Do cultural factors play a significant role in explaining the economic performance of countries?

Introduction

This paper attempts to answer how important the cultural factors are in the economic performance of countries. In order to be able to reach to a satisfying conclusion, we are going to analyze and compare the role of culture in explaining the economic performance of two regions, East Asia and Latin America. Due to the cultural similarities that can be observed between counties of East Asia and countries of Latin America separately and due to the differences in their economic development, this example can shed some light on whether culture affects the economic performance of countries and in what grade.

In explaining why East Asia and Latin America had different economic performances during the past several decades, scholars around the world have applied several approaches, one of which is cultural. By taking the cultural approach, this paper will first review the notion of culture and the relationship between culture and development. Then, it will explore as synoptically and representably as possible the nature of both cultures and also try to see whether cultural factors can explain the different economic performances in East Asia and Latin America during the past decades.

At least until the current financial crisis, East Asia had achieved legendary success in economic development. As a World Bank booklet pointed out in 1993, no other group of developing countries in the world has done as well as in fostering growth, reducing poverty, integrating with world markets or raising standards of living. According to this World Bank publication, per capita incomes in the region almost quadrupled over the past 25 years. On average, absolute poverty fell by about two-thirds, while population growth rates declined rapidly and health and education improved significantly. The first set of success stories of the Asian “tigers” has led to second generation of rapidly industrializing , fast growing economies; and now China has started a new engine of regional growth (Leipziger; Thomas, 1993:1).

On the other hand, in Latin America the picture seemed different. By 1955, Brazil and Mexico were already entering a second dynamic phase of import substitution, well before Taiwan and South Korea started their real industrialization process. By the end of the 1970s, however, Latin America’s economic “golden age” ended, and started the “lost decade” of the 1980s (Grieco; Ikenberry, 2003:254-256). That’s why Latin America seems to be a prime candidate for comparison with East Asia, for the purpose of this essay.

What is culture?

Its notion can be varied from different aspects and according to different understandings. According to some scholars, from its earliest usage the world “culture” has always designated the cultivation or tending of something like “agri-culture”. During and after the 16th century, the tendency was extended in elite usage to include the cultivation of prestigious human qualities: mind, manners, spirit, sensibility and taste. By the 18th century elite Europeans used the word to distinguish between the highly refined civil cultivation achieved by privileged western Europeans and what was perceived as the relatively primitive development of such human qualities both in non-Europeans and the poor. Toward the end of the 18th century, the German historian Herder, introduced perhaps the first usage of “culture” as a substantive noun, suggesting all people had a culture (Berger, 1995:14-15).

It is interesting to note that in his article, The Clash of Civilizations? , Samuel Huntington mentions seven or eight civilizations, of which two are Confucian and Latin America civilizations. According to Huntington, “a civilization is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity…A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions and by the subjective self-identification of people.” Huntington believes that civilization has nothing to do with population size. Therefore, “a civilization may also include several nations states, as in the case with Western, Latin America and Arab civilizations, or only one, as in the case with Japanese civilization.” (Huntington, 1993)

In a paper discussing the relationship between culture and development, Gao Xian raises the issue of macro-culture. He points out that macro-culture includes not only culture in the narrow sense (art, literature, academic activities etc), but also culture in the broadest sense. Therefore, the macro-cultural approach to development is a holistic exploration of the development process, material and moral, current and historical, partial and total. According to Gao Xian, the macro-culture approach primarily addresses the issue of an objective attitude towards tradition and the relation ship between traditional culture and modernization development (Gao Xian, 1996:143-144).

Finally, in discussing the notion of culture, we also need to mention what tradition is. According to Gao Xian, tradition is what a society inherits from its history and which forms the norms of morality, concepts of value, models of behavior, methods of thinking, ways of life, systems and habits, ideas of aesthetics etc. This serves the foundation of the cultural identity of that particular society. However, tradition should not be seen as entirely “good” or completely “bad”. In other words, in dealing with tradition, people should not blindly accept everything past, nor get rid of the tradition because it is totally harmful. Traditions, which are very closely linked to culture, should be renewed and improved constantly (Gao Xian, 1996:143-144).

The relationship between culture and development

It has been increasingly acknowledged that the primary aim of the contemporary era is to seek development and peace. In pointing out the causes of underdevelopment, some people would put more emphasis on external factors, such as unequal exchanges or the absence of a just international economic order. However, it is also necessary to pay attention to internal factors. As a matter of fact, development is the result of both external and internal factors. In terms of internal factors determining economic development, people are increasingly emphasizing the non-economic ones like culture. “Underdevelopment is not just a collection of statistical indices which enable a socio-economic picture to be drawn. It is also a state of mind, a way of expression, a form of outlook and a collective personality marked by chronic infirmities and forms of maladjustment.” (Harrison, 1985)

Many famous scholars have worked on the relationship between culture and development. For instance W. Arhtur Lewis put forward the argument that cultural influence is related to entrepreneurship and the broader issue of the sociopolitical environment for growth. “Economic growth depends on attitudes to work, to wealth, to thrift, to having children, to invention, to strangers, to adventure, and so on, and all these attitudes flow from deep springs in the human mind.” He also believes that religion impacts monetary habit, risk-taking, honesty and rationality – all related to development (Lewis, 1955:14). Apart from Lewis, Schumpeter noted that human creative genius was one of the keys to development. In his view, “…the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new sources of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing industry and so on…” (Schumpeter, 1961:132)

Many scholars have also relied on long term field-study for their research on the relationship between culture and economic development. For instance based on his life in a poor village in southern Italy during the 1950s, Edward Banfield observed that, “we are apt to take it for granted that economic and political associations will quickly arise wherever technical conditions and natural resources permit…The assumption is wrong because it overlooks the crucial importance of culture.” (Banfield, 1958:8)

In answering the question of what makes development happen, Gunnar Myrdal concluded that cultural factors are the principal obstacles to modernization. Not only do they get in the way of entrepreneurial activity, but they rigidify and dominate the entire national system in all its political, economic and social dimensions. Even in their economic choices people are conditioned by their total mental make-up and in particular by the community they live. According to Myrdal, “the conflict between articulated specific traditional valuations and the modernization ideals can be expressed in terms of the costs to the latter through lost opportunities.” He also believes that religion usually acts as a tremendous force for social stagnancy (Myrdal, 1968:7, 93, 103).

In sum, culture, no matter what it exactly means, is a combined reflection of politics and economics in any society. Culture along with politics and economics are the three productive forces of any society and only when they move harmoniously can the whole society develop rapidly. Cultural progress guides the actions and responses of human beings in every walk of life. But it is important to point out that its importance should not be exaggerated. In other words, compared with other internal factors determining economic performance, cultural factors occupy a lower position than economic policies. Culture serves to facilitate or hinder the creation of an environment where sound economic policies can be made and implemented.

East Asia and Latin America: Different culture…different economic performance?

Mankind’s industrialization process has proceeded through three stages of rapid development. The first was from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, with Western Europe standing at the center. Then the second wave came from the mid-19th century to the first half of the 20th century. At this time it expanded from Western Europe to Eastern Europe and North America. Latin America was affected by the end of this wave. The third wave appeared in the post World War II period and it washed through Asia, Latin America and even Africa, with East Asia being the central focus of this industrialization boom.

It appears that the third wave of industrialization and modernization took place in the Confucian cultural circle, apparently with the exception of Latin America. At this point we are interested in exploring the nature of East Asian culture, and hence in concluding how it affected economic development in East Asia. But first we need to make mention that East Asia is not culturally homogeneous. Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity, along with Confucianism which originated from China, all have large followings in East Asia. However, according to Lucian Pye, “the political features that East Asian systems have in common are…their shared Confucian cultural traditions.” (Berger; Hsiao, 1988:82) Indeed, Confucianism occupies one of the most, if not the only, important position in the region’s cultural arena. Therefore, by saying East Asian culture in this paper we mean Confucianism in general.

Then what is the nature of Confucianist culture? Zhang Hongyi lists the following components of Confucianist economic thinking (1989:80-241):

Confucianist Economic Thinking
1) Economic functioning should rely on comprehensive harmony, consistency with natural laws, human supremacy and avoiding extremes.
2) Economic policies of the government should stress making people rich, designing a light tax regime, developing the agricultural sector and reducing poverty.
3) Economic behaviors should emphasize using benign ways of making fortunes, lining a thrifty life, keeping promises in business contracts and working hard.
4) Economic relations should be built upon the efforts to curtail selfishness and reduce inequality.
5) Economic management should highlight centralized administrative power and efficient governance
6) Economic life should be intergrated with economic morality

Other western scholars have a similar account of East Asian culture. For example, according to Herman Kahn, “first and perhaps foremost, Confucian societies uniformly promote in the individual and the family sobriety, a high value on education, a desire for accomplishment in various skills (particularly academic and cultural) and seriousness about tasks, job, family and obligations. A properly trained member of a Confucian culture will be hardworking, responsible, skillful and (within the assigned and understood limits) ambitious and creative in helping the group (extended family, community or company). There is much less emphasis on advancing individual interests.” (Kahn, 1979:121) In other words, like Engholm states, “Confucianism inculcates servility, frugality, abstinence and diligence. It recognizes hard work, patriarchal leadership, entrepreneurial spirit and familial devotion.” (1991:25)

While many scholars believe that Confucianism confers certain advantages over other traditions like the Ibero-Catholic or Hispanic heritage in Latin America in promoting economic development, others point out that simplistic cultural arguments yield several problems. For instance, according to Gary Gereffi (1995:38), these problems include:
-Timing, since Confucian and Ibero-Catholic traditions have existed for centuries, but the shifts in economic performance that gave rise to the East Asia have occurred in recent decades.
-Discussions of culture have been as inconsistent as the same Confucian beliefs that are now claimed to facilitate rapid industrialization in East Asia. They were criticized by several Generations of western scholars for inhibiting economic development.
Another interesting point of view that this culture was once seen as an obstacle to development in China is Weber’s claims. Weber’s study of Asia, including Confucianism, led him to the conclusion that the values and attitudes articulated in Oriental religions explained why Asian economic development was much slower than that of Europe. He argued that the norms of Confucianism did not produce the same kind of psychic anxiety, and hence the same desire for achievements as the Protestant ethic in the West.

However, despite the debate, we can still mention three crucial ways in which East Asian culture is beneficial to economic development:
-Confucianist culture encourages thrift and savings, which in turn benefits the growth of investment. It is pretty obvious that no economy can grow unless surpluses are created that can increase the economy’s productive capacity. Apart from that, economic development also relies on investment of physical capital in the form of roads, machine tools, computers etc. In 1965, investment rates in East Asia equaled about 20% of GDP, very low compared to that in Latin America. By 1990 the East Asian investment rate was 35%, more than twice the Latin America investment rate (Rohwer, 1995:54-55). Furthermore, creation of physical capital depends on financial capital (the saving of money by people and companies).East Asia was good at generating savings which were transformed into capital via banks, stock markets and bond markets. In the mid-1960s the savings rate in East Asia was about 16% of GDP, less than that of Latin America. By the early 1990s, East Asia was saving 35% of GDP, almost twice as much as Latin America (Rohwer, 1995:53). Undoubtedly, economic factors are very important in explaining why the savings rates were so high in East Asia. But, cultural factors also play a role in encouraging people to leave in a thrifty manner and not to show off their wealth with conspicuous consumption. In East Asia thrift was so important that it could determine the fate of a person, a family or even a nation.

-Confucian beliefs place a high value on education, which promotes the development of human resources. Many studies have indicated a significant correlation between educational development and the economic development. Some scholars emphasize that human resources are the ultimate basis of wealth for nations, as it is the capacity of people that leads to the accumulation of capital, the exploitation of natural resources and the building of social, economic and political organizations (Alexander; Kumaran, 1992:19). At the same time, Schults points out that return on investment in education is much greater than return on investment in other items (1963). As far as the role of education to economic development is concerned, education improves the quality of labor through the promotion of skills, efficiency and work knowledge; it increases labor mobility to promote division of labor and to strengthen labor force participation rates; it increases scientific and technical knowledge; it increases the ability of entrepreneurs to improve management and allocation of production factors; and it makes people more responsive to economic change and removes social barriers to economic growth (Kim, 1989:530). In addition to that, Kim came to the conclusion that educational contribution to growth in Korea was lower than that of many developed countries, but higher than the average level of Latin American countries. But that doesn’t imply that Latin America countries pay no attention to school education. According to a World Bank report, the share of educational investment in GDP was much similar in Latin America and East Asia. But the proportions of investment on primary education are not the same. For instance, though Venezuela’s share of educational investment in GDP was larger (3.4%) than that of S. Korea (3%), the former’s percentage of primary education in total educational investment was smaller than the latter’s (World Bank, 1993:199); and the same goes for secondary education. As a result, in East Asia spending was concentrated first on primary schooling and then on secondary schooling rather than on higher education (Latin America). Finally, they combined this high level education with imported technology and the return of expatriates to produce rapid productivity growth.

-Confucianism stresses work ethic. As Barbash puts it, work ethic includes:1)work as an end in itself, which is expected to bring the reward of material success, 2) pride in good quality workmanship, hard work and satisfaction in work and 3) adherence to the discipline of work, namely, punctuality, obedience, diligence, industriousness (1983:233). Through cultural inheritance via learning, the Confucian ethical codes of working hard are well kept in minds of many East Asians. Harrison has illustrative example: A team of rice experts from Taiwan helped set up a rice farm in Costa Rica. A group of Costa Rican farmers were invited to visit the farm, whose yields where much higher than those of the Costa Rican farms. One of them asked a Taiwanese how many hours a day he worked and he responded, “Twelve.” The Costa Rican smiled and said, “Oh, anyone could do that!” Moreover, the success story of the overseas Chinese, who are well influenced by the teachings of Confucianism, may illustrate well the importance of this virtue of working hard. Indeed, it is recognized that overseas Chinese have made great economic achievements during the past decades. In Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia, the Chinese still occupy a very important position in the economy. It is also worth mentioning that among the countries surveyed by the International Labor Office, South Korean workers had the longest working hours in the world, averaging 54 hours per week in 1987 (Lie, 1992:285-286).

Despite all the above, the year of 1997 seemed to be a turning point for the East Asian success story. Starting from Thailand, financial crisis hit East Asian economies one by one. Faced with this crisis, some people are already beginning to ask whether Asian values are what led to nepotistic credit allocation, a disastrous lack of transparency in financial transactions or simply the “economic bubble”. Francis Fukuyama supports, “from being the cause of Asian’s success, Asian values are now seen (by some people) as the root of last summer’s currency crisis of the ensuing economic meltdown across nearly the whole region. Neither reading is correct.” (1998:23) Indeed, a closer look at the East Asian crisis reveals that culture is not the cause, but the results of currency overvaluation, large trade imbalance, declining international competitiveness and speculative attacks are the factors that caused the crisis.

At this point, it would be helpful to say a few things about the nature of Latin American culture. It is true that the region of Latin America is composed of many countries, and each country seems to have its own cultural identity. However, it is a common feeling that there is a “Latin” culture that defines the region as a whole. Likewise, George Foster claims that Ibero-Catholic culture has shaped Latin America and the similarities among Hispanic American countries are more important than the differences (1960:3). Then what is the nature of Latin American culture?

