Experience of Socialism

Although the experience of Western countries was considered inappropriate
for Third World development, countries such as China and Tanzania were
frequently cited as models of successful development. This may not be
correct. It must be remembered that China and Tanzania followed a model
rooted in socialist principles. They cannot be held out as emulative models
unless other Third World countries also import their socialistic, political,
and social organization philosophies (Hedebro 1982). The experiences of
China and India in regard to population control provide a useful illustration.
Although India was the first Third World nation to design a population
control and family planning policy at the highest governmental level, its
rate of achievement has been poor compared to that of China. A major
reason for this is the unpopularity of the family planning program among
the people in India. However, another important factor is the divergent
political philosophies of these two large nations. India, under its democratic
form of government, respects individual choice and freedom. Therefore,
unlike China, India cannot mandate couples to limit their families to only
one child.
When considering the relatively successful model of China (under both
Mao and Deng) in terms of economic growth, agricultural and industrial
productivity, and so forth, one must also assess the human costs of the
model (Chu 1987). Berger (1976: 168) notes: "Anyone who looks at the
record of the communist regime since 1949 with even a modest intention of
objectivity will be impressed by the enormous quantity of human pain
directly traceable to the actions of the regime. It is a record of death,
anguish, and fear deliberately inflicted upon the most numerous people of
earth." Thus, the Chinese model, however successful it may be, is
impractical for many Third World countries, especially those that are
attempting to sustain democratic political systems.

Conclusion
Where do we stand today? The model prescribed by the West has had its
critics while the newer approaches to development have their share of
weaknesses. Probably, the process of development in Third World countries
is so complex that there is no straightforward simple solution. The Third
World is not a monolithic entity but instead consists of countries in several
continents, with different forms of political arrangements, historical
experience, geographical conditions, and cultural makeup.
As we approach the next century, several ideas have been put forward
and are being tested. An idea that has gained some currency is that of
sustainable development. Another idea that is not so new but is finding
renewed support is free market liberal capitalism.

Sustainable Development

Although this concept has become prominent in the past decade, it has been
around for some time. In the orthodox paradigm, it referred to the design
and execution of economic policies that sustained long-term development.
However, since the mid-1980s, this term has been used in a more holistic
manner. It refers to various facets of development that ensure "real
development" and its sustainability, such as community/local development,
community participation in development, an inclusion of and a more
prominent role for women in development, and more recently, the
protection of the environment.

Community Development and Local Participation. In the 1980s and 1990s,

there has been an increasing recognition within national governments,
multilateral agencies, and nongovernmental organizations of the importance
of community or local development. Concomitant areas of interest focus on
participation of local people in the planning and implementation of projects,
the inclusion of social analysis into development planning, and the
consideration of gender issues in development project planning and policies
(Bamberger 1988).
Several factors have provided impetus to the importance of community
participation in development activities:

1. There has been some evidence in World Bank rural development and
population/health projects of the positive impact of community
participation on project efficiency.
2. State and national governments are finding it increasingly difficult to
adequately manage the innumerable development projects and
programs, thus paving the way for a more prominent role by
nongovernmental and community organizations.
3. Nongovernmental organizations and several United Nations agencies,
such as the UNICEF and ILO, have made it their development
objective to empower the underprivileged populations by giving them
greater control over resources and decisionmaking in projects and
programs affecting their lives.
4. There has been a greater sensitivity to gender issues. The special needs
and problems of women are being taken into account in project design
and management (Bamberger 1988).

The problem in the Third World is not necessarily underdevelopment but,

importantly, unequal development. There are oases of "First Worlds" within
the Third World just as there are pockets of "Third Worlds" in First World
countries. If individuals and local communities (rather than countries) are
used as units of observation and analysis, areas of underdevelopment could
probably be more accurately targeted regardless of the country in which
they may be located.

