POLITICS ABROAD

Good-bye to the Third World

Forrest D. Colburn

t a conference, I kept hearing the

term emerging countries. After awhile
I leaned over and asked my neighbor,
Noel Ramrez, then president of Nicaraguas
Central Bank, if Nicaragua was an emerging
country. He whispered back, submerging.
Noel was being funny, but he was also being honest. Nicaragua has stagnated, even
fallen backward, for the last quarter of a century. Emerging countries is a hopeful expression, but it is far from an accurate description
of what is going on in every poor country of
the world. Another upbeat, optimistic term is
developing countries. The most evocative
term, though, is Third World. It is used to
refer collectively to all the poorer countries of
the world. While it suggests poverty, it also
evokes countries on the movepolitically and
economicallyand, above all, in solidarity with
one another, pursuing a common political
agenda, one that demands attentionand resourcesfrom the rich countries of the world.
This conception, however, is especially misleading. It is dated and has lost all of its conceptual usefulness. But what should replace
it? Where are we today? What shorthand notation can we use to refer to the poorer countries of the world? How can we conceptualize
their place vis--vis each other and the more
prosperous countries of the world?
These questions are daunting and answers
to them are elusive. However, a useful place
to start is by an intellectual trek to Harvard
University. But the answers are not forthcoming from the Department of Government (lost
in a fog of formal modeling) or Samuel
Huntingtons former kingdom, the Center for
International Affairs, or that nursing home for
the casualties of politics, the Kennedy School.

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DISSENT / Spring 2006

No, it is across the Charles River, at the

Harvard Business School, where intellectual
guidance can be found. Professor Michael Porter has tirelessly studied and promoted economic competitiveness. Although he commands staggering consulting fees, he is not a
household name. But he best captures how
governing elites in poor countriesand everywhere else for that matterbehave: in an atomistic, self-interested way, almost like firms,
competing for profitable niches in the international economy. It is the reign of the business model. Yes, there are rich countries and
there are poor countries. But there is no first,
second, or third world. There are just markets
and market shares. And if you are not in the
market, you might as well disappear, even if
you have a seat and a microphone at the United
Nations.
We often forget just how new most poor
countries are. For example, Jordan and Syria
as independent nation-stateswere created in
1946. Libya was established in 1951, Tunisia
in 1956. India became independent in 1947,
Indonesia in 1949. Malaysia was established
in 1963. The birth of Ghana came in 1957.
Senegal and Nigeria were established in 1960.
Kenya gained independence in 1963it took
until 1980 for Zimbabwe. Most of Latin
America became independent in the first half
of the nineteenth century, but the Cuban Revolution in 1959 prompted a questioning of national identity and direction throughout the
region. Similarly, the Chinese Revolution in
1949 gave that mammoth country the sense
that it was beginning anew. Between the end
of the Second World War and the end of the
twentieth century, membership in the United
Nations more than tripled. And these new
members were overwhelmingly poor.
Besides poverty, these newly created or recreated countries shared an anger at European
(and Japanese) colonialism and what was fre-

POLITICS ABROAD

quently referred to as the neocolonialism of the

United States (though just what that meant
remained vague), and a corresponding sense
of entitlementthey were owed something.
There was also a sense of solidarity, of being
in the same creaky boat, pride in national identity, and a heady sense of optimism. Often, too,
there was political intoxication: a conviction
that with the right political organization all was
possible. Mao Zedong summed up the feeling
in 1958 when he said, Our nation is like an
atom. When this atoms nucleus is smashed
the thermal energy released will have really tremendous power. We shall be able to do things
which we could not do before. Politics was
all-important in this era.
Intellectuals in Western Europe and North
America were overwhelmingly sympathetic.
How telling it was that the preface to Frantz
Fanons The Wretched of the Earth was written
by Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, the phrase Third
World was coined in the early 1950s by the
French sociologist Alfred Sauvy. The world, as
he observed it at the time, was divided into two
great blocs: the capitalist, democratic West and
the communist East, the First and Second
Worlds. But this classification was incomplete;
it did not encompass the poorer, backward lessdeveloped countries of the Middle East, Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. They were, he pronounced, the Third World or Tiers monde,
echoing the name of the third house of the
French Parliament of the ancien rgime, the
Tiers tat.
A colleague from Cameroon, Bertrade
Banoum, says dismissively, The Third World
never existed. It is true that the term Third
World always embraced an extremely heterogeneous set of countries, marked by awkward
differences of geography, size, history, culture,
political system, and level of economic development. Moreover, actual linksincluding
communicationamong the countries were
limited. There were also questions of just who
was included and who was not: were China and
Cuba, for example, part of the Second World
or the Third World?
Some organization for the Third World was
provided by the nonaligned movement, which
began in 1955 with a meeting in Indonesia of
representatives of twenty-nine countries spread

throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

The nonalignment movement grew and established itself as an institution in 1961. The
agenda was not neutrality in the conflict between East and West; the agenda was jumpstarting and sustaining a North-South debate.
At the forefront of the debate were economic
issues, including prominently a demand from
the poor countries for material assistance and
for concessions on finance and trade.

rguably, though, the real importance

of the Third World was as an idea that
shaped attitudes and values, and so
shaped, too, crucial decisions about how to
organize state and society. The import of the
idea was to suggest that development was easy.
Countries may have been newly created, but
the societies they represented had just been
held backretardedby colonialism and its
handmaiden, capitalism. One of the most influential books of the era has a revealing title:
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Countries
of the Third World were not inexorably poor,
they were victims. They just needed to pull
themselves togetherif necessary by a militant, vanguard partyand receive their due
compensation from those who had bullied
them. Development was essentially a political
task.
The intellectual and political elites of Western Europe and North America may have been
queasy about accepting the blame for underdevelopment, but they were seduced by the
belief that the keys to rapid progress could be
found and that there was, in fact, one set of
keys for all the poor countries of the world.
What would work for Bolivia would work for
Botswana, and would work, too, for Bangladesh. Universities and foundations joined
government agencies in devoting considerable
resources to promoting nation-building and
state-construction.
The effort had many fronts, from agriculture to health care to institutional development.
But the most conspicuous front was probably
intellectual: how do societies modernize? Paradigms were hatched, debated vigorously, and
when exhausted, gave way to other paradigms.
There was a widely shared sense that development was within reach, and that the right poliDISSENT / Spring 2006

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POLITICS ABROAD

tics would make a decisive difference.

The collapse of the Second Worldthe
demise of so-called socialist regimes in Eastern Europe and finally the implosion of the
Soviet Union itselfmade the continued use
of Third World awkward. Moreover, even after decades of meetings and speeches at the
United Nations and elsewhere, there was no
visible reordering of the international economy
to favor poor countries. The Third World lost
its thunder. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the heterogeneity of the poor countries
became more and more accentuated. Some
countries have transformed themselves, other
countries have stumbled along, making some
progress, and still others have faltered. There
are paired comparisons of neighboring countries that are stark: Thailand and Burma,
Ghana and Liberia, Chile and Argentina. Why
have some countries held themselves togethereven prosperedwhile others have
stagnated? Also, there are individual cases
prominently Chinawhere there have been
wide gyrations in economic growth over the
course of the last few decades. Why? The inability to answer these two questions with generalizations, despite all the field work and
scholarship on development, is a mortal blow
to the concept of the Third World.
The World Bank reports that life expectancy in the last forty years has gone up by
twenty years in poor countries. Literacy has
improved. Infant mortality and maternal mortality have decreased. Fewer people are living
in extreme poverty. There has been progress.
But the World Bank also reports that malnutrition and disease still claim the lives of millions of young children, and that millions more
never receive a primary education. And in those
countries at the center of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, life expectancy has been falling.
The puzzle is explaining the distribution of
progress, most prominently among nationstates, but also among regions of individual
countries. The richest Mexican state, Nueva
Len, has a per capita income ten times that
of the poorest state, Chiapas. Why? A lot has
been learned about facets of development; for
example, agriculture and health care. What has
remained mysterious, seemingly unknowable,
is how everything comes together to move

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DISSENT / Spring 2006

countries forward, politically and economically.