It can be observed that many scholars, who have tried to answer this question, have a somewhat negative impression of Latin American culture. For instance, Lawrence Harrison says, “In the case of Latin America, we see a cultural pattern, derivative of traditional Hispanic culture, that is anti-democratic, anti-social, anti-entrepreneurial and, at least among the elite, anti-work.” (1985:165) He also points out that “it is values and attitudes –culture—that differentiate ethnic groups and are mainly responsible for such phenomena as Latin America’s persistent instability and inequity, Taiwan’s and Korea’s economic ‘miracles’ and the achievements of the Japanese, in Japan, in Brazil and in America.” (1992:1) It took him many years of day-by-day experience in Latin America to “appreciate how traditional Iberian values and attitudes impede progress toward political pluralism, social justice and economic dynamism.” (1992:2-3) Furthermore, Latin America’s chronically poor policies and weak institutions…are principally a cultural phenomenon flowing from the traditional Ibero-Catholic system of attitudes and values. That culture focuses on the present and the past at the expense of the future; it focuses on the individual and the family at the expense of the broader society; it enshrines orthodoxy; and it is disdainful of work, creativity and saving…” (1997:4) In other words, Latin America is a region powerfully influenced by the Ibero-Catholic culture, which accords lower priority to values like work, education, merit, frugality, community and justice…

Harrison’s views are also echoed by others. For example, Alan Riding writes about Mexicans and claims that “…what counts to the Mexican is what he is rather than what he does, the man rather than the job: he works to live and not to inverse…Status and appearances are crucial throughout society. The poor spend ostentatiously to hide the ‘shame’ of their poverty…Businessmen gamble on large, fast profits rather than long-term expansion of a market; individuals prefer spending to saving.” (1984:3-21) According to Wiarda, Latin America “remains in many ways hierarchical, authoritarian, paternalistic, Catholic…elitist, corporatist and paternalist to its core. These ingredients have been and remain, even in the new period of democracy, at the heart of its development tradition and are what help make it distinctive.” (1992:20) Another very interesting example is given by Dealy. In his words, “In general, capitalist-industrial society has viewed leisure unfavorably because it is not useful, it does not produce anything…” On the other hand, in Latin American societies “people actively and rationally utilize leisure for the advancement of their goal of public power.” (1977:3) Therefore, the habit of keeping late hours in these societies can be easily justified as rational behavior, just as the capitalist, early-to-bed-early-rise philosophy is consistent with a production ethic. Dealy also mentions that Uruguay, not the USA or Canada, was the first nation in the Western Hemisphere to establish a limit upon work in the form of an eight-hour day and a forty-eight-hour week. Interestingly, the call for shortening hours came from the intellectuals who believed that toil was an inherently degrading evil.

Though we can easily discern the different features of East Asian and Latin American cultures, it is still too simplistic to attribute the different economic performance between East Asia and Latin America solely and totally to cultural differences. In other words, East Asian culture cannot be the only answer to East Asia’s past success. This success was mainly brought about by economic factors, such as strong export promotion, macroeconomic stability, effective government regulations, effective use of resources and better use of the external environment created by the world economic development after WWII. For Latin America, its culture is not the only cause of its relatively bad economic performance before the 1990s and it cannot be used to explain the recent economic recovery either.

As a matter of fact, we cannot contend that Latin America’s culture in the 1990s is much different from that of the 1980s and earlier and at the same time we should note that Latin America’s economic performance has not always been disappointing. For instance, in 1913 Argentina’s per capita GNP matched that of Switzerland and exceeded those of France and Sweden (Waisman, 1987:6). According to one estimate, Brazil grew faster between 1870 and 1980 than any other country in the world (Winn, 1992:191). Also Chile’s GDP in 1981-1990 grew annually at an average rate of 3% and in 1991-1997, the growth rate stood as high as 7% (UNECLAC, 1997). This economic performance during the past two decades is no less remarkable than some of the East Asian economies. Therefore, we can observe that there are examples of Latin America’s economic performance that can hardly be explained by the cultural approach. Finally, we need to take into consideration of the Protestant conversion in many traditionally Catholic Latin American countries like Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Protestant conversion in Latin America has been associated with significant increases in hygiene, educational achievement, savings and per capita income (Fukuyama, 1995:44-45).

Conclusions

To sum up, after the analysis of cultural approach, the relationship between culture and development and the useful example of East Asia and Latin America, we can conclude three very important points:
1) The cultural approach has opened a door for us to see why economic performance is different among regions and countries. The key question here is not whether cultural factors are the exclusive influence over economic performance; rather, it relates development policy options and institutional choices to certain cultural antecedents that make the reason for such selections easier to be understood. In other words, cultural approach provides us with a frame of reference within which we can see how values, attitudes or practices have influenced the economic performance of countries. In our example, it complements rather than contradicts other interpretation of the so-called East Asian “success” and Latin America “failure”.
2) On one hand, culture plays an important role in economic performance, as it can affect people’s behaviors towards savings, education, work ethic etc. On the other hand, culture compared with economic factors, it is less important. Of all the factors determining economic performance, economic factors stand on top.
3) Each culture has its own unique positive and negative components. The positive ones cannot automatically create better economic performance in the absence of other necessary conditions like sound economic policies, effective institutions, favorable world economic conditions, political stability and the right time of a nation’s entry into industrialization. Therefore, only in a favorable economic and political environment can culture trigger economic growth.


REFERENCES

Alexander, K. C. and Kumaran, P. P., 1992. Culture And Development: Cultural Patterns in Areas of Uneven Development, Stage Publications.
Banfield, E., 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, The Free Press.
Barbash, J. et al. (eds), 1983. The Work Ethic—A Critical Analysis, Industrial Relations Research Association.
Berger, B. M., 1995. An Essay on Culture: Symbolic Structure And Social Structure, University of California Press.
Dealy, G. C., 1977. The Public Man: An Interpretation of Latin America and other Catholic Countries, The University of Massachussets Press.
Engholm, C., 1991. When Business East Meets Business West, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Foster, G., 1960. Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage, Quadrangle Books.
Fukuyama, F., 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, The Free Press.
Fukuyama, F., 1998. Asian Values and The Asian Crisis, Commentary, February 1998.
Gao Xian, 1996. Culture and Development: Macro-cultural Reflections on Development, Culturelink, 1996:20:143-144.
Gereffi, G., 1995. Contending Paradigms for Cross-Regonal Comparison: Development Strategies and Commodity in East Asia and Latin America, in Smith, P. (ed.), 1995. Latin America in Comparative Perspective: New Approaches to Methods and Analysis, Westview Press.
Grieco, J. M. and Ikenberry, G. J., 2003. State Power and the World Markets: The International Political Economy, New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Harrison, L., 1985. Underdevelopment is a State of Mind, University Press of America.
Harrison, L., 1992. Who Prosper? How Cultural Values Shape Economic and Political Success, Basic Books.
Harrison, L., 1997. The Pan-American Dream—Do Latin America’s Cultural Values Discourage True Partnership with the United States and Canada?, Basic Books.
Hongyi Zhang, 1989. Confucianism Economic Thinking, Human People’s Publishing House.
Huntington, S. P., 1993. The Clash of Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993:72:3.
Kahn, H., 1979. World Economic Development: 1919 and Beyond, Westview Press.
Kim, J. W., 1989. The Role of Education in Economic Development—The Korean Experience, in Klenner, W. (ed.), 1989. Trends of Economic Development in East Asia, Springer-Verlag.
Leipziger, D.M. and Thomas, V., 1993. The Lessons of East Asia: An Overview of Country Experience, World Bank.
Lewis, W. A., 1955. The Theory of Economic Growth, Harvard University Press.
Lucian, W. P., The New Asian Capitalism: A Political Portrait, in Berger, Peter L. and Hsia Michael (eds.), 1998. In Search of an East Asian Development Model, Transaction Books.
Myrdal, G., 1968. Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, The Twentieth Century Fund, 1968:7:93, 103.
Riding, A., 1984. Distant Neighbours: A Portrait of the Mexicans, Alfred A. Knopf.
Rohwer, J., 1995. Asia Rising, Simon & Schuster.
Schumpeter, J., 1961. The Theory of Economic Development, Harvard University Press.
UNECLAC, Preliminary Overview of the Economy of Latin America and the Caribbean:1997.
Waisman, C. H., 1987. Reversal of Development in Argentina, Princeton University Press.
Wiarda, H. J. (ed.), 1992. Politics and Social Change in Latin America: Still a dinstinct Tradition?, Westview Press.
Winn, P., 1992. Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean, Pantheon.
World Bank, 1993. The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy, Oxford University Press.