Environmental Sustainability. The World Commission on Environment and

Development has defined sustainable development as "meeting the needs
and aspirations of the present generation without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their needs" (Brundtland 1989: 14). This idea
of sustainable development will become an important conceptual and
practical framework for all development activities in the 1990s and beyond.
It puts forth the view that promotion of the environment and promotion of
economic development are not separate issues. For a very long time,
economic progress and growth were assigned the highest priority and the
resulting environmental sacrifices were considered inconsequential
(Williams 1989). However, with widespread development taking place, the
environmental sacrifices are being questioned. The concerns include the
destruction of rain forests; carbon emission of fossil fuels and the
consequent warming of Earth's climate; land, water, and air pollution;
damage to the ozone shield; and exploding world population and the
consequent effects on the environment. There is a growing awareness that
today's environmentally unsustainable practices may well inhibit future
economic sustainability. To a great extent, the environmental approach has
refocused the object of the sustainable development debate from economic
outcomes to environmental outcomes.

Free Market Capitalism

The failure of the socialistic experiment in the former Soviet Union and the
East European countries has given new life to the free market concept.
Since the late 1980s, "the market is not considered merely a technical
device for the allocation of goods and services, but rather as the only
possible way to regulate society" (Berthoud 1993). In the case of many
developing countries, several factors, such as the balance of payments
situation or the debt situation, have given them no choice but to restructure
their economies and become a part of the global market economy. However,
the concept of the free enterprise system is now unhooked from strictly
economic roots: The free market system is now coupled with political ideals
such as individual freedom, democracy, and human rights. Countries of the
Third World are being advised (Berthoud 1993) that deregulating their
markets is a sure path to development and the best available system for
humankind. Whether this assertion is correct, only time will tell.

Notes
1. For background see A. Hooqvelt, Third World in Global Development (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities, 1982); R. P. Misra, Third World Peasantry: A Continuing Saga of Deprivation, 2
vols. (New York: Apt Books, 1986); and Chandra T. Mo hanty (ed.), Third World Women and
the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
2. See Howard H. Frederick, Global Communication and International Relations (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1993), 79; L. Wolf-Phillips, "Why Third World?" Third World Quarterly 1
(1979):10S—114; and Alfred Sauvy, General Theory of Population (New York: Basic Books,
1970).
3. Peking Review, June 13,1975,9. See also L. C. Harris and R. L. Worden (eds.), China and the
Third World: Champion or Challenger? (Dover, MA: Auburn House, 1986).
4. Frederick, Global Communication, p. 120. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the
Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992); and Timothy Burns (ed.), After History: Francis
Fukuyama and His Critics (Savage, MD: Rowman and Little-field, 1994)."
5. For an analysis of the linguistic, cultural, and mythic aspects of the number "3" in human
discourse, see Allen H. Merriam, "Words and Numbers: Mathematical Dimensions of
Rhetoric," Southern Communication Journal 55 (summer 1990):337-354.
6. For background see D. R. Goyal, Non-Alignment: Concepts and Concerns (Columbia, MO:
South Asia Books, 1986); and Odette Jankowitsch and Karl P. Sauvant (eds.), Third World
Without Superpowers: The Collected Documents of the Non-Aligned Countries, 10 vols.
(Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 1978).
7. Examples are Rabindranath Tagore, Towards Universal Man (New York: Asia Publishing
House, 1961); D. Lawrence Kincaid (ed.), Communication Theory: Eastern and Western
Perspectives (San Diego: Academic Press, 1987); and Young Yun Kim, "Intercultural
Personhood: An Integration of Eastern and Western Perspectives," in Intercultural
Communication: A Reader, Larry A. Samovar and Richard E. Porter (eds.), 7th ed. (Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1994), 415-425.

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2 Indexes and Trends in Socioeconomic
Development
Alfonso Gonzalez

The Measurement of Socioeconomic Development

One of the most interesting and controversial problems in dealing with
development is how to assess the level of development attained by
individual countries; an associated problem is the assessment of
comparative changes or progress among countries through time. The most
popular method, among the many that have been proposed or used, is
classification based on gross national (or domestic) product per capita. In
addition, the Human Development Index (HDI) has attracted some recent
attention.
The GNP is the most common method used to classify countries on a
socioeconomic basis. This statistic has been utilized and popularized
notably by the World Bank (World Bank Atlas and World Development
Report, various years). Although the classification of countries by the World
Bank has undergone some modification through time, the 1996
categorization consists of the following (based on GNP per capita):

1. low-income economies (<$750)

2. middle-income economies ($770+)

A. lower middle-income ($770-2820)

B. upper middle-income ($2970-8260)

3. high-income economies ($9320+)

In earlier editions the income figures were generally lower but several
other categories were then included: