GPHC 2019-2020

What I understand from the modernization theory is that it is a social evolution of the development in societies, and focuses on what causes underdevelopment in other countries. From what we can see, countries that are underdeveloped are usually those that are not as advanced as others such as the U.S., Russia, China and etc. The reasoning behind underdevelopment can ran from either poverty or just the size of the country or where it is located. This does not mean that all countries that are small lack development. In the U.S., one of our main pros that help our country develop is our trading routes. From things like boats or aircraft, due to our country being so developed, we are able to reach out to other countries to trade or to get receive things that we cannot produce as well as other countries are. Japan has even confirmed that Western experience has already been made clear and that there are several routes to modernity. In the 19th Century places like France and the United Stat...

NATO in response to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict    Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, since then allied leaders have called on Russia to withdraw their forces from Crimea because of the illegitimacy and unpredictability. However Russia's allies aren't just focused on the invasion and annexation of Crimea, Russia has had a number of irregular military activity near NATO's borders. They've also done several things that do not comply with international norms such as their nerve agent attack on a UK intelligence and his daughter  o n March 4th of 2018, Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal had been poisoned with Novichok agent in Salisbury, UK. The attack was believed to have been arranged and approved by the Russian state… How did this happen? The investigators of this attack believe the Skripals first came in contact with the Novichok at their own front door they also found traces of the agent in the pub and restaurant the S...

GPHC Mr. Roddy 10/23/19 A Decline in the US's Soft Power https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0227-8     The decline of soft power by the US began just after 9/11 with the Bush Doctrine which used unilateral decision making to overpower anyones thoughts of soft power. However just recently with the Trump presidency the US faced a significant drop in soft power due to his "America First" policy. However the idea of soft power is non-existant without hard power, in fact in the past couple decades the US has been using smart power which is the happy medium we seem to use a military force mixed with economics to get what we want. In another recent issue that pertains to this in a way, Russia has been trying out more soft power to subvert politics in the west (the US). Due to the decline of soft power in the US the "global American influence" has been dropping rather significantly; According to an article I read the global ranking of nations...

Our Ever Aging Population A large portion of our population has reached 65 and older, as longevity in ones life is predominantly viewed as a positive it does bring along many socioeconomic issues. The main issues to an older globe population are as followed, the enormous  of money going towards caring for the elderly, maintaining a labor force, as well as structure pension systems.The more developed countries in the world have been aging for a while now so they are getting more acclimated to how to assess these issues. On the other hand less- developed or developing countries are getting older before they are getting richer or strengthening their economy.Of the more developed countries the US is experiencing less of a problem than others due to the highly above average fertility rates among our immigrant population.Relating to that last sentence on another note, our immigrant population is whats stabilizing our population in a way, However that doesn’t mean we aren’t already...

Jorge Larach 12/13/19 GPHC GPHC Neoliberalism Theory of Development Neoliberalism is the socio-economic idea that there should be privatization, deregulation, free-trade market, and reductions in government spending. This development theory became popular during the 80s and 90s when there was a giant push for it by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan. Neoliberalism is the resurgence of ideas and theories proposed during the enlightenment and the founding of the United States during the 18th century. Little government interference, unrestricted market and trade, and more protagonism on private sectors were some of the founding principles of the establishment of the US, and these ideas resurfaced during the latter half of the 20th century. An example of neoliberalism in practice is that of Chile in the late 1970s under the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Pinochet adopted free market policies, including pri...

The modernization theory was created after WWII, while looking at the big Western countries. The ones who had industrialized at the time were the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. The theory is that all developing countries have to imitate what the already industrialized countries did in order to develop. The United States, especially, were fearful that countries were. being exposed to communist ideals and the modernization theory opened a door for more capitalist and democratic views. It is interesting to see how the modernization theory played out for Japan. Japan was one of the first countries in East Asia to successfully modernize. Before WWII Japan had already gone through industrialization and economic modernization but did not have a democracy for their government. Because the Japanese culture prioritizes hierarchy and obedience there was a strong authoritarian fascist government. Once Japan was defeated in WWII America stepped in and got involved. Quickly, the Unit...

I chose to discuss the Neoliberalism theory of development. The Neoliberalism theory was developed in the 1980s and assumes that the free market is the most effective method to maintain and achieve economic growth and development. Supporters of Neoliberalism believe that government interference, particularly corruption, creates the long term negative consequences of development. They suggest that if the government would take a step back and allow businesses to make decisions freely, a healthy competition would exist among enterprises, ensuring the survival of the most successful and long-term development. Another aspect of the Neoliberalism theory is that public services should be less accessible thus incentivizing people to work and contribute to the economy. My understanding of the Neoliberalism theory is that they assume the more independence the government, the more people will have to “fend for themselves” and the stronger they will come because of it.  An example of the imp...