Can industrialization proceed without agricultural transformation?

INTRODUCTION


All industrialized countries have an agrarian past. Two hundred years ago, the vast majority of people in every country lived off agriculture as they do today in much of the developing world. As countries develop, their labor force shifts to industry and services and in the process the wellbeing of the people improves. The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on the economic logic that drives the process and the important role that agricultural productivity plays in industrialization.

At the first part of this paper, we will argue, in general, that agricultural productivity growth can be the key to the successful industrialization of a developing country, according to opinions and theories of very important authors (Grabowski, Mundle, Murphy et al. etc). At the second part, we are going to discuss the policy implications for developing countries. Specifically, we will try to establish the relationship between agricultural growth and poverty, talk about the increase of inputs that are complementary to labor in the production progress, the efficiency of the production technology in agriculture, the importance of importing and exporting and the role of the ‘services’ and the ‘urban bias’. Finally, we are going to take a look at the experience of China, in order to see how agricultural transformation can precipitate industrialization.


FIRST PART


Based on the historical experience of Western countries (Britain, France, Germany), the process of economic development was seen as a process requiring a rapid agricultural transformation. This kind of transformation has to do with the shift of the economy from one predominantly focused on agricultural activity to a more complex modern industrial and service society. As a result, “agriculture’s primary role was to provide sufficient low-priced food and manpower to the expanding industrial economy, which was thought to be the dynamic ‘leading sector’ in any overall strategy of economic development.” A perfect example of this theory is Lewis’s famous two-sector model, which describes industrial growth and expansion as a process fueled by means of cheap food and surplus labor that come from the agricultural sector (Todaro and Smith, 2003:419). Francis Blanchard said:

“The main burden of development and employment creation will have to be borne by the part of the economy in which agriculture is the predominant activity, that is, the rural sector.”(Todaro and Smith, 2003:418)
The two sector classical growth model (the brief analysis that follows is spelled out in Grabowski, 1999:2-4). According to Grabowski, this model was based on the assumption that many LDCs had dual economies with both a traditional agricultural sector and a modern industrial sector. The traditional agricultural sector was assumed to be of a subsistence nature characterised by low productivity, low incomes, low savings and considerable underemployment. On the other hand, the industrial sector was assumed to be technologically advanced with high levels of investment operating in an urban environment.
Lewis suggested that the modern industrial sector would attract workers from the rural areas. Industrial firms, whether private or publicly owned could offer wages that would guarantee a higher quality of life than remaining in the rural areas could provide. Furthermore, as the level of labour productivity was so low in traditional agricultural areas people leaving the rural areas would have virtually no impact on output. Indeed, the amount of food available to the remaining villagers would increase as the same amount of food could be shared amongst fewer people. This might generate a surplus which could them be sold generating income.
Moreover, those people that moved away from the villages to the towns would earn increased incomes and this crucially according to Lewis generates more savings. The lack of development was due to a lack of savings and investment. At the same time, the key to development was to increase savings and investment. Lewis saw the existence of the modern industrial sector as essential if this was to happen. Urban migration from the poor rural areas to the relatively richer industrial urban areas gave workers the opportunities to earn higher incomes and crucially save more providing funds for entrepreneurs to investment. Finally, a growing industrial sector requiring labour provided the incomes that could be spent and saved. This would in itself generate demand and also provide funds for investment. Income generated by the industrial sector was trickling down throughout the economy.
Murphy et al. (1989:537-564) have also developed a model and within the context of this model, agricultural productivity growth plays an important role in industrialization and in the overall process of development. In their model food is a necessity implying that below a certain income level all income is spent on food. In order to have industrialization, agricultural productivity growth improves our wellbeing by reducing the amount of time and resources needed to meet our subsistence needs. When people have enough left over in their budgets after satisfying their food requirements, they demand non-agricultural goods and this is what creates markets for industrial goods and services. What is responsible for creating such a surplus over their subsistence is also what is responsible for enabling a small part of the labor force to produce enough food for the whole society: growth in agricultural productivity. In other words, nothing that we associate with economic development and industrialization—consumption of industrial goods and sophisticated services, specialization of labor and technical progress—would have been possible if agricultural productivity had not reached a high enough level to release labor (labor surplus) and other resources like food and fibre or savings for financing industrial growth.

Further, this model indicates the growth in market size allows firms in the manufacturing sector to shift from constant to increasing returns to scale technology. In a few words, Mundle et al. (1989) explain that manufactured goods can be produced in these two types of setting. The constant returns to scale technology is superior at small levels of production (small market size), while the increasing returns to scale technology is superior at large levels of production (large market size). Industrialization thus is the process of substitution of increasing returns for constant returns technologies in the production of manufactured goods. Specifically, “…if various sectors of the economy adopted increasing returns technologies simultaneously, they could each create income that becomes a source of demand for goods in other sectors, and so enlarge their markets and make industrialization profitable.”(1989: 1004)

In addition to that, it is essential to mention that Murphy et al. include into their analysis the possibility that industrialization may fail to occur.(Grabowski, 1999:10) In order to avoid that, an economy should avoid the creation of two extreme opposite cases: too much equality and two much inequality. In the first case, all consumers will be buying only food and thus there will be no market for manufacturing. In the second case, “…the market for manufacturing output will be too small to make the switch to increasing returns profitable.” (1999:10) According to Grabowski, open economy issues and international trade also play a significant role in industrialization. We need to focus on the fact that “growth in agricultural production will lead to industrialization only if it is broadly based with the income gains widespread among the rural population.” (1999:10) In an open economy, export production results in the importation of cheaper food, which means that income in food production will decline relative to those in the export sector; but the net effect on income would be positive, creating a larger market for manufactured goods and a greater possibility of industrialization. However, Grabowski draws one warning:

“If the returns from exports are more unequally distributed than those from food production, the increased inequality may reduce the size of the domestic market for manufactured goods, reducing the likelihood of industrialization (switching to increasing returns technology). Thus whether or not export production will bring about industrialization will be dependent on how broadly based such production is.”(1999:10)

The emphasis on agriculture as a market for the manufacturing industry, especially rural manufacturing, plays an important role in Mundle’s analysis as well(1985). His main concern is trying to understand the comparative performances of Japan and India in terms of economic development. In both countries—in Japan from 1885 to World War II and in India from the mid-1950s to the 1970s—a saving surplus was transferred out of agriculture. As a proportion of value added in agriculture the magnitude of these transfers was similar to both countries. Moreover, these transfers were part of a strategy of industrialization for by their governments. However, Mundle observes that it succeeded in Japan and failed in India.

Grabowski (1999:8) explains that, according to Mundle, the relative success of industrialization in Japan could not be attributed to transferring surplus or savings to the industrial sector. On the contrary, he offers an alternative explanation. When the transfer started in Japan, the 60 percent of aggregate output was already nonagricultural production. On the other hand, in the 1950s agricultural production in India was for well over half of total production. The explanation of the fact that Japan’s structure was, even in the 1880s, much more advanced than India’s in 1950s, lies “in a long agrarian revolution in Japan, starting in the middle of the 17th century.” This revolution “led to the development of significant amounts of small-scale, labor-intensive, industrial activity, sometimes referred to as protoindustry.”(1999:9)

In his analysis, Mundle concludes that the rate of growth is crucially dependent on agriculture, especially in countries where the size of the market is the constraint on manufacturing output growth. According to Grabowski’s observations, this dependence is a result of two things. The first one is “the large share of manufacturing output which is sold to agriculture and the other one is the large share of manufacturing sector expenditure which is put on food and raw materials from the agricultural sector.” (1999:9) Therefore the key to the development of manufacturing is increasing agricultural growth.

