Dam Development

Sardar Sarovar Dam, Wikipedia (public domain)

Development, What It Is and How It Is Achieved

Development is a big interest in both comparative politics and international relations.

• In comparative politics, issues of interest are how is development achieved and what kinds of political changes does development bring about? 
• In international relations, the development issue fits within the subfield of International Political Economy.  There we are interested in development, as it pertains to a country’s involvement in the world economic system.  Some theories, for example, believe that the world trading system is inherently unfair and that it robs from the poor (but rich in resources) to pad the pockets of the already wealthy; this is dependency theory or systems theory.

Today we are going to be interested in looking at what development is and the tradeoffs that are required to achieve it, the big picture.

Development is the avowed purpose of almost every non-Western country on earth.  We even call them “developing countries” because we assume that they are developing, they are going somewhere, they are changing; this despite the avowedly poor efforts that many have put in in this area.

What is development?

• Development is the process of economic change from the more traditional agrarian or nomadic economic activities to the more modern economy centered on industry and/or services.
• But the idea of development has morphed from this distant observation of a process which happens in some places and doesn’t happen in others to a normative goal.  Development is not a description of what is happening, it is a description of what should happen, what must happen. 
• If you look at the website of almost any developing country, you’ll see references in speeches and government documents to the government’s commitment to development, what it’s doing to bring development about.  It has become a mantra of developing country politics.
• "We must have development."  We will see that this has certain effects.

Development brings about changes in the way people work and live and changes in politics:

• Urbanization—people brought together, political activity on a wider scale becomes easier.
• Creation of a working class—may press for social reform, reduced hours, political inclusion, revolution.
• Decline of the share of the economy coming from agriculture—decline in the relative power of the landed gentry, decline in the need for peasant labor with mechanization.
• Decline in the share of people making their living from agriculture—create surplus pools of labor, maybe unemployment, challenge for the government or fuel for booming factories.
• Lower fertility levels for women with better health care, free women from the home, join in work, join in politics.
• Increased literacy as wealth increases allow the education of children—literacy can have the effect of widening the national community and allowing more people to participate in the political system.
• Better health care can lead to longer lives and maybe overpopulation—change age structure, change demands on government, create conflicts over resources. (See Japan Population Pyramid below)

Source: Japan Statistics Bureau, 2008

• Changes in basis of government legitimacy.  Government might be viewed as legitimate based on successful stewardship of the development process.  This is called "performance legitimacy."  This can apply to even autocratic governments and enable them to claim a right to rule (China's, don't need democracy, life getting better everyday).
• That you must have economic development might allow domestic governments to take coercive steps in order to achieve that goal.  Controlling union activity is common.  Authoritarian regimes will often do this because they fear organized political challenge.  They can also say that they prevent union organization because labor must be cooperative and docile in order to attract foreign investment, in order to develop (because of globalization; if not calm and peaceful, investment will go elsewhere). 
• Another example of these types of controls.  China must have development, but sheer size and population means an extreme stretching of the country’s (and the world's) resources.  Must have development so must build Three Gorges Dam, even if that means moving one million people from their homes in the area (because it will be flooded) and submerging one of the environmental cultural and artistic treasures of China (inspiration of area to poets and painters for centuries).  But because China needs development and development requires electricity, China must build the dam  (anticipated to provide one fifth of nation's power needs).

Three Gorges Dam, Wikipedia (public domain)

• The normative goal of development mandates international organizations, foreign governments, and international non-governmental organizations’ support for the activity.  Obligation to help the development of the Third World: ruled over them as colonies, buy their raw material resources cheaply, venue of war during the Cold War, provided slaves that fuelled your economy.  This brings millions of dollars into the developing world each year.  You OWE us.
• Flow of aid money might create opportunities for construction of vital transportation links, but those links can also crush small farmers reliant on the local economy whose lack of productivity means that there are goods are not competitive on a wider market.   Development process, as it was in the West, can be very painful for many individuals.  Take the idea of time.  Time in village life is very different from time to you and me.  There is sun-up and sun-down and work in between.  There is a busy season and a dead season, maybe a rainy season and a hot season.  Think of the alienation, the difference in life to be at a factory at 8:00am to take lunch at 12:00pm to get off at 5:00pm, to punch in and out.  Requires a totally different mentality, a modern mentality and an abandonment of traditional ways of doing things (being with the kids all day, for example).
• Alienation, as described above, can lead to search for meaning.  This can lead to religious revivalism, like last thirty years' Islamic upsurge (alternate explanation, not that people are "backward" in turning to religion, but that they are catching up, search for meaning)
• Aid money can give opportunities for development projects, and can also open up opportunities for corruption, line the pockets of bureaucrats turning them into petty oligarchs hiring goons to keep their control of their part of the political system, protect their racket.
• The goal of development can lead states to pursue different strategies, different policies, take different sides in the Cold War to get aid.  Different policies have different economic and political effects.  The statist avenue pursued by India can result in an all-powerful state and economic bottlenecks.  Now trying move toward marketization for increased growth.

