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individualists in workplaces, who often respond more favorably to group norms than to groupdisrupting industrial incentive-type pay plans. As it turned out, these lessons were perhaps applied somewhat more assiduously from 1960 to 1990 in Japan than in the United States, where worker participation in organizational decision making and work reforms have appealed to comparatively fewer employers despite the possible benefits of ‘‘humanized’’ personnel policies. Researchers have discovered that U. S. managers’ interest in worker participation tends to wax when there labor market conditions are ‘‘tight’’—that is, high demand for workers—and wane when they are ‘‘loose.’’ In Western managers’ theory at least, human resources are factors of production—commodities— and the treatments of these factors are functions more of short-run market conditions than of longterm concern about the qualities of work life (O’Toole 1974). The latter concerns find more expression in collective bargaining relationships and in remedial legislation, with the endorsement and help of many sociologists who are skeptical of managers as patrons, than in initiatives by employers who are skeptical of the benefits of ‘‘codeterminative’’ relations with workers, such as those requiring worker representations on boards of directors under laws in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE

In present-day industrial sociology, the main subjects of study have been (1) the increasingly important roles of education and training in shaping Americans’ opportunities (Jencks et al. 1979); (2) the relationships between the significant differences in circumstances between managers and workers in ‘‘core’’ industries and managers and workers in ‘‘internal labor markets’’ on the one hand, and the lower-paid, appreciably less capitalized, smaller, more vulnerable establishments in the ‘‘peripheries’’ of economies on the other (Kalleberg 1983); (3) in the correlates—income and otherwise—of discrimination against women and minorities; and (4) the problems of those who simply are not well integrated into the labor force, the so-called underclass (Wilson 1987). These newer topics have taken their places with continuing studies of work groups; industrial conflict; mobility patterns; the evolving roles of public policies and the state; the politics of income distribution;

and intramural studies of organizations, their deci- sion-making arrangements, and, more recently, their ‘‘cultures.’’

Studies by industrial sociologists are increasingly comparative in character, as these researchers seek to identify cultural and political factors— such as belief systems and constitutional arrangements, respectively—that influence the effectiveness of different nations’ populations in efforts to mobilize human and other resources, motivate leaders and their human charges, design productive organizations, and make and provide goods and services (Cole 1989; Lincoln and Kalleberg 1990).

Overall, industrial sociologists have contributed to the delineation of options facing leaders in government but less so to enterprises, unions, and urban communities. During the period until 1970, industrial sociologists’ investigations moved in increasingly specialized directions.

One thrust brought a large group of the field’s leaders to concentrate on organizations (Coleman 1982; Stinchcombe 1990; Thompson 1967). In rich elaborations and embellishments on Max Weber’s pioneering work on bureaucracies, sociologists in the United States and western Europe have ventured into ‘‘the Japanese factory’’; the Tennessee Valley Authority; banks; mental hospitals; British coal mines; a gypsum mine; a state employment agency; schools, prisons and equivalent ‘‘total institutions’’; a foundry; the U.S. Military Academy; steel mills (in the United States and Europe); German, Soviet, and Czech manufactories; the military establishment; French family firms; social movements; labor unions; merchant ships; American soldiers’ organized experiences in and out of World War II combat; and the YMCA— to mention just a few contexts and populations about which studies were completed (Hall 1987; Perrow 1986).

While the vast body of literature produced by the observers in this disparate array of organizations has received little acclaim in the media, it is a sign of the importance of these investigators’ findings, assessments, and consequent theories that their work is basic to the curricula of the very influential graduate schools of business and management, from Harvard to Berkeley, from Seattle to Miami, and from Maine to Los Angeles—and in Scandinavia; Germany; France; the United Kingdom; Japan; and, by the 1990s, Moscow. The

lessons learned: It is possible to design a great many optional variations on the specific structures of hierarchical organizations, their intramural arrangements, and the ‘‘production relations’’ therein, to meet the exigencies confronting managers and their charges in dealings with each other; with competitors, clients, customers, suppliers, subcontractors, regulators, third-party insurers, and community forces; and with labor market developments.