In addition to that, Mundle’s analysis includes the fact that international trade can be the tool for a nation that wants to break the agricultural constraint on the size of the market. However, he argues that “industrialization, however initiated, must sooner or later base itself on the home market; which implies that an agrarian revolution is a necessary condition for sustained industrialization.”(Mundle, 1985:77) Further, “industrialization dependent on external markets is precocious and fragile development which will collapse sooner or later with shifts in the commodity/region composition of world trade.” (Mundle, 1985:77)


SECOND PART


Let us now establish the relationship between agricultural productivity and the poverty within a country for the reason that poverty can be an obstacle to the process of agricultural transformation and industrialization. Before we start looking into the intricate links between these, we should note that small cultivators and workers comprise a significant proportion of the poor in developing countries. In 1970, 75 percent of the population of low- and middle-income countries lived in rural areas and in 1999 the share of the rural population in the low-income countries was still 74 percent. (Cypher and Dietz, 2004:309) Clearly, an increase in agricultural productivity directly increases the family incomes of small cultivators. But it is not quite as easy to see how agricultural productivity growth determines the wellbeing of workers, especially in non-agricultural activities.

In order to be able to explain from where agriculture draws its important —almost indispensable—role in the process of economic development and industrialization, Eswaran and Kotwal (1993:243-269) provide us with a conceptual framework. Consider workers in developing countries who own little or nothing by way of assets. For them, poverty is bound up with the magnitude of the wage rate relative to the price of the goods consumed. Any significant dent on their poverty, therefore, has to be made largely through its effect on the wage rate. Furthermore, the poorest countries have the highest proportions of their labor force employed in agriculture. According to Eswaran and Kotwal, there is an intimate connection between the poverty level and the size of the agricultural labor force. It is also from this connection that agriculture draws its important role in the process of development and industrialization.

Additionally, it is well known that the remuneration of labor (production input) depends on its productivity. Moreover, its productivity depends on how much land (or capital) is concurrently employed; the greater the land-to-labor ratio, the greater its productivity. One reason the workers in less developed countries are poor is precisely because they have small access to the amounts of land. In addition to that, it is important to mention the interactions between rural wages and urban wages, as an explanation of the important role of agriculture transformation in industrialization. Taking into consideration the “Theory of real wage growth in LDCs” written by Eswaran and Kotwal (1993, 243-269), urban wages are linked to rural wages: if rural wages are low, so are the urban wages. On the other hand, if rural wages rise, urban industry is forced to raise its wages in order to attract workers to industry. Thus the low productivity of agricultural workers in less developed countries has negative effects to the process of industrialization, as it reduces rural and urban wages. Therefore, an important component of agricultural transformation is to raise the land-to-labor ratio in the rural sector.

If increasing the inputs that are complementary to labor in the production process is one component of agricultural productivity growth, increasing efficiency of the production technology itself is another. According to Johnston and Mellor:

“ …the most practical and economical approach to achieving sizable increases in agricultural productivity and the output lies in enhancing the efficiency of the existing agricultural economy through the introduction of modern technology on a broad front.”(1961:569)

Technical progress, which generates higher output levels from the same bundle of inputs, has played the dominant role in improving our standard of living since antiquity but particularly in the past two and a half centuries since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. One very important example of technical progress is that of yield increasing technology and especially HYV (high yielding variety), which is analyzed to the next paragraph.

It is very important to mention that the agricultural productivity growth that is relevant to labor abundant countries takes one of two forms: crop-yield increases and a shift in crop choice toward more lucrative crops.

An example of yield increasing technology is the high yielding variety (HYV) of wheat developed by Norman Borlaug and his team in Mexico and adapted in South Asia in the 1960’s, heralding what was dubbed as the Green Revolution (Munshi, 2003:3). Later, higher yielding seeds for rice and other grains were developed in the same way. In his paper (2003), Munshi studies the adoption of new agricultural technology in the Indian Green Revolution. According to him, these new seeds increased labor demand and employment for the following reasons. Firstly, typically the new seeds had a shorter crop cycle—a highly beneficial characteristic that enables farmers to take more crops per year. Secondly, the new seeds required much more meticulous maintenance, including weeding and water control. Thirdly, the higher yields meant higher labor demand for harvesting. The HYV technology thus had the potential to improve the productivity of land and also to increase wages by increasing the demand of labor.

However, Munshi claims that the HYV technology is very intensive in some inputs (such as fertilizers and pesticides). The net result is that this technology requires greater cash outlays on inputs than the traditional technology and therefore has greater need for credit. Furthermore, the HYV technology requires a steady supply of water. As a result, rich farmers—those with access to credits and to water (through tube wells)—prospered and those without languished. The new technology also increases the premium on primary education, since literate farmers manage to adopt the new technology more readily. For all these reasons, the Green Revolution increased income inequality in relative terms. An important lesson for this is that public investment in appropriate irrigation schemes, the development of credit institutions and primary education are essential to ensuring an equitable distribution of the gains from agricultural productivity growth.

Let us now discuss growth through a change in crop choices. There are many instances of rural growth being triggered by the arrival of a new infra-structural input such as an irrigation channel or a road link to an urban market (Kotwal and Ramswami, 1998). Land can have many uses and what use it is put to depends upon the availability of complementary inputs. Typically, farmers sense new, lucrative market opportunities and change their crop choices. Market opportunities thus help create a ‘vent for surplus’ or a window of opportunity to generate higher income from a resource. The availability of complementary inputs and access to markets allow a farmer to exploit his land’s unique advantage. The result is a higher level of specialization in agricultural production and higher incomes. What is crucial is that access to markets remains available so that the production pattern is not constrained by local demand. Agricultural productivity growth and linkages with outside markets go hand in hand.

How does an agrarian economy begin to industrialize? It must import equipment and technology from developed countries if it wants to get the benefit of the technological progress that has taken place in the developed world. But to import machinery, it must export something that it has an advantage in producing. Typically, developing countries started their industrialization programs by exporting agricultural products or minerals. For example, Japan’s initial exports were silk and bamboo products; Taiwan’s were rice and sugar; Malaysia’s was rubber and timber. Even in Canada and the US, the developmental progress during the industrialization period was driven by the exports of staples like wheat and beaver pelts. As incomes rise all over the world, consumers’ preference for variety grows. American and European consumers demand tropical fruits, vegetables and flowers. A developing country with a productive and diversified agriculture is in a better position to take advantage of technological progress and taste for variety in developed countries in order to initiate its own industrialization.

It should be noted that land-abundant countries like the US and Canada have been major food exporters in the world for a long time and their comparative advantage in agriculture did not hamper their industrial growth. In 1900, the proportion of the labor force in agriculture in these countries was 38.9 and 40.2 percent, respectively. In 2000, these percentages had declined to 2.35 and 2.33, respectively (sources: Historical Statistics of Canada and Historical Statistics of the U.S.—Colonial Times to 1970). How did this happen? Interestingly, Matsuyama (1992) makes the following argument: It was growth in agricultural productivity that spawned and sustained industrialization in these countries. It did so not only by generating agricultural exports that financed imports of machinery but also by generating linkages (spillovers) to other sectors. When a vast majority of people live off agriculture, productivity growth in that sector raises incomes across the country, creating demand for industrial goods and helping the industrial sector achieve higher productivity through ‘learning by doing’. What is implicitly assumed here is that the domestic industrial sector is protected from foreign competition until it can compete internationally. But even when no such protection is provided, industrialization can proceed gradually through growth linkages generated by a rise in agricultural incomes.

