Third World Quarterly, Vol 15, No 2, 1994

The end of the Third World'?MARK T BERGER

Introduction: globalisation and the 'Third World'

The end of the Cold War has contributed to the dramatic globalisation of marketeconomics and electoral democracy. But the significance of global capitalismand the substance of the democratic transitions of the past few years are sub-jects of considerable debate. Some observers continue to emphasise thatthe end of the Cold War represents the triumph of liberalism and it is onlya matter of time before the former Soviet Bloc along with the rest of theworld (led by the 'newly industrialised countries' (NICS) of East Asia) arrivesat the capitalist prosperity and democratic stability currently seen to prevailin North America, Western Europe and Japan.' Certainly the end of 'statesocialism' in Eastern Europe and the former USSR has made an importantcontribution in symbolic and substantive terms to the demise of socialistdevelopment models generally and 'state socialism' in the 'Third World' moreparticularly.^ Nevertheless, although the so-called Asian Tigers (South Korea,Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) are at the centre of a major economic boomwhich is lifting them out of their 'Third World' status and shifting the axis ofglobal political economy to the Pacific Rim, the 'neoliberal' governmentsof the rest of Asia, the former Soviet Bloc, Latin America, Africa and Oceaniaare not necessarily guiding their people to consumer capitalism and parlia-mentary democracy. Democratic transitions, where they have taken placeat all, have often remained superficial, while neoliberal economic policieshave stimulated economic growth without necessarily improving the qualityof life for the majority of the population. The acceleration of economic andpolitical globalisation which attended the end of the Cold War has contributedmore to the resurgence of ethnic and national conflicts than it has to internationalpeace and stability.^ The social formations which are emerging out of theferment of Soviet collapse are not characterised by democratic order anddynamic economic 'development', but by unstable parliamentary-authoritariangovernments, considerable dependence on the IMF and World Bank and trans-national capital, and growing 'ideological' and even 'cultural' subordinationto the United States and Western Europe. While East Asia may be leavingthe 'Third World' much of the former Soviet Bloc can be said to have (re)joinedit.''

At the same time, the rise of East Asia, the demise of the 'Second World' andthe onset of a new era of global capitalism, throws the problems associated withthe continued use of the term 'Third World' into sharp relief. The term (along

Mark T Berger is Lecturer at the School of Humanities, Murdock University.

257

MARK T BERGER

with the closely related concepts of 'developing countries', 'less developedcountries', 'underdeveloped countries', 'backward countries' and 'the peri-phery') continues to be a central organising concept in the social sciencesand the humanities generally, and in development studies and developmentpolicy debates more specifically. In the last few years a growing number ofwriters has sought to reinterpret the term 'Third World'. For example, AijazAhmad has emphasised that the 'Third World' 'does not come to us as amere descriptive category'. He noted that it 'carries within it contradictorylayers of meaning and political purpose'; however, he still sought to differen-tiate the theoretical uses and abuses of the term from its use in 'commonparlance' to describe 'the so-called developing countries, from Cuba toSaudi Arabia and from China to Chad'.^ Marc Williams has argued that the'Third World' could undergo a 'resurgence' around a global environmentalagenda. He is optimistic that 'the movement toward political pluralism in muchof the Third World and the important role played by NGOS in the environ-mental debate suggests that a re-vitalised Third World coalition will reflecta set of priorities which has not been set exclusively by the political elites'.*At the end of 1992 Vicky Randall noted, in a review of two books whichseek to 'rethink' the 'Third World', that both works continued to 'hold backfrom any explicit or sustained questioning of the validity of talking about a"Third World" as such'. From her perspective, however, the time has come torethink the concept of a 'Third World' and she asks: '(c)an we justify stillholding on to the term?'^

In an effort to map out fresh perspectives on change and 'development'following the dramatic shift in the international order in the last few years, thisarticle will look at the problems associated with the term 'Third Worid'. A briefdiscussion of the emergence of the 'Third World' will be followed by anexamination of the various ways the term has been deployed. Then the implica-tions of the rise of the Asian Tigers and the growing diversity within andbetween various countries and regions of the 'Third World' will be mentioned.The existence and expansion of 'Third World' conditions within the borders ofthe industrialised countries will also be raised. The conceptual and cartographi-cal challenge to the 'Third World' represented by these changes, combined withthe increasing 'intemationalisation' (or globalisation) of elites and divisions oflabour, in the context of the ever greater movement of information, capital,people and goods across borders, will then be discussed. 'Third World' eliteshave emerged in the international arena claiming to speak for the 'Third World'at the same time as they are deeply implicated in the prevailing internationaldiscourses and structures which work to manage the 'Third World'. In thissituation it will be argued that the idea of a 'Third World' now serves primarilyto generate both a dubious homogeneity within its shifting boundaries and ananalytically irrelevant distinction between the 'Third World' (developing) on theone hand and the 'First World' (developed) on the other hand. At the same time,an emerging approach to 'development' which privileges historical particularity,but also adopts a global perspective, will be outlined insofar as it holds out thepossibility of overcoming many of the conceptual problems linked to the use ofthe term 'Third Worid'.

258

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

The emergence and management of the 'Third World'

In the 1950s the 'Third World' referred to the growing number of nonalignednation-states which were reluctant to take sides in the Cold War. It wasincreasingly deployed by governments and movements in the 'Third World' andtheir sympathisers to generate unity and support in the face of the political andeconomic power of the USA and a handful of former colonial powers. Duringthe late 1950s and 1960s the term 'Third World' gained popular currency asnumerous European colonies in Asia and Africa gained their political indepen-dence.^ Although the Bandung Conference of 1955 has come to be regarded asthe event which gave birth to the 'Third World', none of the ways in which theterm has subsequently been used are easily extrapolated from the meeting itself.Many of the governments in attendance were already politically aligned with oneof the two superpowers, most of them were not seriously committed to analternate economic route between capitalism and socialism, no government fromLatin America or Oceania (where decolonisation had not yet begun) was inattendance, and the gathering did not encompass all of the Asian and Africangovernments of the day.' Following Bandung, 'Third Worldism', as it wasarticulated by its main nationalist proponents, such as Nehru and Sukarno, meantthat the governments of the 'Third World' sought, at least rhetorically, to charta political and economic path between the liberal capitalism of the 'First World'and the 'state socialism' of the 'Second World'. By the 1960s 'Third Worldism'also had its Soviet and Chinese (Maoist) varieties. The former incorporated thoseregimes in the 'Third World' which were formally allied with the USSR andpossessed substantial public sectors, despite their sometimes highly repressivetreatment of peasants and workers. This Moscow-orientated 'Third Worldism'sought to establish a broad front between the 'Second World' and the 'ThirdWorld' against the 'First World'. The Maoist variant articulated a Peking-orien-tated 'Third World', in which China was part of the 'Third World', against the'First World' of which the USSR was perceived to be a part.'" By the 1960s,many movements and governments in the 'Third World' had forged an alliancewith the New Left in the industrialised countries of North America, WesternEurope and Japan. And the Vietnam War exemplified the wider struggle betweenUS imperialism and its allies on the one hand and the national liberationstruggles sweeping Latin America, Africa and Asia on the other."