One major development issue is the degree to which development contributes to the rise of democracy.

One traditional statement of a prevalent theory, one influential on US thinking on the subject is called Modernization Theory. 

Development can bring more people into the modern sector and increase demands on the political system for greater representation, lead to democratization.  New modern working class and middle class will rise as a result of the development process and, having their basic needs met (food, shelter), they will turn to quality of life issues and begin to demand greater popular participation in governance.  Tension/demands will result in democratization.  Economic process operating directly and creating political effects.

Now, think whether and where things happened that way?

·         Certainly happened this way in Europe (tendency in both IR and CP to draw from European example and generalize to theory)

·         What about in the US?  Debatable.  US more democratic before industrialization, but huge masses of individuals left out of that democracy (slaves and women)  Could say that economic progress contributed to widening the system to include those groups: decline of slave economy, demand for industrial labor

·         Other counties:

·         Is Japan democratic because of this process?  No, enforced.

·         Is Germany?  No, enforced.  First iteration after development led to Nazism.

·         Many other countries do fit the pattern: Britain, South Korea, Taiwan, China (??? Tiananmen repressed), Indonesia

·         India-–democratic before developed. Saudi Arabia--rich but not thoroughly developed.

Idea that middle class always a friend to democracy.

Contradictory cases:

·         Thailand 1991 coup, Democratic politics so chaotic, coup attempt led by General Suchinda Kraprayoon, generally greeted with relief by the population.  Middle class not unalloyed friends of democracy, greeted idea of stability provided by the coup with a sigh of relief.  But, less than a year later, middle class out marching for democracy, using mobile phones to communicate and coordinate demonstrations (the “mobile phone mob”). 

·         So, we would look at a coup as a step back for democracy, middle class supported.  Then, middle class main actors in securing re-institution of democracy.

·         Are members of the middle class democrats as the theory would pose?

·         Singapore to today.  Big stumper for modernization theory. Singapore so developed yet remains politically repressive in many ways.  Still, changes afoot now by government to increase participation in governance without overturning government, trying to forestall a more radical democratization. But, the case remains that the middle class in Singapore, when given the choice, has frequently opted for stability and not for political democratization.

MAJOR ISSUE IN DEVELOPMENT TODAY: MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDG's).  

UN MDGs laid out: http://www.undp.org/mdg/basics.shtml

UN MDG more detail and follow-up: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Discuss: Dams, States, and Development

• Dams are illustrative of development tensions more generally: you’ve got it all: politics, maybe international relations (is the water shared with someone else downstream? Will your dam deprive them of water?), the balance between development and environment, or maybe traditional way of life and development. 
• To give you an idea of the size of the dam issue, China is the world champion in dam construction with 22,000 large dams, including Three Gorges, as mentioned above.  Next is the US with 6,600, India with 4,300 (Roy gives 3,600- other figures come from the Economist), and Japan with 2,700.  A lot of dams out there, affecting millions of people, miles of territory.  Big movement in the developed countries to un-build dams, return rivers to their original flows, stop World Bank financing for new dams in the developing world.  Dams long seen as the sine qua non of development.  Roy quotes Nehru “Dams are the Temples of Modern India” speech.  In the same speech, he said “where can be a greater and holier place than this?”

Brings us to Arundhati Roy's the Greater Common Good

Arundhati Roy, (Wikipedia)

Discussion Questions (HOW TO TAKE NOTES IN A DISCUSSION):

• Who is the author?  Is she credible?

• What is the author's argument? How does she support it?

• Do you agree with the author's argument? Why or why not?

• Is the argument biased or balanced?

• Is the piece well or artfully written?

• Are there any terms you don't understand? ASK QUESTIONS. RESEARCH. IT'S TIME TO BECOME YOUR OWN BEST PROFESSOR!

• What are some of the weaknesses of Indian democracy that can be seen in the evolution of the Narmada struggle?

KEY LESSON: Development is a process of change. Some win and some lose. Something is gained and something is lost. This lesson applies to the placement of a Walmart store in a new community as it does to the building of a giant mega-dam on an Indian river.  An implication of Roy's argument is that often it is the powerless, who pay and the state/wealthy who benefit.

Revised February 16, 2010

tanp@uncw.edu

Return to Dr. Tan's homepage: http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/