Modernization theory follows the idea that the only way for developing nations to industrialize is to follow what western countries like Germany did. Germany was one of the first big industrialized nations, and the way they became so powerful was because of this. Let's first focus on the aspects of the modernization theory first, which has 5 stages to follow. The first stage is that your young, developing society needs to have strong agricultural ties so in the future you can feed masses. Germany had this and was then able to move onto the second stage and also improve their food output. The second stage is when societies start to create infrastructure and have talented inventors or scientists working to come up with new ideas. Germany began doing this early on, but they really started to revolutionize their infrastructure when they developed their railroad system. This gave them a big advantage in moving large amounts of people around, one time this was useful for them was during ...

Hong Kong has been an interesting place to look at regarding the recent protests for the past few months. The reaction by the Chinese government to these protests has shown either a complete misunderstanding of the situation or intentional malice towards the issues if the citizens. What has been an interesting development was how the police force handled the protests, which is to say with excessive force. This reflects a growing trend in the world stage, where common reactions to protests is riot control tactics. This appears to be mostly a tactic operated by large governments, in particular the US and France, where armored vehicles and tear gas is commonplace in the former and flashbangs are used with abandon in the latter. An interesting pattern emerges from this, where large governments, irrespective of their stated commitments to free speech, use more forceful tactics when quelling protests, regardless of how lawful they are. When comparing the US and China's policy, the 1st am...

This first graph is very well organized, and does a good job at portraying the countless ways in which things are moving. Often when a group's inflows and outlfows are similar we can assume that there is not much movement happening, since they cancel each other out in a sense. This graph effectively displays the complexity and interconnectedness of geography in the United States. This second graph is filled with very useful information. Firstly, we can see that so-called "distressed America" is the only collection of regions which will see net job losses in the coming dozen or so years. This went against my expectations. We can also see that "megacities" and "high-growth hubs" are projected to grow even more than they have already, perhaps hinting at an increasingly urban future. This graph captures the extreme demographic disparities between different professions. I found the most interesting measure to be education. It is obvious that certa...

       Despite losing World War 2, suffering great food scarcity, loss of soldiers, and a ruined economy, Japan is now known to have one of the strongest economies. During World War 2 they began to ramp up production of war materials, such as weapons, tanks, and airplanes, along with more specific instruments to serve them well throughout the war. Afterwards, with barely any need for these factories, they were repurposed to better suit civilian needs. Rather than making military clothing for soldiers, a factory might switch to making regular civilian clothing. This very closely mimics similar things that happened in the US after the war, when things were beginning to go back to normal. Additionally, Japan heavily relied on trading with other Western countries, especially the U.S. to strengthen their economy. Interesting fact: salmon was first introduced to the Japanese diet in the early 1950s, when they began trading with Norway. Very cool.       ...

Dependency theory explains the failings of unindustrialized countries to develop despite financial aid from more developed countries, as well as how the Modernization theory may fall flat. Instead of pointing out internal factors of the countries’ society and/or culture and blaming those for the lack of development, dependency theory focuses on external factors; the primary ones being the relationships between different countries and how they interact with each other. The dependency theory argues that no matter what developing countries do to copy industrialized 1st world countries, whether it’s using western aid to build infrastructure, developing industries, or adopting western values, it’s ultimately all in vain. Due to the perceived power disparities built into the global economic systems, the undeveloped countries are held in a rat race, and stay stuck in the same dynamics. It’s clear to see the Marxist influence in the theory. The concepts of how social/economic/structural in...

The modernization theory, in layman's terms, is a theory that is mainly used to describe the procedure of modernization. It says that nations will go through steps and transitions that will transform it from a traditional society to a "modern" one. It was created in the 1950s by American social scientists. The social scientists used reflections on hundreds of years of history in both North America and Europe to create a "positive" perspective on the changes that occurred during the 1900s. Basically, the modernization theory shows that modernization is basically a step ladder that involves urbanization, rationalization, bureaucracy, industrialization, mass consumption, and of course, the adoption of democracy. The theory had its fans, but also a lot of critiques. Scholars from non-Western nations drew attention to the fact that the theory neglected the way that Western nations had heavily relied on slave labor and colonization to create development. Because of th...