Industrial sociologists—whether ‘‘majors’’ from colleges or holders of masters and doctoral degrees, some of whom work as consultants or as technicians or managers in corporate settings— offer prescriptions for improving employee morale and marketing programs (from demographic assessments to surveys of customer attitudes); for designing optimal ‘‘mixes’’ of wage and salary schedules with supplementary benefits; for reducing supplementary benefits; for reducing absenteeism and turnover; for productivity ‘‘enhancement’’; for designing therapeutic (rather than custodial) environments in mental health care agencies; and for constructing occupational safety programs, grievance machinery, and quality control programs.

A second group moved away from these more microscopic studies of organizations to study the social, economic, and political development of whole societies, some in historical terms during the post–World War II era, including India’s, China’s, Italy’s, Japan’s, and Germany’s (actually ‘‘redevelopment’’ in the latter two cases), and the USSR’s systems. Among the lessons were important guidelines to understanding the stabilities of some and the flexibilities of other social-cultural values that gave distinctive national shape to individual countries’ brands of industrialization. It is clear that while the ‘‘common denominators’’ in the paths to both growth and development—the latter a matter of the degree of distributive justice in a society and the former a matter of increases in gross national product—are numerous, there are instructive differences as well (Inkeles and Smith 1974).

Indeed, a consortium of scholars, many of them sociologists studying ‘‘industrialization and industrial man’’ in comparative-international terms, produced well over forty volumes and a great many shorter pieces on the convergences and

divergences among industrial and industrializating nations over the period 1955–1975 (Dunlop et al. 1975; Kerr and Dunlop 1973). These works of scholarship have helped thousands of leaders in governments, large corporations, labor unions, and international agencies to make judgments about investments (both public and private); social, political, and economic policies; and the aptness of designs of organizations in what is now truly a global economy in which nations’ planning efforts are turning, more and more, toward market and away from command economies (Yergin and Stanislaw, 1998). The conclusions at the end of 1990, in a continuing body of research following the preceding twenty-four months of changes in eastern Europe and the USSR, were that the ‘‘marketizing’’ and democratization movements in previously planned economies would assuredly reduce divergences among industrial systems but would by no means eliminate entirely the influence of discrete national cultures in shaping the practices and institutions, from child rearing to legal structures, that help, in turn, to shape social relations in a given nation’s enterprises, as some sociologists have long argued.

A third constituency moved ‘‘below’’ organizational levels to study the dynamics of work groups within organizations, picking up on the work of the previously mentioned human relations school before, during, and after World War II. This group of scholars drew heavily on earlier sociologists’ insights and theories—from Georg Simmel, Charles Cooley, and George Herbert Mead, and especially from the massive number of post–World War II publications of data and analyses from one of the first very-large-sample and sophisticated social scientific surveys of wartime American soldiers (Inkeles 1964). These reports gave abundant corroboration to the findings in industry, by earlier human relations investigators, concerning the critical importance of small groups and their norms in efforts to understand individual attitudes and behavior (Homans 1950). The applications of these findings—in studies of satisfaction, leadership, morale, productivity, grievances, absenteeism, turnover, and incentive systems—have become staples in training programs for supervisors and foremen in the United States and in delineating jobs and designing work flows across American industries (Perrow 1986; Porter et al. 1975). A new group of business school educators in western Europe has

generated very similar programs tailored to take account of the historical and cultural imperatives of managers and workers in different countries. The growing integration of Europe’s economies and the mobility of their citizen promises to add to the convergence in the ways and means of financing and directing economic organizations.

