A Humanistic Transformation of Modernization

As the preceding chapters have demonstrated, socioeconomic development, self-expression values, and democratic institutions are so closely correlated that they tap a single underlying dimension. Each of these three components helps develop a society's human potential – that is, people's ability to shape their lives on the basis of their autonomous choices. Accordingly, this dimension reflects human development.

The linkages between socioeconomic development, cultural values, and political institutions that constitute human development were partly foreshadowed by modernization theorists (see Lipset, 1959a; Almond and Coleman, 1960; Pye and Verba, 1963; Apter, 1965; Almond and Powell, 1966; Weiner, 1966; Coleman, 1968; Huntington, 1968; Binder et al., 1971; Pye, 1990). But while many of these social scientists speculated that some set of “modern” values provided the essential link between socioeconomic development and democratic institutions, few examined this linkage empirically, and those who did examined only a handful of nations (see Lerner, 1958; Inkeles and Smith, 1974; Inkeles, 1983). Moreover, they focused on the emergence of secular-rational values as the key cultural manifestation of modernity. This view was accurate enough during the industrialization phase of modernization, but it is outmoded today. In postindustrial society, things have changed in ways that have important political consequences. As long as secularization, rationalization, and bureaucratization were the dominant cultural trends, modernization did not necessarily lead to democracy; it was perfectly compatible with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, as theorists of “totalitarianism” (Friedrich and Brzezinski, 1965), “mobilization regimes” (Johnson, 1970), and “bureaucratic authoritarianism” (O'Donnell, 1973) correctly noted.