Modernization theory was created by western capitalist countries in the 1940s. After World War II, they were worried that many underdeveloped countries might become communist as they developed, so they created a theory that they hoped would stop this. It states that underdeveloped, or “Third World” countries can only become developed by adopting Western (Capitalist) Beliefs and practices and developing in a similar way to the westerners. Modernization theory adopters such as Talcott Parsons argued that the culture of these underdeveloped places is what keeps them underdeveloped. They argue that ways of life such as particularism, collectivism, patriarchism, and ascribed status and fatalism should be replaced with individualism, universalism, and achieved status and meritocracy.  Western countries believed that they could aid these countries in adopting these ways of life by giving them financial and resource-based aid. These countries were then encouraged to focus on build...

Farming has always been a huge industry when it comes to labor that almost anyone can do. But soon enough the labor spent on farming may very well be used elsewhere, as a small company named Iron Ox in Silicon Valley is starting the steps towards revolutionizing the hydroponics market. Using purely mechanical staff to locate and harvest ripe plants. It has also made the decision not to utilize LEDs, but rather to utilize the greenhouse method. One of the main issues this is frowned upon is due to the fact that there are no tractors indoors, so any staff would have to labor through hundreds of meters of crops under harsh, magnified sunlight. Utilizing a system of rails and a group of smart, white rectangular prisms with arms, they are able to negate the costliness of greenhouse work otherwise. Even so, other elements of this practice come into play when considering efficiency, for example, a quote from Brandon Alexander, the CEO, says “This, combined with the fact that we don't hav...

Justin Patera Mr. Roddy GPHC 12/9/19 Modernization Theory In regards to the modernization theory I decided to look at the United States as my example within history. I believe that the prior American society fits this theory very well because of the way they started and how they continued to progress throughout time. We see the United States start as a small pack of english colonies essentially often referred to as ‘the pilgrims’. They did their best to simply accumulate their agriculture so they could survive and thrive within the eastern most portion of the then North America. As the 13 colonies began to grow Englan continued to support them and the population rose. This led to the idea of an economy and general stores of which were beginning to become more common. As the colonies continued to grow and push westward with things like the Louisiana Purchase economic sectors became common and people began to focus on more than just the “subsistence agriculture” on which they...

Sarah Laskin Neoliberalism in Germany In the 1930s and 40s the concept of Neoliberalism was introduced in Germany by economist Ludwig Erhad, however the theory was not fully implemented until after WWII when Germany was in an economic crisis. So, the people in power decided at this point they had hit rock bottom and decided to try Neoliberalism. They saw that there were many monopolies in businesses in different industries in Germany. They thought Neoliberalism would solve this and bring more economic variety through competition and a freer market. Ideally, Germany would become self-reliant again and have an "expansion of the wellfare state" based on social security and justice. Erhad also thought Germany's lacking market was too social unnecessarily and made more efforts to have more private savings. The elderly in Germany (who were past working age) were especially suffering because of Germany's market structure, so he bought a portion of the wellfare state i...

Izabella Curtis  Mr. Roddy  GPHC  8 December 2019 Modernisation Theory Modernisation theory is one of the oldest theories of development. Created around the 1950's by western cultures, such as the US, UK, and Germany. This theory states that there is only one true way of development and modernization that is in 5 stages. 1. Traditional Societies: societies that are based around farming with low technology and pre-scientific values. Countries like any 3rd world country, Brazil and Costa Rica  2. Preconditions for Take-off: Countries that start introducing money and banking into their economy countries like Mexico 3. Take-off: countries that value economic growth and are encouraging development. 4. Drive to Maturity: Countries that have a sound economic economy and have a large variety of goods, but lack of poverty is decreasing. Countries like India and China would be in this category 5. High Mass Consumption: countries that have wealth in production and ...

From what I understand, the modernization theory is the idea that the reason underdeveloped countries are underdeveloped or not as developed as western countries is because they do not function the same way that western capitalist countries do, nor do they follow the same beliefs and ideals. Whether it be their forms of government, distribution of money, Class separations or justice systems, if they do not do these things the same way as western capitalist countries it is essentially wrong.  The modernization theory is an older theory, no longer commonly referred to, so examples are challenging to find. There are also no countries that use the whole process of the theory. The modernization theory was created to somewhat justify the ways of western capitalist countries at the time, which there were very few countries that fell into this category. However there are instances in which the theory was partially used. For example, when the smallpox epid...