A fourth group has focused on industries and occupations as special and highly significant aspects of organizations’ ‘‘external environments’’ and as subsets of America’s systems of social stratification. Sociological studies of whole industries— their personnel and collective bargaining policies especially—have often informed public agencies’ regulations, legislators’ bills, and judges’ decisions. Analyses of differences among industries and occupations have helped leaders in government, business, and labor unions to understand better the dynamics of industrial conflict; the character and effectiveness of organizations; and the complexities in identifying the effects of physical tech- nology—capital—in the spinning of ‘‘webs of rules’’ (Kerr et al. 1973) that, for all of their de facto and even informal character, function very much like governance systems in the workaday world (Kalleberg and Berg 1987). In their most formal states, these systems—arbitration procedures, for example— sometime mature into what the U. S. Supreme Court in 1960, in a ‘‘trilogy’’ of cases that defined the role of arbitration in industrial relations, called ‘‘systems of industrial common law’’ (i.e., as legal systems virtually unto themselves). Otherwise, more implicitly, as with work rules that establish ‘‘how fast is fast, how fair is fair, and how reasonable is reasonable’’, the webs of rules define relationships and codes applicable to both employers and employees that afford a kind of lubrication to the mechanics of human interactions in bureaucratic machines, with their close tolerances, involving millions of persons in hundreds of thousands of workplaces. Sociological studies of the costs and benefits to employees and employers (and ultimately to the public) of work rules, for example, have helped transform emotionally charged arguments about ‘‘featherbedding’’, ‘‘soldiering,’’ and ‘‘goldbricking’’ (all efforts to escape irksome chores) into coherent and constructive debates about nonmonetary dimensions of working conditions. Studies of work rules suggest that ‘‘informal organizations’’ within parent organizations are really not so much informal as they are what Durkheim

long ago called ‘‘the noncontractual element of contracts’’; sociologists have demonstrated that though these patterned, enduring, and bilaterally honored arrangements do not appear on an organization’s wall charts, they are significant components of organizational life unto themselves, not mere shadows of more familiar and more palpable structures.

Meanwhile, the discoveries in international comparisons of data on grievances and strikes— that there are numerous short strikes and many grievances in the United States and few but long strikes and virtually no grievance procedures in western Europe for example—have led researchers, employers, and union leaders to appreciate the value of expeditious ‘‘on-site’’ bargaining relationships, on a day-to-day basis, such that emotional affect in disagreements may be drawn off and tensions relaxed before out-and-out conflicts disrupt production and social relations. It seems clear that these day-to-day adjustments and accommodations occur even as the efficacy of unions has declined in the United States and will likely wane in the ‘‘Euro’’ countries.

At the same time, the costs as well as the benefits of federal laws requiring that unions be democratic have helped us to make more realistic estimates about democratic arrangements’ capacities to function as panaceas; democracy, for example, offers no guarantees against corruption, nor does it assure harmonious relations between parties to collective bargaining agreements. Sociologists have also documented a kind of (perhaps understandable) hypocrisy regarding democracy: Many lay observers and most labor columnists are delighted by unionists who vote to ratify contracts or to ‘‘decertify’’ their bargaining agents but are appalled by ‘‘strike votes.’’

Still another group of specialists have concentrated their attentions on worker satisfactions, dissatisfactions, and work experiences, by use of survey research designs that involve both periodic ‘‘snapshots’’ of different working Americans (and Japanese and west Europeans) and repeated observations of these same respondents, in ‘‘panel studies,’’ over long time periods. These designs also make it possible to study ‘‘cohort effects,’’ that is, the effects of reaching a given age in different time periods, each with their different qualities regarding a variety of social realities (Quinn et al.

1974). Thus there are significant differences, for example, in the experiences (and their attitudes about them) of workers, depending on whether they entered the labor force in 1960, 1970, 1980, or 1990. Sociologists can accordingly raise thoughtful questions about the implications, for public and private policies, of changing social definitions of aging, for example, in juxtaposition and contrast with essentially arbitrary public policies that fix eligibilities for a number of services and benefits on the basis of the chronological ages of individuals; not all those now 65 years old think, act, or want to be treated as a homogeneous class of senior citizens, nor have they had the same life histories, on average, as those who reached that age in 1940, 1960, or 1980.