The Vietnam War proved to be a watershed for 'Third Worldism' and animportant tuming point for the US-led effort to manage the 'Third World'. TheUSA had emerged from the Second World War as the dominant global economicand politico-military power driven forward by an economic boom of unpre-cedented proportions and an ideology of assertive anti-communist globalism.'^Connected to this was the dramatic growth of professional and policy discourseson the 'Third World' which were profoundly shaped by what became known asmodernisation theory. While governments and organisations were deploying theterm 'Third World' as part of an effort to stimulate politico-diplomatic unity inLatin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, the 'Third World'also became central to North American and Western European efforts to controlthose parts of the globe outside the Soviet Bloc. After 1945 modernisation theory

259

MARK T BERGER

imposed an idealised version of North American and Western European historyon Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Oceania.'^ This approach,which remains hegemonic at the popular and policy level, and in many academiccircles, postulated a modem and 'developed' North America and WesternEurope, where the problem of 'development' had been solved, in contrast to a'traditional' and 'underdeveloped' 'Third World'. As Arturo Escobar has argued'to represent the Third World as "underdeveloped" is less a statement about"facts" than the setting up of a regime of truth through which the Third Worldis inevitably known, intervened on, and managed'.''' Over the past 40 years ormore information and knowledge have been extracted from various parts of theglobe and filtered through an array of intellectual and policy processes domi-nated by the so-called 'First World', the effect of which has been to contributeto the managing of the 'Third World'.

At the outset of the Cold War it was widely assumed in US government andacademic circles that poverty facilitated the spread of international commu-nism.'^ It was also assumed that modernisation would bring an end to povertyand undercut anti-capitalist revolution. In the 1950s and early 1960s modernis-ation theory perceived a direct causal link between economic growth, socialchange and democratisation. It also assigned particular importance to theemerging 'middle classes' which were expected to fulfil both a restraining anda progressive function. Although it refiected continuity with the British 'WhiteMan's Burden', the French mission civilisatrice, and the racism of the emergingUS 'imperial state' before 1945, modernisation theory was more secular andmore systematic.'^ Like these earlier approaches modernisation theory wascommitted to a period of tutelage and focused on the need for culturaltransformation in order for the 'Third World' to achieve modernity. Modernis-ation theory emphasised the 'totality' of change and saw modernisation as aprocess, often called 'diffusion', which spread throughout a society affectingeconomics, the type of government, social structure, values, religion and familystructure. Modernisation theorists viewed 'underdevelopment' in the 'ThirdWorld' as the result of internal shortcomings specific to the 'underdeveloped'societies in question. 'Underdevelopment' was seen as a result of their pre-col-onial rather than their colonial history. And despite detailed and tightly focusedscholarship the entire edifice of postwar modernisation theory rested on ahomogeneous image of a 'Third World' destined to follow the North Americanand Western European path.

By the late 1960s, however, the US-led mission to modernise the 'ThirdWorld' and guide it towards liberal capitalist democracy was increasinglychallenged by revolution and economic nationalism ('Third Worldism') in LatinAmerica, Africa and Asia, and by a concern in North America and WesternEurope with the limits of 'Western' power. Under these circumstances distinctradical discourses on the 'Third World' emerged (as part of the rise of, and oftencommitted to, radical 'Third Worldism') to challenge the dominant academicand policy discourses. Dependency theory was at the centre of the newradicalism. Dependency theory, as it came to be understood in the 1960s, haddeveloped out of Latin American 'historico-stmcturalism', which was initiallyassociated with Raul Prebisch and the United Nations' Economic Commission

260

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

for Latin America (ECLA), and out of the North American Marxism of PaulSweezy and Paul Baran.'^ Andre Gunder Frank, an economist who was educatedat the University of Chicago, emerged in the second half of the 1960s as one ofthe main conduits for the entry of dependency theory into North America andWestern Europe and its diffusion around the globe. Walter Rodney was anotherimportant figure whose career and work reflected the linkages between thedependency debate in the Caribbean and Latin America and nationalist andradical debates in Africa, at the same time as his overdetermined dependencymodel was popularised in North America and Western Europe.'^ The over-whelming emphasis on external factors which characterised the dependencyapproach in this period and was linked to radical 'Third Worldism', contributedto a homogenised understanding of the 'Third World' as much as modernisationtheory did.

This was readily apparent in Frank's work. While he was clearly influencedby Baran and the ECLA theorists, his approach departed from the reformism ofPrebisch and was less historically grounded than the work of Fernando HenriqueCardoso and Enzo Falleto.'^ Writers like Cardoso, now Brazilian FinanceMinister, were much more concerned with the analysis of internal historicalstructures, rather than adopting a deterministic focus on external factors.^" InCapitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, which was published in1967, Frank outlined the concept of 'the development of underdevelopment', andarticulated a model of historical development, which directly linked 'underdevel-opment' and economic stagnation to the transfer of an economic surplus fromthe periphery to the industrialised core. Following Baran, Frank made a dramaticbreak with classical Marxism, asserting 'that it is capitalism, both world andnational, which produced underdevelopment in the past and which still generatesunderdevelopment in the present'.^' Frank's work rose to particular prominenceand his ideas were produced and reproduced so widely that they emerged in thelate 1960s and early 1970s as the main radical interpretation, at least as it wasunderstood in North America and Western Europe.

By the second half of the 1970s dependency theory had peaked. Its demise canbe traced to its failure as revolutionary prophecy and the end of the US war inSouth-east Asia. Despite the Communist victory over Washington's erstwhileSaigon-based ally in 1975, by the late 1970s Vietnam represented a majorsetback for socialist 'Third Worldism'. From the very beginning the varioustypes of 'Third Worldism' could not, and in most cases did not, disguise thecentrality of nationalism and national liberation to the various struggles forsocial change in the 'Third World'. The wars between Vietnam, Cambodia andChina in the late 1970s were the culmination of years of tension and fragmen-tation, and clearly reflected the way in which nationalism had undermined 'ThirdWorldism', and socialist internationalism more generally.^^ The rise of the 'NICS'in Latin America (Mexico and Brazil) and East Asia, and the rise of OPEC alsocontributed to both the fading of dependency theory and the failure of radical'Third Worldism'. At the same time, by the late 1970s an emphasis on thecorruption and authoritarianism of many 'Third World' states shifted the blamefor 'underdevelopment' back on to the 'Third World'. Another important factorbehind the 'fall' of radical 'Third Worldism' and dependency theory was that by

261

MARK T BERGER

the mid-1970s the radical challenge had been partially contained via the politicalaccommodation of radical 'Third Worldism' by various international organisa-tions, such as the United Nations, and by the theoretical incorporation ofimportant elements of the dependency approach into the dominant liberaldiscourses.-^^ The relative decline of radical 'Third Worldism' and the demise ofdependency theory was followed by the emergence of a number of 'new' radicaltheoretical approaches which built on and interacted with dependency theory,and contributed to the diffusion of radical ideas in the 1970s and 1980s.Although the new radical approaches departed from the determinism associatedwith classic dependency theory, most of them facilitated the continued circu-lation of the idea of a homogeneous 'Third World'.

