Modernization entered political science and political discourse from sociology, and refers generally to the capacity of countries from outside the European/ North American/Old Commonwealth countries, (the First World, in other words), to develop the economic and political capacity, and the social institutions, needed to support a liberal democracy such as is found in parts of the First World (see political development). While this approach in political science is obviously at risk of being biased in terms of Western values, there is a strong tradition in social and political theory of studying change in this way, much of it derived from Max Weber. In fact all the classic sociological theorists of development, Marx as much as Durkheim, conceive of something like ‘modernity’ as a stage all societies have to go through.
The main thesis is that a form of political division of labour is needed, in which the political system moves from having only a few, all-embracing, authoritative posts, a tribal chieftain, perhaps, to highly specific and task-specialized roles in a modern bureaucratic and governmental system. At the same time changes in social conditions, especially communications and education, are seen as steadily increasing the capacity of a system to maintain and apply complex modern politics oriented to satisfying as many different political interests as possible. So much is modernization seen as a stage of historical development that it is not absurd to talk of ‘post-modern’societies, those which have passed through the primary industrial stage on to something else—though what that something else might be is usually unclear.
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