Modernization theory is one of the most popular economic and geopolitical theories that exists today. It postulates that the reasons behind success of Western countries is primarily due to numerous core values that they all contain. These include but are not limited to: adoption of democracy, industrialization, rationalization (the act of making an entity more efficient), bureaucracy, urbanization, and mass consumption of goods and services. Those who believe the modernization theory to be true hold that these values need to be adopted by developing nations to succeed on the world stage. Virtually every Western country holds true to this philosophy, but none maybe more explicitly than the United States of America. The vastly industrialized and capitalized economic landscape of the USA has caused huge economic growth and output. Nevertheless, there, of course, are critics of the modernization theory. One of the most legitimate criticisms is that modernization theory neglects the enormou...

Prompt: Discuss one theory of development - your choice!  Include research into one example of this theory in action, somewhere in the world now or in history. Development can be measured in so many different ways, making everyone's interpretation of the word different. It can be measured in terms of economic growth, social/ political factors, human rights, and/ or democracy. There are multiple forms of development as well, including: human, economic, socio-political, and freedom. Measuring a countries development is commonly measured in terms of economics and we can often do this by looking at their GDP per capita (the total value of goods/ services produced in a country, divided by the number of people). My personal favorite theory of development discussed is the modernization theory which states that there is one single or specific way a country must develop in order to modernize and continue to develop -- that way is by mimicking or imitating what industrial countries did. Wa...

Charlie McGill Mr. Roddy GPHC 12/9/2019 Neoliberalism in Chile The theory of development I will be discussing is neoliberalism, specifically neoliberalism in Chile and its effects. Chile has been a poster boy for neoliberalism and the free market since the military coup that removed democratic socialist Salvador Allende and appointed Augusto Pinochet as President. Before we dive into the effects of the coup and how neoliberalism transformed the Chilean economy, we must examine what neoliberalism is and come to a general consensus on its definition. Neoliberalism, as defined by the IB Global Politics textbook, “assumes that the free market is the most fair and efficient way to foster economic growth and development.” By this logic, government interference should be avoided at all costs since neoliberalism believes it invariably has negative long-term consequences. This is due to corrupt officials having many opportunities to take public money for themselves and artificial, sud...

Dependency theory is a well known development theory, it is known for it's refusal of the, at the time, popular modernization theory. It particularly condemn the way that countries in powers coerce less fortunate countries into copying their methods in order to become successful, potentially eliminating culture and societal ideas that have been built for several centuries. Dependency theory is founded around the ideals of Marxism, and showcases the economy as an all encompassing thing, voting to ignore specifics sections of it in favor of servicing the whole. Dependency theory is specifically active in places such and Africa, where most wealthy countries have given them loans, and thus their interest is skyrocketing, and they have a very low amount of money to spend with themselves. At this point the likelihood of Africa continuing to prosper is very low unless their debt is forgiven by the wealthier countries and they are allowed to gain money for themselves. Sources:  https://w...

The theory of development I chose to explore for my blog is the modernization theory. The theory talks about the progression of a society into modernization, hence it being called the modernization theory. Once place this theory has been seen very prevently is in Europe. The modernization theory emerged in the 1950s, specifically talking about the development of industrial socieities of North america and Western Europe. The argument of this theory is how societies develop in predictable stages, and through this they develop more complexitively. Modernization relies on development, which depends on the importation of technology, as well as other political and social changes associated with it. Changes observed during modernization have been industrialization, urbanization, rationalization, bureaucracy, mass consumption, and the adoption of a democracy. The more contemporary, modern western societies we know today went through those changes, but began as very traditional. Through the mod...

Modernization Theory has a lot of problems, not least of which is the unapologetic western bias and disregard of other nations' potential for growth without developed western nations. To highlight these issues, however, the best place to look isn't the abject failure of western aid in Africa or post-colonial imperialism, but in nations where modernization theory appears to have functioned as intended. The west has long been considered Europe and the USA, the developed nations that lead the UN and the global economy, but Europe is not all cut from the same cloth. Europe is fairly considered the snobby rich kids of the world, but once you reach mid-central Europe, just past the German city of Witzenhausen, things look a little different. Colonialism wasn't just the means of which western Europe stifled the development of the developing world, it was also the means of which eastern Europe had its own development harmed. The Soviet Union was an empire in all but name, and just ...

Jack Gross 12/09/2019 Neoliberalism is a fairly popular theory of development that replaced Dependency theory as the most dominant world economic policy in the 1980s. In it it assumes that the free market is the best thing ever and that Government interference will mess things up in the long run. According to neoliberalism, competition in the markets will cause healthy competition allowing only companies that consumers like to survive and grow. In creating a "survival of the fittest" market they hope to lead to sustainable long-term development. It states that "Development should grow from Foreign Direct Investment, rather than government investment." (Murphy 52) Unfortunately, neoliberalism in reality isn't as good as it sounds. Neoliberalism was a large thing in Latin America in the early 90s and it caused tons of bad things. GDP stalled, poverty and income concentration rose severely along with unemployment and violence. As a result of all of that going on...