By the 1970s a Marxist dependency synthesis had begun to emerge that linkedhistorical materialism to the insights of dependency theory, placing considerableemphasis on state and class structures in the 'periphery'. Writers in this traditionaccepted dependency theory's overall critique of classical Marxism, namely thatthe potential for independent capitalist development is constrained by a depen-dent economic position in the international economic order. At the same time,however, this tradition also brings together revisionist arguments which empha-sise the relative potential for dependent capitalist development and the survivalof pre-capitalist modes of production, emphasising that politics in the 'ThirdWorld' still enjoy a certain degree of freedom from external pressures. Theyfocus then on local social structures, particularly the character and degree ofclass formation, and the concerns and ambitions of different social groups. Manywriters in this tradition emphasise the colonial and post-colonial state as thelocation in which the local ruling classes may initially have taken form, andthrough which they seek to consolidate their economic and sociopoliticaldominance. This approach is also concerned to determine to what degree thepost-colonial state reflects the interests of international capital and/or localconcerns.^'' But much of this work has continued to rely implicitly on ahomogeneous image of the 'Third World' and a sharp distinction betweenindustrialised North America, Western Europe and Japan and the rest of theworld.

In the 1970s, building on debates within Marxism, the 'mode of production'approach also rose to prominence as a response to dependency theory's privileg-ing of the market over relations of production. For example, in a well-knowndebate, Ernesto Laclau challenged Frank's sweeping characterisation of LatinAmerica as capitalist simply because it was part of a world capitalist economy.'̂ ^This approach emphasises that some pre-capitalist 'modes of production' in theperiphery have proved highly resilient to the expansion of capitalism and havenot disappeared as anticipated. The problem of 'underdevelopment' in the 'ThirdWorld' is the result of a more protracted transition caused by the fact that theprocesses of modernisation and urban industrialisation in the periphery aredependent for a long time on pre-capitalist modes of production in the country-side which have articulated with an externally imposed capitalist mode ofproduction. Although the 'mode of production' approach was important inshifting the burden of explanation for 'underdevelopment' back towards internalclass structures and social formations, many of its proponents tended to factor

262

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

external forces out of their analysis, while they conflated the 'capitalist mode ofproduction' in the industrialised countries with capitalism in the 'Third World'.'̂ ^Although state and class approaches and 'modes of production' approachesshifted the emphasis away from international market relations, they oftenfell back on the 'Third World' as a category with some explanatory powerrather than emphasising the particularity of social formations on the so-called'periphery'.

While the state and class approach, and the 'mode of production' approach,represented a significant challenge to dependency theory as it emerged in the late1960s, the eclipse of classic dependency theory cannot be understood withoutreference to the work of Samir Amin and the world-system theory of ImmanuelWallerstein. Although Amin, an Egyptian economic historian whose work hasfocused primarily on Africa, is often located within the world-system andunequal exchange school, his work as a whole reflects a synthesis of 'modes ofproduction' and a theory of 'unequal exchange' with insights drawn fromdependency and world-system theory.̂ ^ While Amin's work was influential bythe 1970s, Wallerstein's world-system theory emerged as the most importantsingle trend in radical social science. Wallerstein was influenced by dependencytheory and by the work of Femand Braudel and the Annales 'school'.-^^ As PaulBuhle has suggested, Wallerstein's first major book on world-system theory,which appeared in 1974, has, quite possibly, been 'the most influential singlebook of the post-New Left era'.^' By the time he published the first volume ofThe Modern World-System Wallerstein was clearly articulating the view thatsocial change in the modem world could only be 'understood' within theframework of the historical evolution of the modern world-system as a whole.And by the end of the 1980s his central ideas continued to display considerablecontinuity.^"

Wallerstein's project rests on the assumption that a particular country'sinternal development may only be 'understood' with reference to the position itoccupies, or the role it plays, in the modem world-system as a whole. World-sys-tem theorists trace the historical development of capitalism, by focusing on theemergence and functioning of an international market comprised of three levels,the periphery, semi-periphery and the core. Inequality emerges and is maintainedas a systemic characteristic because different regions within the world-systemproduce commodities for exchange using different labour control systems. Theeconomic stagnation of the periphery, and the continued, and even expandinggap, between it and the core of the world-economy, flows from the privilegedposition held by core nations because of the historical terms under which theyinitially entered the world-economy. Although Wallerstein has highlighted theheuristic character of world-system theory, the emphasis on international econ-omic relations has left world-system theorists open to charges of economicdeterminism. The conception of power used by world-system theorists, seespower located in the structure of the intemational economy itself, particularly inthe upper levels of the intemational order, in contrast to more orthodox Marxistconceptions which see power as flowing from class relationships and statestmctures. As a result world-system theory tends to represent change as afunction of elite decision making, or of the system itself, rather than holding out

263

MARK T BERGER

class Struggle or nation-state interactions and initiatives as agents of change. Theworld-system model has contributed to the standardisation of historically particu-lar relationships and socioeconomic stmctures in the 'Third World'. Ultimatelyworld-system theory, as reflected in Wallerstein's own work and in the work ofwriters such as L S Stavrianos and Daniel Chirot, finds the key to the history ofthe 'Third World' in its relationship to an expanding world-system centred onEurope and North America, and later Japan.^'

The maintenance of the 'Third World' and the East Asian 'miracle'

While changes in the postwar order stimulated the emergence and the diffusionof radical approaches, modemisation theory continued to spread at the same timeas it underwent considerable revision. An early shift was the rise of 'militarymodernisation' theory and the emergence of a 'politics of order' approach.^^ Thisapproach questioned the view that there was a connection between 'underdevel-opment' and instability. Its exponents argued that it was the attempt to modem-ise in the 'Third World', rather than 'the absence of modernity', which resultedin political instability. According to Samuel Huntington, for example, 'ThirdWorld' instability had to be understood as primarily a result of the 'gap betweenaspirations and expectations', which flowed from the dramatic expansion of'aspirations' in the initial stages of 'modernization'. From his perspective the'traditional polity' was 'suffering from the absence of power', and the 'problem'was 'not to seize power but to make power, to mobilize groups into politics andto organize their participation in polities', and this had to be done from the topdown.̂ ^ This approach emphasised the important stabilising role of the militaryand a strong state.̂ "* By the late 1960s conservative developmentalism had alsofound a possible source of stability in 'traditional' political and social institu-tions.̂ ^ Some of this work provided a degree of intellectual legitimacy for 'ThirdWorld' dictatorships.^* And much of this work also continued to homogenise the'Third World' and contribute to the overall efforts to manage economic andpolitical change in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.