But in order to capture an essential aspect of these growth linkages, to the two sectors we have been considering thus far, we need to add a third sector: ‘services’ (Eswaran and Kotwal, 2002). Indeed, the service sector comprises a significant proportion of labor employment even in developing countries. Consumers as well as manufacturers demand services. Examples are transportation, construction, insurance, credit, repair services, etc. When agricultural productivity increases, consumers become richer and apart from demanding industrial goods, they also demand services of various kinds. These services have to be domestically produced, since they are typically non-traded. With growing income, the domestic service sector expands: it offers a great variety of services and more of each kind.

According to Eswaran and Kotwal (2002), the emergence and expansion of the service sector confers benefits on the industrial sector, which can be more competitive when it has access to a wider variety of services. Thus, an increase in agricultural productivity, by spawning a domestic service sector, enables the country to industrialize. Once industrial production begins, productivity can increase by the usual ‘learning by doing’ route. Thus, even without protection from foreign competition in industry, growth in agricultural productivity is more likely to facilitate industrialization rather than forestall it. Just as in a closed economy, this productivity growth impinges on poverty by moving labor off land into other activities.

Despite all these good arguments in favor of agriculture, this sector has been much neglected in developing countries. Many previously colonial countries in South Asia and Latin America regarded their lack of industrial development as the main reason of their subjugation, and concentrated on industrial development as soon as they became independent. Not only was far too small a share a share of total public investment allocated to agriculture but policies were implemented that artificially rendered the industrial sector relatively more profitable than the agricultural. These diluted incentives for private investment at the same time that public investment in agriculture was reduced. But how did that happen?

Clearly, the profitability of any sector depends on the price of the output relative to the prices of inputs (the ‘terms of trade’). For instance, the profitability of textiles will be raised if cotton is made artificially cheaper. Not only will such a measure reduce cotton-producing farmers’ incomes but it will also make clothes for their families more expensive. Protection of industry creates an urban class that can get better organized than farmers, since the former are concentrated in cities while the latter are diffused throughout the countryside. Policymakers are inevitably more responsive to the demands of the urban class, which gets used to making exorbitant claims on the public treasury. This phenomenon, common in many developing countries, is called ‘urban bias’, a perspective pioneered by Michael Lipton (1977).

The relative neglect of agriculture can be partly explained by the theory of urban bias. According to Lipton (1977), a consequence of urban bias is that organized urban groups (industrial unions, the chamber of commerce, consumer groups) pressure politicians to keep the prices of industrial goods high and those of agricultural goods low. For example, urban consumers groups agitate for export control on foodstuffs such as rice and sugar; the textile sector contrives a ban on cotton exports. These policies result in low domestic prices for these farm products. Similarly, manufacturing firms, as well as organized labor have a common interest in lobbying for protective tariffs, thus maintaining high domestic prices for their products. Some of these domestically produced goods are industrial inputs to agriculture such as fertilizer and agricultural implements like water and pumps. Farmers’ incomes and thus any returns they expect to make on investments in their farms are squeezed. Urban bias reduces incentives to invest in agriculture. Cypher and Dietz have written:

“In spite of the fact that the research of Schiff and Valdes shows clearly that nations with a low bias against agriculture have (1) lower rates of migration from agriculture – into the belts of urban misery, (2) increased investment by cultivators, (3) greater technological adaptation, and (4) higher economic growth, the bias against adequate support for agriculture remains. (2004:311)

Finally, it is important to mention that the liberalization of agricultural terms of trade has had significantly beneficial effects on poor alleviation and on industrialization as well. In order to support that, we are going to take a look at the case of China, the most populous country in the world. The recent economic liberalization in China started in 1979 with agricultural price liberalization (41% increase by 1980 in the prices at which the State procured agricultural produce) coupled with greater autonomy and incentives to communes. From 1978 through 1990, agricultural production doubled in China. Not only did the percentage of labor force in agriculture fall from 70% in 1979 to 60.1% in 1990 but also the absolute amount of labor employed in agriculture fell by 31%.(the source for the numbers above: Rawski and Mead, 1998) This was a period of significant agricultural transformation in China. If agriculture did well, industry did almost twice as well. The index of industrial production went from 100 in 1978 to 388.7 in 1990 (Statistical Yearbook 1990 & 2000). In 1980 primary goods formed roughly half the total exports, but by 1990 they had dropped to only about a quarter (25.6%) despite the fact that the primary exports had grown by almost two-thirds in absolute amount. At the same time, the proportion of people below the poverty line shrank from 28% in 1978 to 9% in 1990 (Asian Development Bank, 2000). The Chinese experience illustrates how agricultural productivity growth precipitates industrialization and how it impinges on poverty at the same time not only by directly conferring benefits on those engaged in agriculture but also by promoting industry.


CONCLUSION


To sum up, it would be wrong to claim that industrialization can proceed without agricultural transformation. Agricultural productivity growth moves labor off land and helps a country industrialize by rendering non-agricultural activities more profitable. It spawns a productive service sector and thereby makes domestic industry more competitive. It can help finance the imports of machinery and technology through agricultural exports in the initial stages of industrialization. Agricultural transformation itself goes hand in hand with the expansion of markets, infrastructure and producer services so that land and labor can be shifted continuously toward their most profitable use. Given that a vast majority of the poor in the world live off agriculture in developing countries, the process of agricultural growth also helps tap the enormous, but latent, entrepreneurial pool in these countries. As new productive activities become available, people find niches for their intrinsic talents and generate new ideas to sustain the process of industrialization. Improving the productivity of agriculture is the single most important step a less developed country can take to proceed effectively in industrialization.


REFERENCES


Asian Development Bank. 1996. Country Economic Review. <>

Bureau of the Census. 1975. Historical statistics of the United States—Colonial Times to 1970. U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. <>

Cypher, J. and Dietz, J. 2004. The Process of Economic Development (second edition). London: Routledge.

Eswaran, M. and Kotwal, A. 1993. A Theory of Real Wage Growth in LDCs. Journal of Development Economics. 42:243-269.

Eswaran, M. and Kotwal, A. 2002. The Role of the Service Sector in the Process of Development. Journal of Development Economics. 68:2:401-420.

Grabowski, R. 1999. Pathways to Economic Development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Johnston, B. and Mellor, J. 1961. The Role of Agriculture in Economic Development. 51:4:566-593.

Kotwal, A. and Ramswami, B. 1998. Economic Reforms of Agriculture and Rural Growth. Policy Reform. 2:369-402.

Leacy, F. H. 1993. Historical Statistics of Canada. Statistics Canada in joint sponsorship with Social Science Federation of Canada. <>

Lipton, M. 1977. Why poor people stay poor: Urban Bias in World Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Matsuyama, K. 1992. Agricultural Productivity, Comparative Advantage and Economic Growth. Journal of Economic Theory. 58:317-334.

Mundle, S. 1985. The Agrarian Barrier to Industrial Growth. Journal of Development Studies. 22(October):49-80.

Munshi, K. 2003. Social Learning in a Heterogeneous Population: Technology Diffusion in the Indian Green Revolution. Journal of Development Economics. 73:1:185-213.

Murphy, K., Shleifer, A. and Vishny, R. 1989. Income Distribution, Market Size and Industrialization. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 104(August):537-564.

Murphy, K., Shleifer, A. and Vishny, R. 1989. Industrialization and the Big Push. Journal of Political Economy. 97:5:1003-1026.

National Bureau of Statistics of China. China Statistical Yearbooks 1999 and 2000.
<>
Rawski, T. and Mead, R. 1998. On the Trail of China’s Phantom Farmers. World Development. 26(5) (May):767-781.

Todaro, M. and Smith, S. 2003. Economic Development. (Eight Edition). London: Pearson.

What are the main tenets that inform Neo-conservatism? How influential has the movement been on US Foreign Policy?