(It is thus no surprise that the worlds richest
individualBill Gateswould spend his fortune combating diseases in poor countries but
sidestep financing nation-building and state
construction.)
he best recent thinking about political and economic development might be
found in an edited volume published in
2005 by Oxford University Press and the World
Bank: Development Challenges in the 1990s:
Leading Policymakers Speak from Experience.
The volume opens with a wry epigram from
John Maynard Keynes: It is ideas, not vested
interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
Contributors range from Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, former president of Brazil, to Montek
S. Ahluwalia, former secretary of Indias Department of Economic Affairs, to Zhou
Xiaochuan, governor of the Peoples Bank of
China. The collective testimony suggests how
thoroughly governing elites in poor countries
have changed the way they see themselves (and
how they are seen, too, by international financial organizations). Liberalism is in vogue; the
state is out, the market is in. Governing
elitespolicymakers, in the lexicon of the
bookneed to focus on providing a supportive environment for the market. But there is a
black box that is obscured by all the discussion of markets. Who is in the market and what
are they doing? Timothy Besley, in the introduction to the book, says, Each country must
find its own growth strategy based on an internally driven process responsive to its institutional capacity and economic conditions.
Okay, but what is the internally driven process? Does selling plastic bags of cold water
at Managuas intersections count? When does
market activityand political activity for that
matterpush countries forward?
The most persuasive answers we have to
these questions are offered by Michael Porter.
He focuses on what has become the new synonym for developmentcompetitiveness. Porter is not widely read outside of business
circles, but his writing is extremely influential.
He best captures the behavior of governing
elites in poor countries, even those who publicly denounce markets. Porter begins by ac-

POLITICS ABROAD

knowledging the importance of a sound macroeconomic, political, and legal environment.

However, he asserts, it is not sufficient to ensure a prosperous country. A countrys prosperity, he says, is determined by the productivity
with which it uses its human, capital, and natural resources. Productivity is the basis of competitiveness. No country is competitive in every industry. A countrys competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industries to innovate and upgrade continuously. Through the
process of innovation and upgrading, countries
create prosperityit is not inherited or a gift
of natural resources. Ultimately, countries succeed in a particular industry (be it bananas or
tourism or steel) because their home environment is the most dynamic and challenging for
that industry. In a time of increasing global
links, countries, and even cities, have become
more importantparadoxical as it may appearbecause competitive advantage in particular industries is created and sustained
through a highly localized process. Left unsaid
by Porter is the obvious: if you are not competitive, you are a loser.
ike it or not, Michael Porter is todays
Julius Nyerere, Gamel Abdel Nassar,
Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. Solidarity and politics have given way to competition
in business. Individual countries are atomized,
locked in competition for markets and market
share. Everything else is just parades and
grandstanding. Instead of the Third World,
there are many poor countries, and the differences among them are significant. Moreover,
the reigning paradigm highlights these differences and the extent to which countries compete against one another. There is a proliferation of institutions and publications that rank
countries. A prominent example is the World
Economic Forum, which publishes an annual
global competitiveness report. In contrast with

decades past, today it is difficult to group togethereven for the purpose of discussion
the poor countries of the world.
The ascendancy of the competitiveness
paradigm poses many challenges to poor countries. Markets, especially international markets,
are fickleand sometimes just plain cruel. Unfettered markets may be dominated by powerful economic actors, most likely from rich countries. A simple but illustrative example is a brand
of cubed sugar in New York: A la Perruche. The
carton of 1.1 pounds of pure cane sugar pressed
into cubes is imported from France. The back
of the box states, Product made of Swaziland
or Congo sugar packaged in France. The value
of the sugar on the international market is about
12 cents, though the carton, which boasts since
1837, sells for $5.99. Africans try to earn a living selling raw sugar on the international market for 11 cents a pound; the French, with their
skills in packaging and marketing, pocket the
dollars. There surely are opportunities in the
worlds markets, but poor countries confront
many obstacles, including well-ensconced competition. The new market paradigm makes no
promises, thoughand it shifts all responsibility for the welfare of the poor to their own weary
shoulders.
It is hard to believe we have heard the last
word about how best to spur economic developmentor that politics has forever receded.
Indeed, many in the worlds poor countries are
skeptical, even hostile, to the new market paradigm. At the farmers market where I shop in
Alajuela, Costa Rica, I recently saw a young
man dressed in a red shirt emblazoned with
the slogan, Mao More Than Ever. Most likely
he was wearing a castoff from the 1970s. But
maybe not.

Among other works, Forrest D. Colburn is the

author of The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries and Latin America at the End of Politics.

DISSENT / Spring 2006

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