Modernization theory

Modernization theory, or modernisation theory, is a sociological and comparative political science theory positing that processes of structural socioeconomic development, including industrialization, urbanization, rising per capita income, and rising levels of education, generate systematic transformations in political culture, institutional structure, and value systems, culminating in the consolidation of liberal-democratic governance and rationalist-bureaucratic forms of authority. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s, most influentially articulated by Seymour Lipset, drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons. Modernization theory was a dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, and saw a resurgence after 1991, when Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of the Cold War as confirmation of modernization theory. The theory is the subject of much debate among scholars. Critics have highlighted cases where industrialization did not prompt stable democratization, such as Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union, as well as cases of democratic backsliding in economically advanced parts of Latin America. Other critics argue the causal relationship is reverse (democracy is more likely to lead to economic modernization) or that economic modernization helps democracies survive but does not prompt democratization. Other scholars provide supporting evidence, showing that economic development significantly predicts democratization.