The author seeks to bring out the various approaches that describe imperialism and their limitation. Additionally, the author justifies the fact that despite the challenges faced by the developing nation as a result of imperialism and exploitation, they have experienced dramatic advancement in social, economical, technological and political aspects.
In this article, the author has built his work by reviewing the different secondary literatures focusing on political development across the world. From author’s perspective, varying literatures fail to differentiate political development from social and economic change. For instance, cultural and political modernization has played a great role in the advancement of technology. The classification of the world politic in regards to liberal democracy is also touched on in the article. Despite the attempt to classify the world’s political system into Anglo-American system, preindustrial systems, continental European system and totalitarian system, this tends to be too broad and unclear to be empirically important. For example, preindustrial systems involve various systems and different degrees of industrialization. It is from this that the world is dichotomized into either industrialized or not or Western and non-Western. The different classifications fail to the diverse political systems. The major reason behind this is the fact that political development is not differentiated from industrial or technological advancement. Interestingly, various nations that are not liberal show some traits of modernity. From this perspective it is clear that technological advancement can occur without political advancement and at the same time the two can take place without democratization. According to Karl Deutsch seminal article, pressures generated as a result of political expansion within the society forces the system take necessary structural changes to embrace them.
Author further uses various theories in his work to bring out the political system advancement. The author’s works revolves around Marxism, Leninism and dependency theories. According to these theories, political systems are a major cause of underdevelopment and inequality across the world. Capitalist advances and survive as result of exploiting resources from less-developed countries. For this reason, the material wellbeing of industrialized nation is as a result of exploiting resources from underdeveloped nations. This in turn has played a great role in hindering advancement in the developing world. Interestingly, in the contemporary world, the elite or the powerful in the government are installed into their position by the capitalist nations so as to serve their needs and interest and on the other hand restrict dependent states. This ensures that such nations serve the needs of global system. Based on these assumptions, it means that the countries that colonized and exploited other nations are among the richest countries in the world. However, from author’s perspective, this is not true taking into consideration the economic status of other nations that were not colonial powers. Such nations include but not limited to Australia, Japan and Scandinavian democracies. Additionally, such nations are Spain and Portugal were among the most exploitive countries and colonial master but have remained the least developed in the European nations. Additionally, such countries as Ethiopia and Liberia are among the colonies that were neither colonized nor exploited but are among the poorest nations in Africa.
The authors work is conclusive. The reason behind this is the fact that he/she comes out clearly that the different scholars focusing on political and economical development of nations across the world ought to clarify the reliability and validity of their assumption and reasoning. For instance, the issue of dependency and existence of capitalist nations lacks validity as it is not testable.
The authors focus on various secondary literatures and revisits various theories in his/her work. Based on this, he further criticizes the assumption and reasoning of the authors stating their stand and limitation. Conclusively the author believes that these assumption are not empirically verifiable and their validity and reliability still questionable. This leaves more room for research.