At the same time a more liberal trend had emerged by the early 1970s whichbuilt on the 'politics of order' approach, but was also influenced by andincorporated radical perspectives on the 'Third World'. This was part of thewider shift in the late 1960s and 1970s towards greater influence at the UN by'Third World' govemments, the call for a New Intemational Economic Order(NIEO) and the apparent recognition in North America and Westem Europe thatthe North-South conflict was more important than the East-West conflict. Thisliberal managerialism was reformist and envisioned improving North-Southrelations without having to make major stmctural changes. The shift in the1970s, from the East-West conflict and the containment of communism, to theNorth-South conflict and the management of revolution, was partially reflectedin the policies adopted by the Carter administration in its first two years in office.Carter, as well as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as his National SecurityAdvisor, and a number of other members of the Carter administration, weremembers of the Trilateral Commission, which was founded in 1973 by promi-nent North American, Westem European and Japanese academics, politicians

264

THE END OF THE THIRD WORLD'?

and corporate heads. According to Brzezinski, one of the organisation's co-founders, the Trilateral Commission saw US relations with Japan and WesternEurope as the 'strategic hard core for both global stability and progress'.^' Themajor goal of the Trilateral Commission was to develop a cohesive andsemi-permanent alliance which embraced the world's major capitalist govern-ments in order to promote stability and order and protect their interests.^^ In thecase of the 'Third World', Trilateralism advocated and sought accommodationrather than confrontation. It sought to encourage a limited amount of reform inorder to maintain long-term stability. By the end of the 1970s the BrandtCommission and its North-South report had emerged as a major initiative anda key document by which the elites of the industrial nation-states attempted tomanage the 'Third World'.^'

At the same time the initiatives associated with the NIEO and the liberalmanagerialism embodied by the Trilateral Commission, the early Carter admin-istration and the Brandt Report, were under serious challenge by the end of the1970s from a powerful 'neoliberal' approach to 'development' associated withthe ascendancy in the early 1980s of 'conservative' governments in NorthAmerica and Western Europe. Although the 'conservatism' of the early 1980sdismissed many of the ideas associated with liberal managerialism and modern-isation theory, the 'conservative' revival still rested on the earlier diffusionistideas that North American and Western European economic expansion wasprimarily beneficial and that economic growth tended to undermine any need forpolicies aimed at the redistribution of wealth. This 'free-market' counterrevolu-tion emphasised supply-side economics and recommended that 'Third World'governments follow the North American and Western European lead andprivatise public companies, as well as curb the regulation of prices and wagesand economic activity generally.'*" These 'recommendations' were backed up byNorth American and West European power over the IMF and the World Bank inthe context of the new found leverage provided by the Debt Crisis and theinternational economic recession of the early 1980s. This situation also weak-ened the impact of the United Nations and related organisations such as theInternational Labour Organisation (iLO), the United Nations Conference on Tradeand Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Development Program(UNDP), where 'Third World' views had gained weight in the 1970s. The centralprescription for the 'Third World' that flowed from 'free market' ideology wasthat 'underdevelopment' was caused by excessive state involvement in theeconomy. However, North American and Western European assumptions abouteconomic behaviour are often irrelevant even in North America and WesternEurope. During the 1980s the mechanical application of free-market economicsto the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania, where markets arestill fragmented, information is often limited and significant aspects of economicexchange are still outside the money economy, could not be expected to have,and has not had, a beneficial impact for the majority of the population."*'

Despite the dubious social legacy of neoliberal economic policies in LatinAmerica, Africa, Asia and Oceania by the beginning of the 1990s, the wide-spread failure of 'state socialism' has generally enhanced the power of liberalideas about economic development and social change in the 'Third World'. At

265

MARK T BERGER

the same time the notion of a 'Third World' in sharp contrast to the 'FirstWorld', which emerged during the Cold War, has remained a central element ofsocial science and policy discourses in the 1990s. The concept of the 'ThirdWorld' continues to be used across a whole range of disciplines which can befound in a variety of institutional settings, all of which have the 'Third World'(and 'development' and 'underdevelopment') as their targets. Most of thedisciplines and organisations concerned with the study of, and the generation ofpolicies related to, the 'Third World', continue to be shaped by a set ofassumptions that flow from a conception of history as a linear progression froma condition of political and economic 'underdevelopment' and 'tradition', to astate of liberal democratic industrialism and modernity. The 'Third World' andits history has been created and understood primarily in terms of the failure ofthe countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania to become idealisedversions of the industrial democracies of North America and Western Europe.More broadly, economic and political liberalism (modernisation theory) hascontinued to provide the most influential set of assumptions about the 'ThirdWorld'. And within liberal discourses the concept of the 'Third World' and the'First World-Third World' dichotomy continues to encourage a homogenisedunderstanding of a large part of the globe.

The East Asian 'miracle' provides a particularly good example of the way inwhich the 'Third World' has been managed and homogenised over the course ofthe Cold War. The dramatic rise of a number of East Asian countries sinceWorld War II has resulted in the growing expectation that we are on thethreshold of the 'Pacific Century'.'*^ The 'NIC'S' of East Asia have undergoneprofound economic changes and it is very difficult to continue to evaluate theireconomies, politics and societies as part of the 'Third World'.''^ But rather thanseeing the East Asian 'success' as evidence that the 'Third World' is far toohomogeneous a concept, history is ignored and the 'lessons' of East Asianindustrialisation are regularly held out as readily transferable throughout the restof the 'Third World'. The East Asian 'miracle' is now the central theme in awide range of development literature which has sought to universalise the'lessons' from East Asia.

A key approach to East Asian development, as exemplified by the World Bankand the related literature, has been to point to East Asian success as evidence ofthe global applicability of liberal economic policies.'*'' According to one unrepen-tant 'free trade' advocate 'such success as Asia now enjoys is the result ofunremitting hard work, an unquenchable spirit of enterprise, and sound economicpolicies'.''^ The famous novelist and one-time Peruvian presidential hopefulMario Vargas Llosa, insists that East Asian 'success' has demonstrated thatliberalism 'is the only recipe' for the 'Third World'.'*'' In the context of theenthusiastic response to the rise of East Asia there has been a tendency toconflate 'export-oriented' industrialisation with 'free-trade'; however, aside fromHong Kong, the governments of the East Asian NICS have played a far moreinterventionist and protectionist role in economic development than the liberaleconomic development model suggests. Because the central goal of the variousEast Asian NICS has been export success, their governments have, among otherthings, manipulated interest rates and credit channels, made major concessions

266

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

to foreign investors—in the case of Singapore particularly—and intervened inthe labour market to keep workers' wages below market rates. The importanceof state intervention in East Asian development actually challenges neoliberalismand has given rise to considerable literature and debate on East Asian and 'ThirdWorld' development.*^ However, most of the discussion of the applicability ofthe East Asian model to the rest of the 'Third World' has failed to go beyondthe debates over the role of state intervention, the relationship between economicdevelopment and political democracy, and the role of liberal economic policies.There has been far less work which seeks to address the 'problem' in a way thatfocuses on the historically speciflc experience of East Asia in contrast to otherparts of the 'Third World'.

