Modernization Theory

Modernization has been an important concept in the second half of the twentieth century to grasp and describe the ongoing technological, economical, social, and cultural changes that are associated with industrialization and democratization. The actual term modernization theory refers to an intellectual movement consisting mainly of scholars in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Social scientists were eager to show that the West (especially the United States) had reached a point in history that foreshadows the future history of other states. Embedded within the cold war struggle, Western scientists proposed the United States as a better role model for the developing postcolonial world than that of the USSR. Particularly influential was Walt Rostow's concept of economic growth, which asserted that all countries would ...