Finally, the advent and continuing engagements of the civil rights movements have sparked the expenditure of a great deal of research effort on the comparative socioeconomic opportunities of men and women, and of minority group members in these groups (Jacobs 1989; Jaynes and Williams 1989). The findings by sociologists in these investigations have figured prominently in the drafting of legislation, legal suits, and employment policies, as well as in landmark civil rights decisions in courts at all levels.

In their work, as noted at the outset, a shrinking population of traditional industrial sociologists have drawn on work by sociologists in virtually every one of the profession’s own major areas of interest with alacrity and have, in turn, seen much of their work inform the work of these other specialists. There has been similar intellectual commerce with social psychologists, industrial relations practitioners, and with full-time nonacademic social scientist practitioners in private enterprises, public agencies, universities, and research and other organizations in foreign lands, especially in the United Kingdom; Yugoslavia; Germany; Japan; France; Scandinavia; Canada; Italy; and what has, for so long, been called eastern Europe (Adams 1991; Barr, 1994; Freeman, 1994).

Industrial sociologists will likely grow in numbers in the years ahead, despite the growth of service sectors and information technology across the globe, as the global economy’s structures will tend to be more related to multilateral regional pacts among nations with shared currencies, laws, and macroeconomic policies that will reshape the

political, economic, and social characters of member nations.

REFERENCES

Adams, Roy J., ed. 1991 Comparative Industrial Relations: Contemporary Research and Theory. London: HarperCollins Academic.

Adorno, T. W., et al. 1950 The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper.

Barr, Nicholas, ed. 1994 Labor Markets and Social Policy in Central and Eastern Europe. New York: Oxford University Press.

Berg, Ivar 1970 Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery. New York: Praeger.

Brady, Robert A. 1943 Business as a System of Power. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cole, Robert E. 1989 Strategies for Learning: Small Group Activities in American, Japanese, and Swedish Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Coleman, James 1982 The Asymmetric Society. Syracuse,

N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.

Commons, John R., et al. 1926, 1935, 1936 History of Labor in the United States. New York: Macmillan.

Dunlop, John, et al. 1975 Industrialism and Industrial Man Reconsidered. Princeton, N.J.: Inter-University Study of Human Resources in National Development.

Freeman, Richard B., ed. 1994 Working Under Different Rules. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Hall, Richard 1987 Organizations: Structures, Process and Outcomes. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Homans, George 1950 The Human Group. New York:

Harcourt, Brace.

Inkeles, Alex 1964 What is Sociology? Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

———, and David H. Smith 1974 Becoming Modern: Industrial Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Jacobs, Jerry 1989 Revolving Doors: Sex Segregation and Women’s Careers. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Jaynes, Gerald David, and Robin M. Williams, Jr., eds. 1989 A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Jencks, Christopher, et al. 1979 Who Gets Ahead? Determinants of Economic Success in America. New York: Basic Books.

Kalleberg, Arne, ed. 1983 ‘‘Capital Labor and Work: Determinants of Work-Related Inequalities.’’ (special issue). International Sociology Journal. August.

———, and Ivar Berg 1987 Work and Industry Structures, Markets, and Processes. New York: Plenum.

Kerr, Clark, John T. Dunlop, Fredrick Harbison, and Charles A. Meyers 1973 Industrialization and Industrial Man. London: Penguin.

Lincoln, James R., and Arne L. Kalleberg 1990 Culture, Control and Commitment: A Study of Work Organization and Work Attitude in the U. S. and Japan. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Moore, Barrington 1973 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press.

Neumann, Franz 1942 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

O’Toole, James, ed. 1974 Work and the Quality of Life: Resource Papers for Work in America. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Perrow, Charles 1986 Complex Organizations: A Critical

Essay. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Porter, Lyman W., et al. 1975 Behavior in Organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Quinn, Robert P., et al. 1974 Job Satisfaction: Is There a Trend? Monograph 30. U.S. Department of Labor, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1990 Information and Organization. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Thompson, James D. 1967 Organizations in Action. New

York: McGraw-Hill.

Wilson, William J. 1987 The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Yergin, Daniel, Joseph Stanislaw 1998 The Commanding Heights. New York: Simon and Schuster.