The importance of various long-term historical factors specific to East Asia docome out in the more historically oriented literature, which can be divided intothree categories. First there are those studies which emphasise that the EastAsian Tigers all share a cultural history characterised by an emphasis on higheducation levels, a highly motivated population, a 'strong state', and an 'effec-tive' bureaucracy—all of which have been traced back to a common Confucianheritage.'*^ Second, and also of great importance in explaining South Korean andTaiwanese success, is the region's colonial history (this is also important in avery different way for Hong Kong and Singapore). Before 1945 Korea (Northand South), Taiwan and Manchuria, formed the core of the Japanese colonialempire, which had important consequences for post-1945 industrial develop-ment.'*' The third historical factor which needs to be emphasised, but is oftenglossed over, is that East Asia was a major arena of the Cold War after 1945.This ensured South Korea and Taiwan received sustained US military andeconomic aid and capital, as well as privileged access to the North Americanmarket at a time of steady growth in demand. It also resulted in the implemen-tation of land reforms, under US auspices, which contributed to economicgrowth and industrialisation. This is in contrast to those areas of the 'ThirdWorld' that have had a more episodic, less intense position, or have played a less'successful' role, in US Cold War national security policy.^" A focus on EastAsia's historical particularity, in the context of global trends, challenges theahistorical assumptions on which much of the thinking about economic develop-ment in the 'Third World' is based, and problematises the whole notion of a'Third World'.

Globalisation and historical specificity

While a historical approach to the rise of East Asia calls into question prevailingconceptions of a 'Third World', the existence, and even the expansion, of 'ThirdWorld' conditions within the borders of the so-called 'First World' furtherundermines the notion of a 'Third World'. The 'internal colonialism' which hascharacterised the history of the United States and Australia, for example, hasconsigned native Americans and Australian aborigines to circumstances whichmirror the conditions in which the rural and urban poor of 'Third World'countries live. Mike Davis's recent history of Los Angeles seriously qualiflesany attempt to view the USA as simply a 'First World' country. For African-

267

MARK T BERGER

Americans and Chicanos, and recent arrivals from Latin America, life inSouthern California is little different from the urban poverty south of the RioGrande.^' At the same time countries like South Africa have always presenteda particular problem for anyone attempting to talk about a 'Third World'. InSouth Africa the white minority enjoys a standard of living comparable to anyother industrialised country, while the black majority lives in 'Third World'conditions.^^ The concept of 'internal colonialism' or related approaches has alsobeen applied to parts of Latin America, in order to highlight the way in whichin a number of countries a Europeanised elite continues to occupy a position ofpower and privilege in sharp contrast to the indigenous inhabitants and/or thedescendants of African slaves.^''

In a wider sense this conceptual difficulty points to the 'intemationalisation'of class structure, as ruling elites in the 'Third World' and the 'First World'become increasingly integrated. The governments and elites of Latin America,the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Oceania have been incorporated into theglobal political-economic order on favourable terms at the same time as theyenthusiastically claim to speak for the rural and urban poor of the 'Third World'who have clearly not been incorporated into the current international order onfavourable terms. In Latin America, and elsewhere, certain sectors of the eliteare economically, socially and culturally orientated towards North America andWestern Europe, where they have bank accounts, maintain business links, ownhomes and send their children to school. Globalisation has meant the increas-ingly tight interlocking of transnational capital and 'national' capitalist classes.Over the past decade or more, the Debt Crisis, 'the generalized economicrecession' and IMF backed 'structural adjustment', has contributed to greaterconcentration of income, high rates of unemployment, widespread poverty andthe marginalisation of a growing number of rural and urban poor around theglobe. As Jorge Nef has emphasised, for much of Latin America, 'the state hasbecome the receiver and debt-collector of a bankrupt economy on behalf oftransnational creditors'. In this situation 'nation-states' have been drawn intoservice by interlocking national and global elites.̂ '* It is worth noting that incontrast to the 'great modem theories of social emancipation—for democraticrights, for socialist revolution, for liberation of women; indeed anti-colonialnationalism itself, 'Third Worldism' as a political project, and the 'ThirdWorld' as a category, has usually denoted a collection of 'states' alreadyimplicated in the retention of power and in a whole array of exploitative andaccumulative practices.^^

The solution to the problems generated by the concept of the 'Third World'is not to find a new label, but to dispense with the term. There is alreadyimportant work being done which has begun to foreshadow ways of movingbeyond the concept of the 'Third World'. Although this work has, predictably,had less impact on development economics and development policy debates, itprovides the basis for a theoretically informed historical perspective on 'develop-ment' which is global. While some of this work has also sought to universaliseits conclusions by reference to the 'Third World', there are a growing numberof approaches which in different ways seek to privilege the specific over thesystemic, and have emerged out of important debates in the humanities and the

268

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

social sciences over the past decade or so.̂ ^ Dissatisfaction with the elite-orien-tated focus of much of the work on India, for example, has given rise toSubaltern Studies. Informed by Gramscian, and later post-structural theory.Subaltern approaches have focused on the peasantry and workers with particularconcern to delineate structures and techniques of domination, strategies ofresistance and the historical particularity and role of culture and religion.'^ Theirconcern to restore the subaltern classes to history, and provide the intellectualunderpinning for a less elite-orientated politics, intersects with the growingamount of work by historical anthropologists coming out of the modes ofproduction and world-system debates of the 1970s and 1980s. These scholarshave drawn attention to the way in which the expanding world economy hasneither historically nor currently levelled 'pre-capitalist' structures and dis-courses to the degree that many of the earlier theoretical models implied.̂ ^

In the case of Latin America, for example, the work of Steve J Stem, whichhas grown out of efforts to synthesise a 'modes of production' approach withWallerstein's world-system model, has resulted in an important attempt toemphasise both historical particularity and global political economy. Erom hisperspective the central dynamics of Latin American history since the colonial erahave been the various approaches and popular resistance strategies of theinhabitants, the interests of mercantile and political elites whose 'centers ofgravity' were in the Americas, and the world-system.^' The overall methodolog-ical concerns apparent in Stem's work intersect with the emphasis on the longueduree in the work of Jean-Erangois Bayart, which attempts to historicise 'states'in Africa, rejects the state-society dichotomy and argues that colonial andpost-colonial 'states' should be seen as historically rooted in particular socialformations rather than regarded as alien institutions.̂ ** This overall concern withthe strategies of resistance pursued by the peasantry and subaltern classes, andthe historicity of 'states', needs to be meshed with an approach which breaksdown the North-South dichotomy. One of the central problems with thedevelopment discourses is the way they have treated 'development' in the'developed' world as a problem that has been solved. There is a growing numberof development theorists who emphasise the need to move beyond NorthAmerica and Westem Europe as implicit models and address 'development' asa historical and political question that is still common to all parts of the globe.*'

Conclusion: the rise and fall of the 'Third World'

The 'Third World' began as a loose political alliance ('non-alignment') betweennation-states in the context of US-Soviet rivalry after World War Two. At leastone tendency had evolved by the 1960s into a revolutionary ideology committedto movements of national liberation on three continents. At the same time the'Third World' rapidly came to be more than a description of governmentalcoalitions and/or allied revolutionary movements in the context of the Cold War.The apparent gulf between the industrialised nation-states (where 'development'was understood not to be a problem any longer) and the rest of the world in the1950s suggested that a distinguishing characteristic of 'Third World' countrieswas a shared 'underdevelopment'. The term 'Third World' increasingly came to

269

MARK T BERGER

be central to North American and Western European analysis of politico-econ-omic and social change in the rest of the world. The idea of a 'Third World' nowserves an important function in terms of the 'management' of the global politicaleconomy and allows for the homogenisation of the history of diverse parts of theworld. What began in the 1950s as an attempt to forge a political and diplomaticalliance ostensibly outside the capitalist and socialist 'camps' has now becomean all encompassing category reducing the governments, economies and soci-eties of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania to a set of variables distinctfrom and inferior to the 'First World'. For many of those concerned witheconomic development, a relatively homogeneous 'Third World' continues toexist. And this 'Third World' is still evaluated in terms of its ability or lack ofability to advance towards a degree and type of economic development similarto the'First World'. The economic problems of the 'Third World' continue to beunderstood primarily as technical problems that can be overcome by the rightmix of advice, investment, aid and liberal reforms. Economic development in the'Third World' is seen primarily as a technical or policy problem rather than ahistorico-political problem. The information and knowledge about the 'ThirdWorld' which has built up over the course of the Cold War has been obtained,transmitted and organised by a whole series of processes of informationaccumulation and dissemination aimed at managing the 'Third World'. Thissituation, along with the wider difficulties associated with the continued use ofthe term 'Third World', can be alleviated by an approach which locates thepolitics of 'development' in both historically particular and global processes.

