Transformational Development in the Face of Historicist Inertia: Nations Which Altered Their Growth Trajectories 1870-1950

• In Event: 198 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Democracy, Development, and Decline

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The macrosociology of development is under attack from new historicist models of growth. Salvatore Babones and James Mahoney show that the levels of economic development in the contemporary period are determined by income levels in the distant past. Countries rarely move between the periphery, the semi-periphery and the core. If the present is largely determined by the past, then most studies of the present become epiphenomenal – which invalidates a great deal of development sociology.
This paper acknowledges the reality of the historicist critique – but offers an alternative strategy for identifying the cases of transformational development. If past levels of wealth determine present rates of growth, one can consider which nations had relatively high rates or low rates of growth net of their previous level of economic development. Countries with high or low residuals are countries with factors that substantially promoted or hindered growth above and beyond levels expected from historicist inertia.
Estimating transformational development net of historicist inertia for the nations of 1870-1950 produces surprising findings. The breakthrough late developers are not Germany or Japan but a completely different set of nations.
We argue that dynamics associated with the rise of petroleum, the social organization of agriculture and strategic neutrality in geopolitical conflicts account for these transformational developments. This is in marked contrast to the manufacturing based, and imperialism based explanations growth that dominate current macrosociology.

Author

• Samuel Cohn, Texas A&M University