This paper intends to present conservatism, as an ideology revisited. Its modest goal is to analyze the tenets that inform neo-conservatism and illustrate how influential this movement has been on US foreign policy. We need to mention that the widespread notion that today’s conservatism, at least as far as the Anglo-American version, commonly called neo-conservatism is concerned, is somehow different from earlier, more serene versions of neo-conservatism. Beginning with Margaret Thatcher in Britain and with Ronald Reagan in the US, conservatism has become a “fighting” faith. In other words, it has become what many of its adherents would have forcefully insisted it could and should never become; that is a full-fledged political ideology (meaning a distinctive, more or less coherent system of political beliefs with a view to informing political action).

Samuel Huntington’s article “Conservatism as an Ideology” (1957) differentiates its subject from other examples of the species by describing it as a kind of positional or situational belief-system, continuously responding to the challenges of the times, expressed in rival ideologies, but itself lacking substantive content, that is a permanent, idiosyncratic core of propositions. So, you might summarize Huntington’s argument in Conservatism as an Ideology this way: it really isn’t. Likewise, another thinker, Michael Oakeshott, most explicitly and unapologetically takes this latter position that conservatism is not an ideology; or perhaps more accurately: that, although you could be a conservative (and not just in politics, either), there really no such thing as conservatism (as an ideology), as those who adhere to an ideology are the exact opposite of a conservative (Oakeshott, 1991).

According to Anthony Quinton (1978), the well-known conservative arguments, following from this skepticism concerning the capabilities of human reason, against rationalistic plans of perfecting social institutions are rather powerful. They are also of an unmistakably negative nature. It is not too difficult to see how this alleged negativity renders conservatism somewhat helpless in the face of what conservatives perceive “the relentless onslaught of rationalistic plans of reform” (taking the forms of various ideologies) which for the best part of the last century have been the chief characteristic of the times. Some conservatives reacted to this constellation of events with a certain measure of resigned pessimism, believing that the future indeed belonged with the opposite side; “that at best a rearguard action could be fought; that conservatism’s role was to make concessions as slowly and with as good grace as possible.” On the other hand, others decided to take up arms against this sea of troubles and by opposing try to end them. This, they reasoned, could only be done by adopting an ideology of their own, to arm themselves with in the battle of ideas. Flashing a light on the origins of this feature of contemporary Anglo-American (neo)conservatism is what the exceedingly modest aim of this paper is.

Being conservative, according to Oakeshott, means, among other things, preferring:

“the familiar to the unknown, […] the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss” (1991:408).

In other words, it means exhibiting a certain kind of disposition in manners of thought and behavior. What is most emphatically does not mean is subscribing to a certain set of beliefs, or general principles, “a creed or a doctrine”- an ideology. Ideologies belong to a rationalist approach of politics, which takes as its starting point a system of theoretical, abstract ideas and intends to use it as a guide to political action. The problem with ideologies, according to Oakeshott, of course, is that only the technical, and not the practical, part of knowledge about politics is available to the rationalist mind, as it is the kind that is susceptible to formalization. So he considers political ideologies only a poor extract, a crude abridgement of political knowledge and the ideological manner of political conduct an impoverishment of politics. The fullness of political knowledge can only be found in the practice of a given political community, in tradition. Political action can take as its guide nothing else but “the intimations of tradition”.

However, Oakeshott claims that “governing is a specific and limited activity”. It is concerned only with the administration of general rules of human conduct, “which are understood, not as plans for imposing substantive activities, but as instruments enabling people to pursue the activities of their own choice with the minimum frustration” (1991:424). As people tend to be engaged in a great variety of activities and entertain a multiplicity of opinions, collisions between them are inevitable. Hence the need for rules of conduct, the making and enforcement of which constitute the office of government. But to avoid imposing substantive activities or opinions on people, the rules have to be general and only a government that is “not concerned with moral right or wrong”, “indifferent to ‘truth’ and ‘error’ alike” on the part of its subjects, is well suited to the task (1991:428-430). Now, Oakeshott observes that some conservatives ma want to defend their view of the proper nature of government “by appealing to certain general ideas”. He on his part does not think that a disposition to be conservative in politics is “necessarily connected with any particular beliefs about the universe, about the world in general or about human conduct in general” (1991:423).

As we have seen, there were others who considered it “commonly sufficient for practical purposes if conservatives, without saying anything, just sit and think.” But there were others who did not. Or, rather, rejected the label- all the while exposing many o the same ideas. In his famous essay, “Why I am not a Conservative”, Hayek gives his reasons not only for that, but voices his “increasing misgivings” with regards to describing himself as a “liberal” too. He writes that what he means by liberalism “has little to do with any political movement that goes under that name today”. Those political movements have “absorbed the crude and militant rationalism of the French revolution” and are led “more by a desire to impose upon the world a preconceived rational pattern than to provide opportunity for free growth.” Hayek’s kind of “true” liberalism, on the other hand, “shares with conservatism a distrust of reason” and recognizes its debt to conservative thinkers’ “loving and reverential study of the value of grown institutions” (Hayek,1984). Indeed, Hayek builds his ideas on much the same epistemological ground as Oakeshott. His main enemy is also “rationalism”. The problem with rationalistic plans of reform is that they jeopardize the “spontaneous order” of “grown” (and not planned) social institutions, which rely on dispersed, practical knowledge for their proper functioning. As the rejection of rationalism is, as we have already noted, one of the basic tenets of conservatism, it is not surprisisng that Hayek felt the need to defend himself against charges of being conservative. Moreover, according to Hayek “conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change”, something not unlike Oakeshott’s conservative “disposition”. The problem for Hayek with this kind of conservatism is that:

“by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance….The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a ‘brake on the vehicle of progress’, I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake.” (1984:281-282)

Conservatism “by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved,…deprives itself of the weapons needed in the struggle of ideas.” As Hayek didn’t think it would be enough to “sit and think”, he set out to arm himself with an “ideology of freedom”.

The founding father of American neo-conservatism, Irving Kristol, opens his 1995 essay, “America’s ‘Exceptional’ Conservatism”, recalling the day in 1956 when arriving at his office at the Encounter magazine in London he found on his desk an unsolicited manuscript from Michael Oakeshott. He proceeded to read the essay, called “On being Conservative”, with “pleasure and appreciation” and finally he rejected it. By way of explanation, Kristol proposes that while admiring the essay, he didn’t really like it. That is he disagreed with it. The reason was that he was “in the earliest stages of intellectual pregnancy with those attitudes and dispositions that later emerged as ‘neoconservatism’. And American neoconservatism is very different from the kind of ideal English conservatism that Oakeshott was celebrating so brilliantly” (Kristol, 1995:375-376). The reason why Kristol thinks “Oakeshott’s conservative disposition runs squarely against the American grain” is the kind of “ideological patriotism” inherent in the American character; a consequence of the widely noted fact that the United States is a “creedal nation”, united, as a nation of immigrants, by a “civic religion”.

By Kristol’s famous definition a neoconservative is “a liberal who has been mugged by reality”. Like Hayek, neoconservatives (many of them one time liberals or radicals) were deeply unsatisfied with contemporary turns of American liberalism, so, like Hayek, they took to reclaiming “the traditional principles of liberalism from the leftists who had hijacked and corrupted it” (Podhoretz, 1996). But in fact, neoconservatives went further than the Hayekian project of resurrecting classical liberalism. Strauss, who had immigrated from Nazi Germany to America, had the greatest effect on Kristol’s intellectual formation. Strauss saw as the central problem of his time “the crisis of modernity”. This meant primarily the loss of faith on the part of the West in its own moral ideals, which loss manifests itself in a lack of political resolve and a consequent unreadiness to act in defense of those ideals. “Once we realize that the principles of our actions have no other support than our blind choice, we really do not believe in them any more. We cannot wholeheartedly act upon them any more”, writes Strauss (1953:6).

