Modernization Theory Analysis

The Second World War changed the structure of the world in many ways and the end of this; the USA and the USSR became the most powerful countries. All of these countries required some ideas about the best way to achieve development, which led to the concept of development becoming significant. In order to response to these challenges, different development theories were emerged. One of them was that the creation of modernization theory achieve in the 1950s and 1960s with the aim of helping underdeveloped countries to greater development. Second one came later that dependency theory appeared in the late 1960s as a reaction to modernization theory which claimed that developing countries just stand on the previous steps of development as compared

In terms of strengths, it has worked successfully in some developing countries. The success of economic growth in Asian shows that modernization theory plays a significant role in the affluence of “tiger economies” in Asian. Another strength of this theory is that it provides a model from the historical industrialization of the West, for developing countries to use to become wealthy. Also, the Marshall Plan shows how aid could be used to help countries rebuild or build up their economy after World War II. The pursuit of modernization theory in the West nations leads to the success of development as a modern society (McKay, 2016, p. 56). However, a major weakness is that core countries supply their products higher its value. Developing countries are undeveloped because of the advantage in trade that developed countries have, for example the high price of goods like manufactures. Rich countries gain considerable advantage in price setting from goods because they have political control over markets (McKay, 2016, p. 62). The inequality of development is also one of the weaknesses of modernization theory. There is a considerable difference between cities center and rural areas. This means that the model of development mainly focuses on cities because far rural areas lack even the basic infrastructural facilities and modern technology for their productivities (Binns, 2014, p. 104). In addition, according to Rostow, the high priority of “increasing industrial investment” might attribute to lesser social prosperity called “growth without development” (Binns, 1994; Binns et al., 2012, as cited in Binns, 2014, p.