IVAR BERG

INDUSTRIALIZATION IN LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

In the two and a half centuries since the Industrial Revolution in England, the process of industrialization has perhaps had more impact on all the nations of the world than any other complex set of forces. This process has not been uniformly introduced in all countries, nor has it occurred at the same time or at the same rate. Despite the common features of industrialization, these differences in its introduction and adoption have produced

inequities among nations and among people on a scale never before experienced.

In describing various countries and regions of the world, certain terms have been adopted, first by official agencies such as the United Nations and national governments, and then more generally by scholars, journalists, and those interested in making sense of international relations. According to a now commonly used United Nations classification, more developed countries (MDCs, or developed countries) comprise all of Europe, North America (excluding Mexico), Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Other countries (e.g., Singapore, Taiwan, and Israel) constitute recent additions, while many of the former Soviet-bloc countries (including the Russian Federation) are now in a developing, or ‘‘transition,’’ phase. Less developed countries (LDCs, or developing countries) make up the remainder. The distinction between MDCs and LDCs mirrors the famous ‘‘North–South divide,’’ a phrase coined by former West German chancellor Willy Brandt (1980) in his Commission’s report to the World Bank. LDCs have also been referred to as the Third World, a term devised in post–World War II Europe to distinguish the politically nonaligned, underdeveloped nations of the world from the industrialized capitalist nations (First World) and the industrialized communist countries (Second World) (Worsley 1984, pp. 306–315).

In some cases, the underlying variable upon which these distinctions are based is economic, in other cases it is political, and in still others it is unspecified. However, generally speaking, MDCs are ‘‘rich’’ and LDCs are ‘‘poor.’’ In 1996, the per capita gross national product (GNP) among all MDCs was US$25,870, while in the LDCs it was only US$1,183 (World Bank 1998, p. 38). The major explanation for this vast discrepancy is that MDCs are fully industrialized whereas LDCs are not. In 1994, the industrial market economies produced 81.4 percent of total world manufactures (World Bank 1997, p. 152). Considering that LDCs comprise 84 percent of the world’s population (World Bank 1997, p. 36), their industrial output and, consequently, their standard of living are dramatically lower than in MDCs.

INDUSTRIALIZATION DEFINED

Industrialization is a complex process comprised of a number of interrelated dimensions (Hedley

1992, pp. 128–132). Historically, it represents a transition from an economy based on agriculture to one in which manufacturing represents the principal means of subsistence. Consequently, two dimensions of industrialization are the work that people do for a living (economic activity) and the actual goods they produce (economic output). Other dimensions include the manner in which economic activity is organized (organization), the energy or power source used (mechanization), and the systematic methods and innovative practices employed to accomplish work (technology). Table 1 specifies these dimensions and also lists indicators commonly used to measure them.

According to these indicators, MDCs are fully industrialized. On average, close to one-third of the labor forces in these countries are employed in industry (three-fifths work in the service sector); manufacturing makes up approximately one-quar- ter of the gross domestic product; the overwhelming majority of workers are employees of organizations; commercial energy consumption is high (5,100 kilograms of oil equivalent per capita); and professional and technical workers comprise on average 15 percent of the work force. Furthermore, more than 95 percent of all receipts for royalty and license fees are collected in the MDCs (Hedley 1992, pp. 128–133; United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] 1998; World Bank 1997). Industrial activity and the services associated with it constitute the major driving force and source of income in these more developed economies.

In contrast, none of the LDCs is fully industrialized as measured by these five dimensions of industrialization. Although manufacturing accounts for a significant proportion of many of these countries’ total output, most do not achieve industrial status on any of the other dimensions. Manufacture in these countries is accomplished largely by traditional methods that have varied little over successive generations. Consequently, although manufacturing (transforming raw materials into finished goods) is an essential component of industrialization, there is considerably more to the process. Because industrialization is multidimensional, it cannot be measured by only one indicator.