NotesI would like to acknowledge the assistance of Catherine Waldby (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) andClaire Slatter (University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji) who commented on an earlier version of this article.Of course, any errors of fact or interpretation remain the sole responsibility of the author.

' The most well-known exponent of this view is probably Francis Fukuyama, a RAND consultant and formerUS State Department employee, who suggested in 1989 that the end of the Cold War might be the 'end ofhistory'. In a now famous article he characterised the waning of the conflict between Washington andMoscow as the 'end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberaldemoeracy as the final form of human government'. He emphasised that the liberal 'victory' was stillunfinished, and it had occurred mainly 'in the realm of ideas or consciousness'. The process was 'as yetincomplete in the real or material world'. According to Fukuyama's scenario, much of the 'Third World'is still 'mired in history' and will be 'a terrain of conflict for many years to come'. At the same time hewas confident that economic and political liberalism would 'govern the material world in the long run'(emphasis in original). F Fukuyama, 'The end of history?'. The National Interest, 16 (8), 1989, pp 3-4, 15.See also F Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992; ZBrzezinski, The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century, New York:Macmillan, 1990; J Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny, Washington, DC:American Enterprise Institute, 1991; and R Nixon, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Super-power World, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. For a variety of critical views on the end of the ColdWar see G Arrighi, 'Marxist century, American century: the making and remaking of the world labourmovement'. New Left Review, 179, 1990; R Blackburn, 'Fin de siecle: socialism after the crash'. New LeftReview, 185, 1991 (these articles are both reprinted in R Blackburn (ed). After the Fall: The Failure ofCommunism and the Future of Socialism, London: Verso, 1991); A Callinicos, The Revenge of History:Marxism and the Eastern European Revolutions, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991; I Wallerstein, 'The collapseof liberalism', in R Miliband & L Panitch (eds), Socialist Register 1992: New World Order?, London:Merlin Press, 1992; and S P Huntington, 'The clash of civilizations?'. Foreign Affairs, 72(3), 1993.

^ See C Clapham, 'The collapse of socialist development in the Third World', Third World Quarterly, 13(1),

270

THE END OF THE THIRD WORLD'?

1992. The entire issue is devoted to 'Rethinking socialism'. Also see F J Hinkelammert, 'The crisis ofsocialism and the Third World', Monthly Review, 45 (3), 1993; and E Altvater, The Future of the Market:An Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature after the Collapse of 'Actually Existing Socialism';London; Verso, 1993.

•* B Anderson, 'The last empires; the new worid disorder', New Left Review, 193, 1992.'' I Wallerstein, Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System, Cambridge; Cambridge

University Press, 1991, pp 10, 14; and K Jowitt, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, Berkeley,CA; University of California Press, 1992, pp 252-253.

' A Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, London; Verso, 1992, pp 307-308.^ M Williams, 'Re-articulating the Third World coalition; the role of the environmental Agenda', Third World

Quarterly, 14(1), 1993, p 28.'' V Randall, 'Third World; rejected or rediscovered?'. Third World Quarterly, 13(4), 1992, p 730. See also

J Manor (ed). Rethinking Third World Politics, London; Longman, 1991; and R Galli (ed). Rethinking theThird World, New York; Crane Russack, 1992.

* L Wolf-Phillips, 'Why "Third World"?; origin, definition and usage'. Third World Quarterly, 9 (4),1987.

' For a thorough analysis of the Bandung Conference, particularly the role and rhetoric of Jawaharlal Nehru('undoubtedly the main luminary at the Conference'), see Ahmad, op cit, note 5, pp 293-304. For a critiqueof India's foreign policy which emphasises that a commitment to 'Third Woridism' has not meshed easilywith the imperatives of post-1947 Indian political economy, see S Dutt, India and the Third World: Altruismor Hegemony?, London; Zed Press, 1984. A clear articulation of Bandung as the moment of arrival for the'Third World' can be found in a recent book by Theodore H Von Laue In which he argues that '(t)heBandung Conference of April 1955 marked a milestone in the evolution of postwar globalism. It establishedthe developing countries, aligned and nonaligned, as a force to be counted in world affairs'. T H Von Laue,The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global Perspective, New York; OxfordUniversity Press, 1987, p 239.

'" Ahmad, op cit, note 5, pp 304-308." G Chaliand, Revolution in the Third World, Harmondsworth; Penguin Books, 1978, p 24; and N Miller and

R Aya, 'Preface', in N Miller and R Aya (eds). National Liberation: Revolution in the Third World, NewYork; Free Press, 1971. It has been argued that the New Left's attempt to Identify with and distill a wholerange of 'Third World' struggles into a radical 'Third Woridism' helped to detach the movement from itsdomestic roots in North America and Western Europe. N Young, An Infantile Disorder?: The Crisis andDecline of the New Left, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977, pp 103, 133, 158-159, 163-164, 179,183-188, 256-259.

'̂ G Koiko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy 1945-1980, New York; Pantheon,1988.

" For recent overviews of the history of modernisation theory and development theory generally, see A Y So,Social Change and Development: Modernization, Dependency and World-System Theories, Newbury Park;Sage, 1990; C Ramirez-Faria, The Origins of Economic Inequality Between Nations: A Critique of WesternTheories of Development and Underdevelopment, London; Unwin Hyman, 1991; and R Peet, GlobalCapitalism: Theories of Societal Development, London; Routledge, 1991.

''' A Escobar, 'Culture, economics and politics In Latin American social movements theory and research', inA Escobar and S E Alvarez (eds). The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy andDemocracy, Boulder, CO; Westview Press, 1992, p 62. See also A Escobar, 'Discourse and power indevelopment; Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World', Alternatives, 10,1984-1985. A Escobar, 'Power and visibility: development and the invention and management of the ThirdWorld', Cultural Anthropology, 3 (4), 1988.

" G Myrdal, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, Vol 2, New York; Pantheon, 1968,pp 791-798; and R A Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas inForeign Aid and Social Science, Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1973, pp 52-53.

