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Modernization and Political Instability: A Theoretical Exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Claude Ake
Claude Ake
Affiliation:
Nigerian, teaches political theory at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario.
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Extract

What is the effect of the process of modernization on political stability? That is the question I want to explore theoretically. I will suggest that there are no plausible reasons for the expectation that the process of modernization is destabilizing, and also that there is no problem of political instability in transitional societies or anywhere else. Let us begin by examining some of the arguments used to support the thesis that modernization causes political instability.

Information

Type
Research Notes
Information
World Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , July 1974, pp. 576 - 591
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1974

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References

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3 Apter, David, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago 1965), 123–24.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 125.

5 See Franz Neumann, “Anxiety and Politics” and “Notes on the Theory of Dictatorship,” in Neumann, Franz, ed., The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (New York 1957), 270–300 and 233–56Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold D., “The Psychology of Hiderism,” Political Quarterly, IV (July-September 1933), 373–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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