Author: Olle Tornquist
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 197
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0761959343
Description
This major new book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the main analytical approaches to the study of third world politics and development. Accessible and wide-ranging, this work will be invaluable reading and aims to offer a deeper understanding of the problems of development.
The text is organized around three key sections:
PART 1: Outlines the difficulties in the various analytical approaches to the study of development and locates the role of political science to the field.
PART 2: Presents a critical overview of each of the main schools of thought, from the politics of modernization theories to the more recent new institutionalist and post-marxist perspectives.
PART 3: Introduces the key contemporary issue of democratization to illustrate how students can apply a framework for research and critically develop a perspective of their own.
The author concludes the text with his own critique of the dominant civil society and social capital paradigm and advances new insights into democratization in the third world.
REVIEWS
If it’s a lucid, concise, intellectual history of development theory you’re looking for –one with originality and political bite-you’ll find it in Tornquist’s fine work.
-JAMES C. SCOTT, Yale University
Through a wide-ranging critique of influential conceptualizations of the Third World, and by focusing on the symbiosis between politics and development, Tornquist opens the way for a fresh understanding of how late developing societies can be democratized.
-NEERA CHANDHOKE, University of Delhi
This book introduces the student to the politics of development in the ex-colonial world by familiarizing them with the main debates on the subject. I can think of no better way of doing it.
-MOHMOOD MAMDANI, University of Cape Town
Contents
Preface
Introduction
PART 1: THE STUDY OF THIRD WORLD POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT
The Problem Area
The Subdiscipline
Analytical Approaches
Political and Scientific Conjunctures
PART 2: THE DISCUSSION ON THIRD WORLD POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT
Modernisation and Political Development
Revised Modernisation and Guided Development
Dependency and Politics
Class Politics and the Relative Autonomy of the State
Rent-Seeking politicians and bureaucrats
The Primacy of Institutions
Post-Marxist Alternatives
PART 3: FROM A SCHOOL TO A PERSPECTIVE AND STUDY OF ONE’S OWN: THE CASE OF DEMOCRATISATION
Towards the Study of Democratisation in the Context of Late Development
From Civil Society and Social Capital to the Politics of Democratisation
Study questions
References
Index