In general, LDCs may be classified into three major groups according to how industrialized they are. The first and smallest group, referred to as

newly industrializing countries (NICs), contains the most industrialized countries in that they achieve industrial status on at least two dimensions listed in Table 1. Located mainly in East Asia (e.g., South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia) and Latin America (e.g., Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela), these eight NICs accounted for more than 40 percent of all merchandise exports from developing countries in 1995 (World Bank 1997, pp. 158– 160). Although China and, to a lesser degree, India (because of their huge population bases) contribute significantly to the merchandise exports of LDCs, they have not developed their industrial infrastructures to the same extent as these NICs and therefore do not belong in the most industrialized group of LDCs.

A subgroup of NICs are high-income, oilexporting nations (e.g., the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia). Although they do not have large manufacturing bases, they do have significant proportions of their labor forces involved in industry (oil exploration and refining), a substantial component of professional and technical workers (many of them imported), and high per capita commercial energy consumption (World Bank 1998, pp. 34–35, 42– 43). Although concentrated in just one industry, they are more industrialized than most other LDCs according to the criteria specified in Table 1. As a result of their petrodollars, they have acquired an industrial infrastructure that in other countries has taken many decades to establish.

The second, very large group of LDCs in terms of industrialization are those with a traditionally strong manufacturing base that also have a substantial agricultural component. Their economies straddle the agricultural and industrial modes of production. China and India are in this group, as are most of the non-European nations that form the Mediterranean basin. The goods that these LDCs predominantly manufacture (e.g., apparel, footwear, textiles, and consumer electronics) are essential to their own domestic markets and, because they are labor-intensive, also compete very well in the international market. In addition, they export natural resources and agricultural products. Other countries included in this semi-indus- trial group are most of the nations in Central and South America as well as many in South and East Asia.

The third and final group of LDCs are not industrialized on any of the five dimensions listed in Table 1. On average, less than 10 percent of their labor forces are employed in industry; most (76 percent) work in agriculture. Manufacturing contributes only 20 percent to their national economies; the bulk of income derives from natural resources and cash crops grown exclusively for export. Per capita gross national product is very low (US$215). Most of these nonindustrial LDCs are located in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (UNDP 1998).

Of these groups of LDCs, the semi-industrial cluster of nations is by far the largest, constituting just over half the world’s population. China and India alone make up two-thirds of this group. The second-largest group, comprising between 10 and 15 percent of the world population, is the nonindustrial countries; NICs (including high-in- come oil exporters) comprise less than 10 percent. Thus, approximately one-quarter of the world is fully industrialized, another 10 percent are industrializing, half are semi-industrial, and the remaining 15 percent are nonindustrial.

CORRELATES OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

Research has demonstrated that industrialization is directly related to national and individual income, urbanization, the development of an

infrastructure (e.g., communication and transportation networks, education, and health and welfare programs), and the overall quality of life (Hedley 1992, pp. 133–146). These relationships occur because industrialization results in huge productivity gains, which in turn raise individual and national income. For example, when Britain was industrializing, total national income increased by more than 600 percent between 1801 and 1901 (Mitchell 1962, p. 366). In 1850, workers in industrial nations earned eleven times more than their counterparts in nonindustrial countries. Moreover, the advantages of industrialization have been cumulative: today per capita income is more than fifty-two times greater in developed than less developed countries (World Bank 1995, p. 53), thus magnifying what one author has termed a Global Rift (Stavrianos 1981). For a variety of reasons, the direct relationship between industrialization and income is continuing to increase.

In an annual survey of all countries in the world, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) measures ‘‘human development’’ based on the combination of three, admittedly crude, criteria: longevity, knowledge, and a decent standard of living. Table 2 provides a summary of its most recent results grouped by level of industrialization. Of the 174 countries examined, MDCs consistently scored at the top of all three dimensions that comprise human development, while LDCs, particularly the least developed (nonindustrial)

countries, scored at the bottom of the scales. The composite Human Development Index ranged from a high of 0.960 for Canada to a low of 0.185 for Sierra Leone.

