It is well known that the developmental model has encountered severe empirical, methodological, and theoretical difficulties. It is, however, not easy to discard an idea when there are no substitutes. Accordingly, an alternative theory-one borrowing biological notions of evolution-is offered as a replacement. Because many scholars have failed to distinguish "development" from "evolution," the properties of the two models are spelled out and their differences specified. To illustrate the new model, it is shown how the problem of developmental stages can be reformulated in evolutionary terms. Finally, two methodological problems of evolutionary theory, its falsifiability and its predictive and explanatory power, are briefly discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Almond, G. (1970) Political Development . Boston: Little, Brown.
2.
———, S. Flanagan, and R. Mundt [eds.] (1973) Crisis, Choice, and Change . Boston: Little, Brown.
3.
Apter, D. (1971) Choice and the Politics of Allocation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press.
4.
Armstrong, J. (1973) The European Administrative Elite. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press.
5.
Ashby, W. R. (1968) "Principles of the self-organizing system," pp. 108-118 in W. Buckley (ed.) Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist. Chicago: Aldine.
6.
Bendix, R. (1967) "Tradition and modernity reconsidered." Comp. Studies in Society and History9 (April): 292-345.
7.
Binder, L. (1971) "The crises of political development," in L. Binder, J. Coleman, J. LaPalombara , L. Pye, S. Verba, and M. Weiner, Crises and Sequences in Political Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press.
8.
Campbell, D. (1965) "Variation and selective retention in socio-cultural evolution," in H. Barringer, G. Blanksten , and R. Mack (eds.) Social Change in Developing Areas. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman.
9.
Coker, F. (1910) Organismic Theories of the State. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
10.
Eisenstadt, S. (1964a) "Social change, differentation and evolution." Amer. Soc. Rev.29 (June): 375-386.
11.
--- ( 1964b) "Breakdowns of modernization." Econ. Development and Cultural Change12 (July): 345-367.
12.
--- ( 1963) "Bureaucracy and political development," in J. Palombara (ed.) Bureaucracy and Political Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press.
13.
Esman, M. (1966) "The politics of development administration," in J. Montgomery and W. Siffin, Approaches to Development. New York: McGraw-Hill .
14.
Feyerabend, P. (1970) "Consolations for the specialist," in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. London: Cambridge Univ. Press.
15.
Hayashida, C. (1975) "Institutionalized ascription as a response to modernization and stress in Japan." J. of Asian and African Studies10 (July-October): 198-208.
16.
Hough, J. (1969) The Soviet Prefects . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
17.
Hull, D. (1974) Philosophy of the Biological Sciences. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
18.
Huntington, S. (1965) "Political development and political decay." World Politics16 (April): 386-430.
19.
Kaufman, H. (1976) Are Government Organizations Immortal?Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.
20.
--- ( 1964) "Organization theory and political theory." Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.58 (March): 5-14.
21.
Lakatos, I. (1970) "Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes," in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. London: Cambridge Univ. Press.
22.
Landau, M. (1972a) Political Theory and Political Science. New York: Macmillan.
23.
——— (1972b) "Linkage, coding and intermediacy," in J. Eaton (ed.) Institution Building and Development . Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage .
24.
--- ( 1969) "Redundancy, rationality, and the problem of duplication and overlap." Public Admin. Rev.29 (July-August): 346-358.
25.
LaPalombara, J. (1966) "Public administration and political change," pp. 72-107 in C. Press and A. Arian (eds.) Empathy and Ideology. Chicago: Rand McNally.
26.
——— (1963) "Bureaucracy and political development: notes, queries, and dilemmas," in J. LaPalombara (ed.) Bureaucracy and Political Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press.
27.
Marx, K. (1967) Capital, Vol. I. New York: International Publishers.
28.
Medawar, P. (1967) The Art of the Soluble. London: Methuen.
29.
Monod, J. (1971) Chance and Necessity . New York: Knopf.
30.
Nisbet, R. (1969) Social Change and History. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
31.
Ohta, T. (1974) "Mutational pressure as the main cause of molecular evolution and polymorphism." Nature252 (November): 351-354.
32.
Organski, A. (1965) The Stages of Political Development. New York: Knopf.
33.
Parsons, T. (1966) Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
34.
Peel, J. (1971) Herbert Spencer . London: Heinemann.
35.
Popper, K. (1964) The Poverty of Historicism. New York: Harper & Row.
36.
--- ( 1963) Conjectures and Refutations. New York : Harper & Row.
37.
Pye, L. (1966) Aspects of Political Development. Boston: Little, Brown .
38.
Riggs, F. (1973) Prismatic Society Revisited. Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press.
39.
--- ( 1967) "The theory of political development," pp. 317-349 in J. Charles-worth (ed.) Contemporary Political Analysis. New York: Free Press .
40.
--- ( 1964) Administration in Developing Countries. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
41.
--- ( 1962) The Ecology of Public Administration. New Delhi: Asia Publishing House.
42.
——— (1957) "Agraria and industria," in W. Siffin (ed.) Toward a Comparative Study of Public Administration . Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press .
43.
Salthe, S. (1972) Evolutionary Biology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
44.
Sapolsky, H. (1972) The Polaris System Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
45.
Service, E. (1968) "Cultural evolution," in D. Sills (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 5. New York: Macmillan .
46.
Simon, H. (1969) Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
47.
Smelser, N. (1963) "Mechanisms of change and adjustment to change," in B. Hoselitz and W. Moore (eds.) Industrialization and Society. Mouton: UNESCO.
48.
Smith, A. (1973) The Concept of Social Change. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
49.
Steward, J. (1955) The Theory of Culture Change. Urbana: University of Illinois.
50.
Stinchcombe, A. (1968) Constructing Social Theories. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
51.
Tipps, D. (1973) "Modernization and the comparative study of societies." Comp. Studies in Society and History 15 (March): 199-226.
52.
Verba, S. (1971) "Sequences and development," in L. Binder, J. Coleman, J. LaPalombara , L. Pye, S. Verba, and M. Weiner, Crises and Sequences in Political Development. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press.
53.
Weiner, M. (1965) "Political Modernization and Evolutionary Theory," in H. Barringer, G. Blanksten, and R. Mack (eds.) Social Change in Developing Areas. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman.
54.
Winter, S. (1975) "Optimization and Evolution in the Theory of the Firm," Institute of Public Policy Studies Discussion Paper No. 68. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
55.
——— (1969) "Concepts of Rationality in Behavioral Theory," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
56.
Yanaga, C. (1949) Japan Since Perry. New York: McGraw-Hill.
