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Modernization theory

About: Modernization theory is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14641 publications have been published within this topic receiving 232469 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored the conditions under which political modernization leads to nation building, to the politicization of ethnic cleavages, or to populism by modeling these three outcomes as more or less encompassing exchange relationships between state elites, counterelites, and the population.
Abstract: This article explores the conditions under which political modernization leads to nation building, to the politicization of ethnic cleavages, or to populism by modeling these three outcomes as more or less encompassing exchange relationships between state elites, counterelites, and the population. Actors seek coalitions that grant them the most advantageous exchange of taxation against public goods and of military support against political participation. Modeling historical data on the distribution of these resources in France and the Ottoman Empire from 1500 to 1900 shows that nation building results from strong state centralization and well-established civil societies; ethnic closure, from weak state capacity and civil societies; and populism, from medium centralization and weak civil societies. The results are consistent with French and Ottoman political histories of the 18th and 19th centuries.

78 citations

Book
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the non-hardware side of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) modernization and its implications for the U.S. Air Force.
Abstract: : This volume is the product of a conference, jointly sponsored by the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy (CAPP) and the Taiwan-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies (CAPS), held in San Diego, California, from 9-12 July 1998. The meeting brought together Chinese military experts to discuss a subject too long ignored: the non-hardware side of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) modernization. The result is a comprehensive examination of the critical "software" side of China's military modernization, covering topics as diverse as civil-military relations, professionalism, logistics, training, doctrine, systems integration, and force structure, whereas financial and logistical support for the conference was supplied by CAPS and CAPP, funding for the publication of this volume was provided by RAND's Project AIR FORCE Strategy and Doctrine Program, under the leadership of Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad. This program is in the third year of a comprehensive study of issues related to Chinese military and security affairs for the United States Air Force; the project is entitled "Chinese Defense Modernization and Its Implications for the U.S. Air Force." It focuses on the fundamental question of how U.S. policy should deal with China, a rising power that could have the capability, in the not too distant future, of challenging the U.S. position in East Asia and its military, political, and economic access to that dynamic and important region. It then addresses the implications for the Air Force, in the areas of shaping the environment, deterrence, and war fighting. To achieve these objectives, RAND is building a "Center of Excellence" for the study of China and the PLA.

78 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the impact of new media in the Middle East and examine the role played by trust in Middle Eastern societies, where traditional state control of the information media has often meant that more reliance is placed on oral and unofficial means of communications, in the mosque, the coffeehouse, or the marketplace.
Abstract: Western assessments often suggest that the emergence of satellite television broadcasting, the Internet and other new media in the Middle East will profoundly change the political and social realities of the region. Such predictions may underestimate the important role played by trust in Middle Eastern societies, where traditional state control of the information media has often meant that more reliance is placed on oral and unofficial means of communications, in the mosque, the coffeehouse, or the marketplace. Just as the validity of the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad were supported by a system of isnad, or the chain of transmission, similarly oral sources of information in the Middle East today sometimes enjoy more credibility than written sources. With this in mind, the article examines the impact of new media in the region. The coming of the Internet and the mushrooming of satellite dishes on Arab rooftops have been heralded in the West as signs of the retreating Arab state, the rise of civil society, the emergence of the public sphere, and maybe a dawn of new politics.I Despite this excitement about modern means of communication and their impact on Arab polities, one is astonished by the disjunction between these pronouncements and the realities of Arab politics and Arab societies. This article is a response to an obvious puzzle concerning political communication, modern media, and their impact in the Arab world. If one looks at the Arab states, one never fails to notice that most Arab states control almost all means of mass communication: print, radio, and television. Naturally, as a result, one would expect that the language of those at the helm of the state would dominate the political language in the Arab world. Yet, the dominant language in Arab societies, at least in the past two decades, has been oppositionist and Islamist, or at least dominated by Islamic symbols. Given that states bar these groups from the various media, it is puzzling that their discourse is dominant. Thus, before making the linkage between the diffusion of state controlled, modern means of communication, and political change in the Arab world one has to contend with the following questions: Why is the Islamist discourse, despite lack of access to these modern means of communication, still dominant?; Why is it that state discourse is not taking hold, despite what is available to the elites in terms of means of mass communication and other instruments of social control?; Why is the hegemony of the Arab state weak?; What is the relationship between communication and trust? Before I answer these questions, I would like to contest the assumptions that link modern media to socio-political change in the Arab world on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Macro-sociologists and economic historians have disputed the relationship between technological change and openness of the political order or economic growth elsewhere. Contesting the relationship between openness and new technologies from a sociological standpoint, James Beniger argues that the information revolution came as a response to the crisis of control that resulted from the great flows of material and data that accompanied the industrial revolution.2 This pressing problem of movement of goods, information, and their processing required new means of control. This is why we had innovations such as the telegraph, telephone, assembly lines, and scientific management, he argues. The conclusions of Beniger's argument run against the assumption of both medium theory and modernization theory alike. Another argument challenging the direct correlation between technology and economic growth comes from a giant in the field of US economic history. In his book Railroads and American Economic Growth, Robert Fogel wrote, "despite its dramatically rapid and massive growth over a period of half a century ... the railroads did not make an overwhelming contribution to the production potential of the economy". …

78 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This analysis underscores the interactive nature of institutional change, where the motor of change simultaneously structures and is structured by the process it is driving and where the initiators of reform have to create their proper and specific combination of old and new in order to build an innovative dynamic.
Abstract: A good deal of strategic choice has been given back to organizations, which have become actors of their (only partial) compliance with institutional demands that they in turn contribute to shaping. The reported case of the successful modernization of the French cancer centers and their reinstatement as the leaders in their field contributes to a better understanding of the role of leadership in institutional change because it demonstrates a positional approach to institutional leadership. Cancer centers' reformers were both central, because they were placed at the intersection of several potentially interdependent organizational fields or institutional spheres, and marginal to most but not all of them. This particular position of the change-entrepreneurs, with its relational constraints and also its resources, enabled them to initiate a successful drive for the transformation of the field of cancer care and also greatly explains the particular form it took. Our analysis underscores the interactive nature of institutional change, where the motor of change simultaneously structures and is structured by the process it is driving and where the initiators of reform have to create their proper and specific combination of old and new in order to build an innovative dynamic.

78 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20241
20231,630
20223,824
2021370
2020573
2019604