"WORLDS" OF DEVELOPMENT
Richard J. Estes
University of Pennsylvania
The concept of a "third world" is European in origin. Writes Allen
Merriam (1988),
Safire (1978) traced the phrase to France in the 1940s as a
description of the political parties distinct from both de Gaulle's
Rassemblement des Peuple Francais and the Fourth Republic, while
Clegern (1978) [as cited by Merriam] compared the idea to the Third
Estate, the rising but under-represented bourgeoisie in the French
Revolution of 1789. Wolf-Phillips (1979) credited the French
demographer, Alfred Sauvy, with coining the term in 1952. Since the
early 1960s the phrase has gained increasing acceptance as a positive
concept signifying the new and experimental arena of global politics
bound to neither Western capitalism nor Soviet Socialism (p. 16).
In general, the term refers to the developing nations of Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. The majority of these nations are characterized by low per
capita income levels, high rates of illiteracy and infant mortality,
agriculturally-based economies, short life expectancies, low degree of
social mobility, strong attachments to tradition and, usually, a history
of colonization (Sachs, 1976; Hoogvelt, 1982; Guernier, 1982). According
to Merriam,
these countries are thus distinguished from the First World (and
Western industrialized democracies and Japan, with Israel and South
Africa sometimes included) and the Second World (the Communist bloc of
European nations of the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia).
"Worlds" of Development
Credit for the "worlds of development" concept belongs to sociologist
Louis Irving Horowitz. In Three Worlds of Development: The Theory and
Practice of International Stratification (1972), Horowitz used a variety of
criteria to distinguish between groups of countries that share more or less
similar patterns of socioeconomic development: the nature of the dominant
economic system (i.e., "capitalist" vs. "socialist"; "open" vs. "closed");
the nature of the dominant political system (esp. in terms of their degree
of participatory democracy); degree of urbanization; and, the role of the
military in national life.
Using these criteria Horowitz, then, divided the political world of
the 1970s into three
"worlds" of socioeconomic development:
1. a "First World" consisting of Western industrial democracies
characterized by open market economic systems;
2. a "Second World" consisting of the military-dominated Soviet
Union and the other centrally-planned economies of Eastern Europe;
3. a "Third World," in which the vast majority of nations were
grouped, characterized by "mixed" approaches to social, political, and
economic organization. The majority of these countries were poor in
comparison to the first two worlds of development and, in the past,
many had been former colonies of First or Second World countries.
Other criteria that have been used to group countries into one or
another category of socioeconomic development include: rate of assimilation
of change (slow vs. mixed); behavioral norms of governance (law vs. custom
and traditions); vehicles of individual status achievement (i.e.,
"ascribed" vs."achieved"); degree of technological innovation; life style
(including mobility patterns, stratification systems, etc.); and level of
consumption (see McGranahan et al., 1985;
Norwine and Gonzalez, 1988).
A Fourth World of Development
In recent years a "fourth world" of development has been identified.
Manuel and Posluns (1974) and Hamalian and Karl (1974) were among the first
authors to use the concept of a fourth world of development. According to
Hamalian and Karl (1974:13), the term refers to "a community of the
powerless, the oppressed, and the dispossessed." They continue,
The Fourth World is common to the other "three worlds," but its
people and their conditions have no necessary identification with
race, sex, religion, or nationality. The Fourth World exits not
solely because of political or economic reasons, but because of human
indifference and ignorance. It came into being in America not as the
result of cruelty; yet the consequences are often murderous. There is
basic to American society a planned obsolescence. People who cannot
measure up are, like those wasted shadows in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
Darkness," left to die at the roadside, already forgotten even while
still alive (p. 13).
In international development, the "fourth world" refers to those
deeply impoverished countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are
characterized by slow--often negative--patterns of economic growth. Most
of these countries are either land-locked countries, small island
developing nations, or countries that possess few natural resources. The
majority of fourth world countries also lack assured access to
international navigation and other transportation networks with which to
bring their raw materials for sale in the international market place. Most
are heavily indebted to international lending institutions; many are
substantially dependent on international assistance as a primary source of
income to their economies.
In general, the "fourth world" of development is distinguished from
other poor "third world" countries by: the slow, or negative, rate of
economic expansion occurring in these countries; their steady level of
social deterioration over time; and the generally negative prospects
for reversing current social and economic trends without substantial
external assistance.
Current Concepts
In current usage, the countries of the First World are referred to as
"Developed Market Economies" (DMEs); those of the Second World are referred
to as the "Eastern Trading Area" (ETAs); and, those of the Third World are
referred to as "Developing Countries" (DCs). The countries of the Fourth
World are now referred to as "Least Developing Countries" (LDCs). For more
than 20 years, the LDCs have been targeted by the United Nations for
preferential
development assistance (UNCTAD, 1990).
Table 3.
[CHART]
In development parlance "rich" countries" refer to the "more
developed" industrialized countries of "the North," i.e., to both the First
and Second Worlds of development. The term "poor countries" refers to
"less-" or "non-industrialized" as developing countries of the "the South,"
i.e., to both the DCs and the LDCs, albeit this category of nations includes
the resource rich oil-exporting countries of North Africa and Latin America.
The term "Group of 77" refers to the 77 nations which, at the first
meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
in Geneva in 1964, formed a separate entity to press for bigger and more
vigorous international development programs
(Merriam, 1988:20).
The World Bank prefers to group countries by per capita GNP levels
measured in U.S. dollars (World Bank, 1991:204-205). Thus, in 1991 the
Bank divided the world into: "low-income economies" ($80-$500; average =
$330); "lower-middle-income economies" ($610-$2,320; average = $1,360);
"upper-middle-income economies ($2,450-$5,350; average = $3,150); and
"high-income economies" ($6,020-$29,880; average = $18,330).
Table 3 classifies 124 of the world's approximately 169 nations by
geographical and socio-economic development grouping. These groupings have
been used by the author since 1970 to assess changes in the capacity of
nations to provide for the basic social and material needs of their
populations (Estes, 1984; 1988). The 124 countries identified on this
typology contained more than 95 percent of the world's total 1990
population (Estes, 1992). The majority of countries not included in the
typology are small island developing countries located in the Asian/Pacific
region.
Chart 26 reports average scores on the author's 46-item Weighted
Index of Social Progress (WISP); average scores are reported in the chart
for each of the four development groupings at three time intervals, i.e.,
1970, 1980, and 1990 (Estes, 1992). These data confirm the existence of
four discrete worlds of development; in the main, they also provide
evidence of a substantial gap in development between the rich nations of
the "North" (DMEs and ETAs) and the majority of nations of the "South" (DCs
and LDCs). These data also provide dramatic evidence of the deepening
poverty and deprivation in the LDCs not only in comparison with nations of
the industrialized "North", but in comparison with development trends
occurring in
the majority of other developing countries as well.
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Excerpted from Richard J. Estes (1992) _Internationalizing Social Work
Education: A Guide to Resources For a New Century_ (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania School of Social
Work).
Perission is granted to disseminate this document so long as proper credit
has been given to the source.