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Modernization Theory

Modernization theory, the dominant approach in the sociological study of development during the 1950s and 1960s, conceived the development trajectories of Western European societies as an idealized model. The central theoretical problem became how to replicate the shift from traditional to modern society in countries lacking similar economic progress, social structures, cultural institutions, and personality types. Modernization theory combined insights from classical evolutionary, structural-functional, and diffusion theories to explain this transition (Eisenstadt 1970; Smelser 1966). Parson's (1937; 1951) synthesis of Durkheim's functionalism and Weber's work on the role of culture and ideas in society was particularly influential in providing an explanatory basis for the origins of development: Societies develop through a set of evolutionary stages; societies are self-regulated entities with the impulse for social change coming from within them; social differentiation is introduced through the discovery or acquisition of modern norms and values. In this sense, modernization theory identified traditional, "pre-modern" cultural values guiding action as the crucial barrier to entering the stage of a developed society (Inkeles and Smith 1974; Lerner 1958; Lerner 1968; Rostow 1960). Development action based on modernization theory envisioned the diffusion of modern values through education and technology transfers to non-western elites (Leys 1996).

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