Capitalism and Democracy in the Third World: The Doctrine for Political Development, Leicester University Press, 1997.
I argue that what political development theorists from the 1950s onwards took to be a universal theory of political development is better understood as a theory of political change in societies undergoing a process of capitalist modernization, and that the driving force behind it, constant through all its various theoretical twists and turns, was the desire to produce a doctrine which would aid the promotion of capitalist rather than socialist development. There is an intimate relationship between the 'revisionist' theory of democracy associated with Schumpeter and Dahl, and political development theory: while the former is a theory of politics in already constituted capitalist states, and a doctrine aimed at maintaining the capitalist character of the societies concerned, the latter is a theory of politics in the process of capitalist modernization, and a doctrine aimed at guaranteeing the capitalist direction of change. The central theme of the book is the emergence of a separate doctrine for political development in the wake of disillusionment with the prospects of building a universal theory, and I interpret this doctrine as a transitional programme for the installation and consolidation of capitalist regimes in the Third World.
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