Theory Gets Real, and the Case for a Normative Ethic: Rostow, Modernization Theory, and the Alliance for Progress

Abstract

This paper looks at the complex relationship that exists between ideology, international relations theories, and the world of practice. It focuses on the role of theoretical concepts in forming foreign policy, asks whether theoreticians and theories act as agents in the political arena, and if so, what the consequences of this agency are. The paper attempts to show that theoretical concepts have a political role to play in the field of foreign affairs, and that to some degree they shape the reality that they try to study. As such, they blur the dichotomist distinction between subject and object, and should not be considered outside observers, which is a necessary precondition to objectivity. This agency and lack of objectivity, I claim, endow theoreticians with moral responsibility, and obligate the founding of research on morality. In order to demonstrate my claims I focus on U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America under the Kennedy administration, the influence of Walt W. Rostow regarding that policy, and what can be termed the rise and fall of modernization theory.

Theory as a Hermeneutical Mechanism: The Democratic-Peace Thesis and the Politics of Democratization

“…This assumed dichotomy is what hypothetically enables the objectivity of the sciences (and the social sciences), much desired by positivism. However, once we establish the involvement of theoreticians and of their theoretical constructs in the world of politics (willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously) through the hermeneutical mechanism, the presupposed dichotomy collapses and with it also the possibility, and desirability, of objectivity (see Gadamer, 1989: 528; see also Ish-Shalom, 2006).…”

The demise of the American hegemony in international business research has been greatly exaggerated

“…During the 1960s, the United States was struggling to prevent the expansion of Soviet communism (Ish-Shalom, 2006).…”

”R-länder” och ”U-människor”. Rasismens tankefigurer i svenskt bistånd cirka 1950–1980

“…Bland efterkrigstidens utvecklingsekonomer fick MITprofessorn Walt Whitman Rostow särskilt genomslag med The stages of economic growth 1960 (med den mera sällan citerade undertiteln A noncommunist manifesto), enligt vilken människans samhällssystem genomgick fem utvecklings-och tillväxtstadier, från det pre-newtonska traditionella samhället, över "take-off" (en tidstypisk metafor) med urbanisering och tekniska och industriella genombrott för att slutligen nå den mogna sista fasen karakteriserad av hög masskonsumtion. Denna teoretiska och samtidigt normativa modell -det västerländska industrisamhället som det högsta stadiet att sträva efter -kom att influera såväl Kennedyadministrationen som 1960-talets europeiska och svenska biståndspolitik (Ish-Shalom 2006;Rist 2014, 94-103).…”