The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (review)

When the United States emerged as an economic and military superpower after World War II, communism quickly became its major threat. The cold war between East and West soon involved the "underdeveloped periphery" of the world, for this struggle was not just a military standoff between great powers but a global confrontation between two radically different social orders. Relying solely on military containment appeared inadequate, and during the 1950s and the 1960s a more comprehensive approach emerged, based on the worldwide promotion of the American economic and social model. Rich countries would provide the development template that would help poor countries jump-start their economies and reshape their political and social structures, ultimately transforming them into capitalist liberal democracies and, most important, thwarting the promise of social redemption that communism offered.

Modernization theory, as it came to be known, was a combination of scholarly research on the characteristics of "traditional" societies and "modern" ones, and the pattern of change from the former to the latter, mixed with both policy advice and actual policy-making. As Walt W. Rostow, one of the main theorizers of modernization, pointed out, "the underdeveloped nations—now the main focus of Communist hopes—can move successfully . . . into a well-established take-off within the orbit of the democratic world, resisting the blandishments and temptations of Communism. This is, I believe, the most important single item on the Western agenda" (The Stages of Economic Growth, 134).

Michael E. Latham has provided a very interesting and useful synthesis of the rise and decline (and eventual reappearance) of modernization theory in the United States, exploring both its intellectual roots and its deep connections to the country's foreign policy. In the postwar period the government and philanthropic foundations supported the social sciences as a new source of strategic intelligence. Modernization theory was one of the most prominent examples, in addition to game theory and area studies: it promised to be a powerful tool to steer the transformation of underdeveloped societies into modern ones. Such steering would keep them "on the right side of history" and limit their vulnerability to communism during the difficult and unstable period of the transition. In this respect, as Latham appropriately points out, modernization theory became an ideology.

Latham shows that results were often disappointingly different from what the theory had predicted. After a first chapter on the foundations of modernization theory (from the Enlightenment to U.S. imperialism to the New Deal) and a chapter on the rise of modernization theory in the United States and its increasingly strong links to policy-making, especially in the 1960s, Latham devotes three chapters to "field" experiences: the support of the nationalistic governments of Nehru in India, Nasser in Egypt, and Nkrumah in Ghana (chapter 3), the visions of social engineering through birth control and technocratic command of nature via the green revolution (chapter 4), and the justification of brutal repressions and dictatorships for political and social stabilization in Guatemala, Vietnam, and Iran (chapter 5). In all those cases, reality proved to be much more complicated than the prognosis, with Latham seeing the results as dismal when they were not tragic.

The case of the green revolution is a good example of the unintended consequences of modernization theory. The problem of food availability was framed in terms of productivity, and the solution came from new high-yielding rice and wheat seeds. "Complex social problems," writes Latham, were re-cast "in an appealingly simple way" (p. 110). Social factors affecting the technological sustainability of the new techniques, however, were not considered: the expensive technological packages required to grow the new varieties favored, in the medium term, rich landowners, who bought out small farmers and invested in capital-intensive, labor-saving technologies. In a few years, many Asian countries experienced increased rural poverty and...