According to the UNDP (1998, p. 2):

Well over a billion people are deprived of basic consumption needs. Of the 4.4 billion people in developing countries, nearly three-fifths lack basic sanitation. Almost a third have no access to clean water. A quarter do not have adequate housing. A fifth of children do not attend school to grade 5. About a fifth do not

have enough dietary energy and protein. Micronutrient deficiencies are even more widespread. Worldwide, 2 billion people are anaemic, including 55 million in industrial countries. In developing countries only a privileged minority has motorized transport, telecommunications and modern energy. Inequalities in consumption are stark. Globally, the 20% of the world’s people in the highestincome countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures—the poorest 20% a minuscule 1.3%. More specifically, the richest fifth:

•Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5%.

•Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4%.

•Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5%.

•Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1%.

•Own 87% of the world’s vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%.

Although annual GNP growth rates were higher overall in LDCs (4.1 percent) than MDCs (2.2 percent) between 1980 and 1995 (UNDP 1998, p. 210), the least developed of these LDCs did not fare so well. Not only were their GNP growth rates (2.1 percent) lower than those of MDCs, they were also significantly below their 1970–1995 average annual population growth rate (2.6 percent) (UNDP 1998, p. 209), which means that these countries are actually falling behind in what little progress they have made (Estes 1988). For example, of the 50 countries that comprise sub-Saharan Africa

(Cunningham 1998), two-thirds have been evaluated as ‘‘least developed,’’ that is, targeted for priority international development assistance by the Nations Nations (UNDP 1998, p. 226). Consequently, some experts have openly questioned whether these countries will ever reach the level of industrialization and quality of life now enjoyed in the capitalist countries of the North (South Commission 1990, p. 19).

DEVELOPMENT GOALS: A VIEW FROM

THE SOUTH

World War II marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. Among the more notable turning points following the war were the establishment of the United Nations (and its subsequent Universal Declaration of Human Rights), the onset of the Cold War between East and West, the emergence of many new independent states following the end of colonial rule, and the sudden realization that the income and development gaps between MDCs and LDCs were growing at a precipitous rate. In turn, these events sparked the generation of theories on international development (see, for example, Modernization Theory, Convergence Theories, Dependency Theory, Global Systems Analysis), the creation of organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to design an open and stable global monetary system and to establish development and investment programs (IMF 1985), and the formation of various world commissions to address issues of global development (e.g., Brandt Report 1980; Pearson Report 1969; World Commission on Environment and Development 1987).

These activities were initiated largely in MDCs by Northern-based scholars and practitioners. Although there have been several prominent writers from the South who have viewed relations between MDCs and LDCs from a Southern perspective, (Cardoso and Faletto [1969] 1979; Said 1993; Sen 1990, 1992); it was not until 1990 that delegates from the South expressed their concerns in a representative and comprehensive manner. The South Commission (1990), initially formed in 1987, was comprised of twenty-eight members from twen- ty-six LDCs located on all continents of the South. Chaired by Julius K. Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, the South Commission ‘‘has its origins in a recognition within the South that developing

countries have many problems and much experience in common, but that no one in the South was responsible for looking at these things in a comprehensive manner, or at the lessons about appropriate development strategies which could be drawn from them’’ (Nyerere 1990, p. v). Consequently,

The Challenge to the South (South Commission 1990) is an attempt to articulate from a Southern perspective what needs to be done ‘‘to help the peoples and governments of the South to be more effective in overcoming their numerous problems, in achieving their ambition of developing their countries in freedom, and in improving the lives and living conditions of their peoples’’ (Nyerere 1990, p. vi).