An article in The New York Times by Matt Sandy discussed the current situation in the Amazon rainforest under Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. The situation shows an example of a criticism that has been raised of neoliberalism, the theory Bolsonaro subscribes to. The main issue is that massive swaths of the rainforest, a very important source of environmental health for the planet have been burned down. This is as a result of Bolsonaro's lifting of restrictions on business in the Amazon. Under neoliberalism, government regulation ought to get out of the way and let nations' business do whatever it takes to increase profits. This demonstrates a possible flaw with neoliberalism though, because it does not consider the necessity of government being able to restrict businesses in some cases in order to fulfill its role of protecting its citizens. Through a pure neoliberal lense, it might be seen as an additional bonus that, as the article points out, lots of employment opport...

Neoliberalism is a theory of development often supported by conservatives in America which promotes no government interference in the market. Applying neoliberalism to the fullest extent can lead to large economic crashes as a result of the lack of regulations. The application of neoliberalism is what caused the US housing market crash of 2008. Since the US financial sector did not have many regulations in place, banks and loaners were able to make poor decisions that resulted in a large economic crash. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report describes the cause of the crash in this way:  The sentries were not at their posts, in no small part due to the widely accepted faith in the self- correcting nature of the markets and the ability of financial institutions to effectively police themselves. More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by ...

There were many events that contributed to modernization including The Green Revolution. What was the Green Revolution? The Green Revolution was an adoption of advanced agricultural technologies and using chemical fertilizers and agro chemicals to drive mass production of dwarf wheats and rices out of Mexico and India in the 1950's and 60's. Norman Borlaug who was an American agricultural scientist started the revolution by finding ways countries could produce more crops to keep up with rapidly growing population. And to continue research into new technologies both the Rockefeller Foundation and The Ford Foundation began funding Norman's research. How were grains being mass produced? The plants had been specifically bread so that they would respond directly to the fertilizers given to them and creating more grain per acre. Before all of this "more advanced" technology countries such as Mexico had been producing a little less than half of its wheat supply. This all...

John Mazziotti Mr. Roddy Global Politics December 8th, 2019 Modernization Theory Blog: Rostow’s Five Stage Model of Development I chose “Rostow’s Model” of Development because I think it is the perfect example of a basic understanding of developing countries, and countries that are already fully developed. The “Stage 1” section of Rostow’s Model displays a very finite example of how subsistence farming, bartering, and trade, are the basic key features of a developing society. Western countries upped the list mostly due to the “Industrial Revolution”, and continued to grow from there. Currently, in Europe, subsistence farming is almost non-existent, and most of it was fazed out before the first World War, because of developing technologies that aided farming. Essentially, all of the countries in Central Europe reached “Stage 2 and 3” before WWI, having upgraded infrastructure, skill development, and efficiency. A great example of a “Stage 1” country would be Italy in the Mi...

Neoliberalism  The theory I chose to look at was neoliberalism. This theory replaced the dependency theory in the 1980s, and it became the dominant global economic policy. Neoliberalism states that a free market is the most efficient and fairest way to foster economic development and growth. It also states that interference from the government almost always has negative consequences on development in the long run. The reason for the consequences according to neoliberalism is that government interference can lead to sudden economic growth that doesn't last, and officials are able to take money for themselves illegally. Neoliberalism wants to encourage free enterprise by intervening in the economy as little as possible because little intervention leads to healthy competition, and that leads to sustainable long-term development. There are some criticisms of neoliberalism. One of the criticisms is that neoliberalism removed the state from the development process. The cost of reducin...

The dependency theory was a popular theory of development in the 1960s and the 1970s. It condemns the modernization theory which is the idea that disadvantaged countries just need to copy the ways that developed countries work, the reasoning behind this is so the underdeveloped ones can catch up. However, the dependency theory is developed around marxism and targets the format of the word economy as a whole, instead of singular states. Some examples of a typical model that might occur in this theory would be placing high tariffs on imported consumer goods in order to protect their own industries. Another one would be overvaluing their currencies in order to make the import of production inputs cheaper. The last example is subsidizing industries as well as agriculture in the interest of self-sufficiency.  An example of where the dependency theory has and some might say still does use the dependency theory is africa. Africa was given billions of dollars in loans from wealthier co...