"" M Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance,Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1989, pp 402-403, 411-415. For a discussion of the relationshipbetween Cold War development theory and pre-1945 ideas about Latin America which relates to widerthinking about Africa, Asia and Oceania, see M T Berger, 'Civilising the South; the US rise to hegemonyin the Americas and the roots of "Latin American Studies" 1898-1945', Bulletin of Latin AmericanResearch, 12(1) 1993. Also see M T Berger, Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies, Inter-AmericanRelations and the History of 'Development' 1898-1990, Bloomington, IN; Indiana University Press,forthcoming.

" R Prebisch, The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems, New York; UnitedNations, 1950; P A Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, New York; Monthly Review Press, 1957. Ondependency theory, see Joseph L. Love, 'The origins of dependency analysis'. Journal of Latin AmericanStudies, 22 (1), 1990; C Kay, Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment, New York;

271

MARK T BERGER

Routledge, 1989, pp 1-57, 125-162; and R A Packenham, The Dependency Movement: Scholarship andPolitics in Development Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

'* W Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1972.See also F E Mallon, 'Dialogues among the fragments: retrospect and prospect', in F Cooper, F E Mallon,A F Isaacman, W Roseberry & S J Stem, Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor andthe Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,1993, p 382.

" F H Cardoso & E Falleto, Dependencia y desarrollo en America Latina, Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1969; and THalperin-Donghi, '"Dependency theory" and Latin American historiography', Latin American ResearchReview, 17(1), 1982, p 116.

°̂ F H Cardoso, 'The consumption of dependency theory in the United States', Latin American ResearchReview, 12 (3), 1977, pp 12-13.

^' A G Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil,New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967, p xi. See also A G Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopmentor Revolution—Essays on the Development of Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy, NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 1969; A G Frank, Lumpen-Bourgeoisie. Lumpen-Development: Depend-ence, Class and Politics in Latin America, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. Frank's mostfamous essay is probably 'The development of underdevelopment' which originally appeared in MonthlyReview in September 1966, was reprinted in Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution in 1969,and again in R I Rhodes (ed). Imperialism and Underdevelopment: A Reader, New York: MonthlyReview Press, 1970 and again in an abridged form in J D Cockcroft, A G Frank & D L Johnson,Dependence and Underdevelopment: Latin America's Political Economy, Garden City, KS: Doubleday,1972.

^̂ G Evans & K Rowley, Red Brotherhood At War: Vietnam. Cambodia and Laos Since 1975, London: Verso,1990. It was the failure of Marxist internationalism in Indochina that provided the impetus for BenedictAnderson's influential book. B Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread ofNationalism, London: Verso, 1983, pp 1-2. See also B Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on theOrigins and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1992.

•̂' Key examples of liberal analysis informed by dependency theory include P Evans, Dependent Development:The Alliance of Multinational. State and Foreign Capital in Brazil, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1978. S Haggard, Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly IndustrializingCountries, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

'̂' V Randall & R Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment: A Critical Introduction to Third WorldPolitics, London: Macmillan, 1985, pp 137-138. Works in this tradition might include A K Bagchi, ThePolitical Economy of Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982; J Larrain, Theories ofDevelopment: Capitalism, Colonialism and Development, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989; and J Petras & MMorley, US Hegemony Under Siege: Class. Politics and Development in Latin America, London: Verso,1990.E Laclau, 'Feudalism and capitalism in Latin America', New Left Review, 67, 1971, reprinted in E Laclau,Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, London: Verso, 1979, pp 15-50. (In a postscript Laclau extendshis critique to Wallerstein's work.) A particularly orthodox Marxist perspective also emerged to challengedependency theory. See B Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism, London: Verso, 1980. Also see GKay, Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis, London: Macmillan, 1975.

*̂ P F Klaren, 'Lost promise: explaining Latin American underdevelopment', in P F Klar£n & T J Bossert(eds). Promise of Development: Theories of Change in Latin America, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986,pp 24-25. See also A Foster-Carter, 'The modes of production controversy'. New Left Review, 107, 1978;and J G Taylor, From Modernization to Modes of Production: A Critique of Sociologies of Development andUnderdevelopment, London: Macmillan, 1983.

^' D F Ruecio & L H Simon, 'Perspectives on underdevelopment: Frank, the modes of productionschool and Amin', in C K Wilber & K P Jameson (eds). The Political Economy of Developmentand Underdevelopment, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992, pp 138-143; S Amin, Accumulation on a WorldScale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment, Sussex: Harverster Press, 1974; S Amin, UnequalDevelopment: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, New York: MonthlyReview Press, 1976; and S Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development, New York: Monthly ReviewPress, 1977.

*̂ The influence was a two way affair insofar as volume three of Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism drewheavily on Wallerstein's 'modem world-system'. Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: TheAnnales School I929-I989, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, p 50. See F Braudel, The Structures of EverydayLife: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century Volume I, New York: Harper and Row, 1981; FBraudel, The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization and Capitalism I5th-I8th Century Volume 2, New York:Harper and Row, 1982; and F Braudel, The Perspective of the World: Civilization and Capitalism I5th-18thCentury Volume 3, New York: Harper and Row, 1984, pp 69-70.

272

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

^̂ P Buhle, Marxism in the USA: Erom 1870 to the Present Day, London: Verso, 1987, p 265.°̂ C Ragin & D Chirot, 'The world system of Immanuel Wallerstein: sociology and politics as history',

in Theda Skocpol (ed), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1984, pp 284-290. I Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and theOrigins of the European Worid-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, New York: Academic Press, 1974;I Wallerstein, The Modem World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the EuropeanWorld-Economy 1600-1750, New York: Academic Press, 1980; and I Wallerstein, The Modem WorldSystem III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy 1730s-l840s, New York:Academic Press, 1989.

'̂ L S Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age, New York: William Morrow, 1981; D Chirot,Social Change in the Twentieth Century, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977; and D Chirot,Social Change in the Modem Era, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1986.

'^ J J Johnson (ed). The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1962; and M Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations: An Essay inComparative Analysis, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

•'̂ S P Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968,pp 41-45, 52-56, 144-145.

^ See A Zolberg, Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa, Chicago, IL: University ofChicago Press, 1966.

^̂ See, for example, C W Anderson, Politics and Economic Change in Latin America: The Governing ofRestless Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.

•̂ According to Howard Wiarda '(m)ost Western social science, with its favoritism toward democratic andcivilian government, treats coups as aberrations—irregular, dysfunctional, and unconstitutional—thusignoring their normality, regularity, workability, often onstituted constitutional basis, the reasons for them,their functional similarity to elections, and the fact the former may be no more comic opera than the latter.Our antimilitary bias, however, often prevents us from seeing these events neutrally and scientifically.'H J Wiarda, Ethnocentrism in Eoreign Policy: Can We Understand the Third World?, Washington, DC:American Enterprise Institute, 1985, p 31. Also see H J Wiarda, Critical Elections and Critical Coups: State,Society and the Military in the Processes of Latin American Development, Athens, OH: Ohio UniversityCenter for International Studies, 1979.

" Z Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor 1977-1981, London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983, p 289.

•*' S Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.•" W Brandt, North-South: A Programme for Survival—Report of the Independent Commission on Inter-

national Development Issues, London: Pan, 1980.""' The most famous exponent of 'conservative' development economics is probably P T Bauer. See P T Bauer,

Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. P TBauer, Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,1984.