As part of its initial mandate, the South Commission (1990) first defined its development goals:

Development is a process of self-reliant growth, achieved through the participation of the people acting in their own interests as they see them, and under their own control. Its first objective must be to end poverty, provide productive employment, and satisfy the basic needs of all the people, any surplus being fairly shared. This implies that basic goods and services such as food and shelter, basic education and health facilities, and clean water must be available to all. In addition, development presupposes a democratic structure of government, together with its supporting individual freedoms of speech, organization,

and publication, as well as a system of justice which protects all the people from actions inconsistent with just laws that are known and publicly accepted. (p. 13–14)

To achieve these development goals, the South Commission (1990) identified three interrelated task areas:

1.National self-reliance. Individual countries of the South must realize their own unique potential through united and sustained efforts on the part of all people working toward clearly defined interim and long-term objectives. However, because there are external factors (e.g., the current structure of the global economy) that impede progress, solidarity among nations of the South is crucial.

2.South–South cooperation. ‘‘By joint endeavours to use to the maximum their different resources of expertise, capital, or markets, all would be able to address their separate and differing needs more effectively, thereby widening their development options . . . By exploiting these openings for co-operation, the South as a group can also become stronger in its negotiations with the North’’ (p. 16).

3.An organized South for meaningful North– South negotiations. In their relations with the North, the South must ‘‘establish common priorities in keeping with the

development interests of all,’’ ‘‘share technical and negotiating expertise,’’ and ‘‘hold constructive South–South discussions in advance of negotiations’’ (p. 21). Also, the South should actively support the growing initiative to establish international regulatory frameworks for the enforcement of global economic relations (including finance and trade) that are in the best interests of all nations and all peoples.

From this brief review of the report of the South Commission, it is possible to identify several key features of sustained development, as perceived by those affected:

•The South must play an active role in its own self-reliant development,

•Democratic grassroots participation is essential,

•Cooperation must occur at several levels (e.g., community, nation, and region),

•International regulatory codes must be renegotiated between North and South.

Although it is too soon to assess what results the recommendations of the South Commission will achieve, there are indications that some progress is being made. For example, President James Wolfensohn of the World Bank proposed a Challenge of Inclusion (1997) during a recent annual meeting of the Bank. Wolfensohn’s ‘‘challenge’’ is similar to the objectives of the South Commission: ‘‘Our goal must be to reduce . . . disparities across and within countries, to bring more and more people into the economic mainstream, to promote equitable access to the benefits of development regardless of nationality, race, or gender’’ (p. 6). Moreover, the key elements of his challenge also resemble those offered by the South Commission:

•First and foremost, the governments and the people of developing countries must be in the driver’s seat—exercising choice and setting their own objectives for themselves . . .

•Second, our partnership must be inclu- sive—involving bilaterals and multilaterals, the United Nations, the European Union, regional organizations, the World Trade

Organization, labor organizations, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], foundations, and the private sector . . .

•Third, we should offer our assistance to all countries in need. But we must be selective in how we use our resources. There is no escaping the hard fact: More people will be lifted out of poverty if we concentrate our assistance on countries with good policies than if we allocate it irrespective of the policies pursued . . .

•Finally, all of us in the development community must look at our strategies anew (Wolfensohn 1997, pp. 9–11).

Whether The Challenge to the South and The Challenge of Inclusion represent realistic steps toward meaningful North–South dialogue, cooperation, and beneficial action remains to be seen. However, if we do not tear down the many institutionalized structures of exclusion that are currently in place, all of us may eventually lose.

A NEW TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

Another set of challenges confronting LDCs is the new information and communications technology (ICT) revolution. Beginning in the late 1960s with breakthroughs in microelectronics and fiber-optic transmission (Diebold 1990; Gilder 1989), the ICT revolution is still very much in its genesis and is limited primarily to the developed countries (Hedley 1998). In 1994, just five G-7 nations (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and United Kingdom) accounted for 80 percent of the information technology market, and American and Japanese corporations dominate the industry (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD] 1996, pp. 7, 37). Table 3 presents the stark facts of information communication by both traditional and modern means. Particularly with regard to telephones and personal computers, essential ingredients for electronic communication, the less developed, lowand middle-income countries are barely represented. In sub-Saharan African countries, for example, 51 percent of all telephones are located in the largest cities (7 percent in MDCs), and the average waiting time for a telephone connection is 15.2 years (Aggor 1998, p. 9). Inadequate infrastructure, low purchasing power, lack