"" See M P Todaro, Economic Development in the Third World, London: Longman, 1989, pp 82-84.For a recent analysis of the ability of the World Bank to influence the economic policies of 'ThirdWorld' governments which emphasises the significant constraints on policy-based lending and the divergentexperiences that flow from the gap between the theory and the practice of 'structural adjustment',see P Mosley, J Harrigan & J Toye, Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy-based Lending. Volume1: Analysis and Policy Proposals, London: Routledge, 1991; and P Mosley, J Harrigan & J Toye,Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy-based Lending. Volume 2: Case Studies, London: Routledge,1991.

''̂ M Borthwick, (with contributions by selected scholars). Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern PacificAsia, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992.

''•' Already at the beginning of the Cold War there was considerable economic diversity in the 'Third World'and throughout the Cold War era the diversity has increased. If the World Bank's new technique for thecalculation of national wealth, described as 'purchasing-power parity' is taken into consideration China isranked as the world's second largest economy (according to the IMF using the same technique it is third)with India fifth, Brazil ninth and Mexico eleventh, while just before its breakup the USSR would haveprobably ranked fourth on this scale. A Swardson, 'Are the right seven at the summit?' Guardian Weekly,11 July 1993, p 16. A number of oil-rich states, in the Middle East especially, although not industrialised,have risen to positions of financial and political prominence in the international order. Saudi Arabia, witha per capita GNP of over $6000 by the late 1980s hardly seems to belong in the same category as Boliviawith a per capita GNP of less than $600 a year, or Zaire with a per capita GNP of around $150 a year. ThirdWorld Guide 91/92, Montevideo: Instituto del Tercer Mundo, 1990, pp 232, 493, 577. In fact, economic andquality of life indicators for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole suggest that throughout much of the region therehas been no improvement over the past 30 years and in many cases considerable decline.

273

MARK T BERGER

"" See, for example, B Belassa, The Newly Industrializing Countries in the World Economy, New York:Pergamon Press, 1981; World Bank, Korea's Experience with the Development of Trade and Industry:Lessons for Latin America, Washington, DC: Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, 1988; MPorter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, London: Macmillan, 1990; S Schlossstein, Asia's New LittleDragons: The Dynamic Emergence of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books,1991; W McCord, The Dawn of the Pacific Century: Implications for Three Worlds of Development, NewBrunswick: Transaction Books, 1991; and World Bank, The East Asian Miracle, Washington, DC:Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, 1993.

'^ M Thatcher, 'The triumph of trade'. Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 September 1993, p23."** M Vargas Llosa, 'A novelist in the corridors of power'. Independent Monthly, September 1993, p 19."" For a good summary of the East Asian development literature see J Henderson and R P Applebaum,

'Situating the state in the East Asian development process', in J Henderson & R P Applebaum (eds). Stateand Development in the Asian Pacific Rim, Newbury Park: Sage, 1992.

"' See for example, R Hofheinz Jr & K E Calder, The Eastasia Edge, New York: Harper and Row, 1982.Linked to the emphasis on 'culture' there have been reductionist explanations which find in Confucianismthe same kind of dynamism that was earlier attributed to Protestantism's role in the 'rise of the West'.C H Chung, J M Shepard & M J DoUinger, 'Max Weber revisited: some lessons from East Asian capitalisticdevelopment', /4i(a Pacific Journal of Management, 6 (2), 1987. Weber's thesis has also undergone a certainamount of revival in relation to Western Europe. See Daniel Chirot, 'The rise of the West', AmericanSociological Review, 50 (2), 1985.

•" See for example, B Cumings, 'The legacy of Japanese colonialism in Korea', in R H Myers & M R Peattie(eds). The Japanese Colonial Empire 1895-1945, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984; UMenzel, 'The Newly Industrializing Countries of East Asia: imperialist continuity or a case of catching up?',in W J Mommsen & J Osterhammel (eds). Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities, London:Allen and Unwin, 1986; and C J Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Originsof Korean Capitalism 1876-1945, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1990.

^° This point is emphasised in W Bello & S Rosenfeld, Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies inCrisis, San Francisco, CA: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1990, pp4-5.

" M Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Euture in Los Angeles, London: Verso, 1990.'^ H Wolpe, 'The theory of internal colonialism: the South African case', in I Oxaal, T Bamett & D Booth

(eds). Beyond the Sociology of Development: Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa, London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.

'•' G Urban & J Sherzer, 'Introduction: Indians, nation-states and culture', in G Urban & J Sherzer (eds),Nation-States and Indians in Latin America, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1991.

''' J Nef, ' "Normalization", popular struggles and the receiver state', in J Knippers Black (ed), Latin America,Its Problems and Its Promise: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991, p 199.On the 'intemationalisation' of class structure in Latin America also see J Petras & M Morley, LatinAmerica in the Time of Cholera: Electoral Politics, Market Economics and Permanent Crisis, London:Routledge, 1992, p 2.

^' Ahmad, op cit, note 5, p 292."• J MacKenzie, 'A second wind from the Third World', in A Ryan (ed). After the End of History, London:

Collins and Brown, 1992.^̂ R Guha, 'On some aspects of the historiography of colonial India', in R Guha and G Chakravorty Spivak

(eds). Selected Subaltern Studies, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988; G Chakravorty Spivak,'Subaltern studies: deconstructing historiography', in G Chakravorty Spivak (ed). In Other Worlds: Essaysin Cultural Politics, New York: Routledge, 1988; and G Prakash, 'Writing post-orientalist histories of theThird World: Indian historiography is good to think', in Colonialism and Culture, Nicholas B Dirks (ed),Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

^̂ An important pioneering work is E Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley, CA: Universityof California Press, 1981. See also W Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture,History and Political Economy, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989. The emergence of,and growing interest in, the new social movements is also linked to a renewed concern with his-torical particularity in the context of global processes. A Escobar, 'Reflections on development: grassrootsapproaches and alternative politics in the Third World', Futures, 24 (5), 1992; A Escobar, 'Imagining apost-development era? critical thought, development and social movements'. Social Text, 10 (2-3), 1992;and A Escobar & S E Alvarez, 'Introduction: theory and protest in Latin America today', in Escobar andAlvarez, op cit, note 14.

' ' S J Stem, 'Feudalism, capitalism and the world-system in the perspective of Latin America and theCaribbean', American Historical Review, 93 (4), 1988, reprinted in Cooper, Mallon, Isaacman, Roseberry& Stem, op cit, note 18, p55.

^̂ J F Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, London: Longman, 1993; J F Bayart, 'Finishingwith the idea of the Third World: the concept of political trajectory', in James Manor (ed), Rethinkingy

274

THE END OF THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

Third World Politics, London: Longman, 199L There is now a number of historical approachesto state formation which parallel Bayart's overall concerns. For example see B Anderson, 'Old state, newsociety: tndonesia's new order in comparative historical perspective'. Journal of Asian Studies, 42 (2), 1983,reprinted in B Anderson, Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, tthaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1990; and B Anderson, 'Cacique democracy and the Philippines: origins anddreams'. New Left Review, 169, 1988.See, for example, D Senghaas, The European Experience: A Historical Critique of Development Theory,Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1985; and B Hettne, Development Theory and the Three Worlds, London:Longman, 1990.

275