In particular, Strauss thought that this crisis was encoded in the DNA of modernity and he traced it back to the liberalism of Hobbes and Locke and their break with the ancient tradition of political philosophy. By giving up on natural law, the moderns gave up on political philosophy (defined as the search for truth in matters of politics) as well, substituting it with a “value-neutral” social science built on the Weberian distinction between “fact” and “value”. This, according to Strauss, inexorably leads to nihilism, indeed “it is identical with nihilism” (1953:6). The only cure could be found in the writings of the “ancients”, Plato and Aristotle, and in their ideas about “classical natural right” (or, rather, natural law) and the proper place of political science in the life of the community. He believed that the perfect political order was “the perfect political order, as Aristotle and Plato sketched it”. However, he also agreed with the ancients on the chance realization of the best regime. So, in another place he wrote that “liberal or constitutional democracy comes closer to what the classics demanded than any other alternative that is viable in our age.” (Deutsch and Soffer, 1987:8) In general, for Strauss and his followers, their aim really was (and is) the preservation of liberal democracy, as it is practiced in the United States. However, they have their reservations that liberal democracy, by its very nature, is vulnerable in a confrontation with despotism, lacking the moral basis for making the necessary sacrifices which are needed to persevere in such a confrontation. But, unlike Oakeshott and Hayek, they believe that the US government has everything to do with “natural law”; they support the liberty of the ancients (and not the liberty of the moderns), which meant the right to participate in the matters of the community, often bought by paying the price of personal sacrifice. Sometimes, in the face of tyranny, making war is what is called for.

Indeed, the great passion of neoconservatives in the 1970s was their implacable anti-communism. Norman Podhoretz writes that they did not love anything more than they loathed communism (Podhoretz, 1996). Correspondingly, it was in the realm of US foreign policy where neoconservatives made their most determined stand in the 1970s and 1980s, and where they have remained (or, rather, have reemerged as) the most influential. Neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals waged a two-front war against traditional conservative “realist” foreign policy –as personified by H. Kissinger and practiced by the Nixon and Ford administrations—on the one hand and the liberal “idealism” of the Carter precidency.

Neoconservatives were no fans of foreign policy liberal idealism. Perhaps the most prominent neoconservative foreign policy intellectual of the era, Reagan’s adviser J. Kirkpatrick, names the “rationalist perversion in modern politics” as the source of much that is wrong with the world (events in Iran and Nicaragua, among other things). The essence of rationalism, as Kirkpatrick understands it, is the “failure to distinguish between the domains of thought and experience,” that is between “ideas and institutions.” “Rationalism encourages us to believe that anything that can be conceived can be brought into being.” Rationalist theories “begin not from how things are but how they ought to be” and consist “in the determined effort to understand and shape people and societies on the basis of inadequate, oversimplified theories of human behavior.” It is “concerned more with the abstract than the concrete, with the possible than the probable” and less “with people as they are than as they might be” (1982:10-11). In other words, Kirkpatrick believes that “we have had enough rationalism in our foreign policy” and blames “the rationalistic spirit of the age” for taking no note of the fact that:

“institutions are patterned human behavior that exist and function through the people of society and that radically changing institutions means radically changing the lives of people who may not want their lives changed…When we forget, or willfully choose to ignore, the intractability of human behavior, the complexity of human institutions and the probability of unanticipated consequences, we do so at great risk, and often immense human cost.” (1982:17-18)

But neoconservatives were no fans of foreign policy realism in the Kissingerian mould, either. There main problem with realism was its ideological indifference. According to this school of thought, in foreign policy there is no place for morality. The only think that counts is the geopolitical balance of powers. Injecting notions about the moral superiority of one of the participants in the international system only brings instability. They long argued that when confronting the Soviet Union, ideology is paramount. It is so on the part of the Soviets, who probably don’t consider themselves representatives of a “normal” nation state, “seeking its place under the sun.” But it is still more important on the part of the United States. As Kirkpatrick wrote, “the notion that foreign policy should be oriented toward balance of power politics, or realpolitik, is totally foreign to the American tradition.” Governments must act from an ideal of their societies, especially in democracies, where moral legitimacy is a persistent question in politics. Kristol, similarly, insisted on the fact that “pure amoral Realpolitik is no part of the American political tradition,” and warned against the nation sacrificing its moral foundations and thus “casting a pall of illegitimacy” over its ideals. Podhoretz said that realism “robbed the Soviet-American conflict of the moral and political dimensions”, thus jeopardizing Americans’ will to make the necessary sacrifices to pursue the Cold War effectively (Hoeveler, 1991:152-171).

In a speech entitled “The Reagan Reassertion of Western Values”, Kirkpatrick warned that:

“it is not only conceivable that an affluent and technologically advanced democratic civilization may succumb to one that is distinctly inferior in the wealth and well-being of its people. This has occurred more than once in history. The decisive factor in the rise and fall of nations is what Machiavelli called virtu, meaning vitality and capacity for collective action. In the battle with totalitarianism, a free society has enormous advantages of which we are all well aware. But without the political will not merely to survive but to prevail, these advantages count for nought.” (1983:31)

And in another, “The Reagan Phenomenon and the Liberal Tradition”, she noted that the presence of intellectuals at relatively high policy-making positions in the Reagan administration signals that “there is something ideologically self-conscious going on” in American politics and then she stated that “the president and many of his principal advisers see themselves as purveyors and defenders of the classical liberal tradition.” (1983:7)

The successes of the Reagan years however –especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “evil empire”— gave way in the 1990s to what the neoconservatives saw as the complacency of the first Bush, the Clinton presidencies and Bush junior. In 1996, William Kristol and Robert Kagan –representatives of the new generation of neoconservatives—find the US foreign policy climate of the times reminiscent of the mid-1970s (the period of the first great conservative awakening). Conservatives are, once again, “adrift”, leaning uncertainly “on some version of the conservative ‘realism’ of Henry Kissinger and his disciples.” Meanwhile, the American public is “indifferent, if not hostile, to foreign policy and commitments abroad, more interested in balancing the budget than in leading the world.”

What one might call the Tocquevillean disease of modern democratic societies –turning away from public affairs in favor of the pursuit of one’s and one’s families’ happiness, that is material well-being—is ready to reassert itself. Americans “have never had it so good”, the authors observe (mentioning as proof, among other things, the security of Americans not only to live within their own borders but to travel and do business safely almost anywhere in the world.”). The lack of visible threats “has tempted Americans to absentmindedly dismantle the material and spiritual foundations on which their national well-being has been based.” As Kristol and Kagan see it, the post-Cold War question of “where the threat is” is misconceived. “In a world in which peace and American security depend on American power and the will to use it, the main threat the United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness.”

So, what America needs, once again, is a “neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence”, which would actively engage in promoting American principles of governance –democracy, free markets, respect for liberty—abroad and also pursuing policies intending to bring about “change of regime” (in Irak, Iran, Cuba or China, for example). This “more elevated vision” of America’s international role would consist in a “benevolent global hegemony” resting on the “strategic and ideological predominance” of the United States. Kristol and Kagan even challenge the famous admonition of John Quincy Adams against America going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy” with the words: “But why not?”

The last but one part of Kristol and Kagan’s article (Kristol and Kagan, 1996) bears the subtitle: “From NSC-68 to 1996.” As the authors inform us, NSC-68 was a national security planning document drafted in 1950, which called for an all-out effort to meet the Soviet challenge, and called for a full scale ideological confrontation and massive increases in defense spending. Now, what is eminently interesting from the authors’ point of view regarding NSC-68 is that at first, against a backdrop of an American public enjoying peace and prosperity, it languished. Then the North Korean invasion of South Korea changed that. The moral of the story, according to the authors, is that “as troubles arise and the need to act becomes clear, those who have laid the foundations for a necessary shift in policy have a chance to lead Americans onto a new course.”

On the other hand, Oakeshott calls the approach in which “arrangements of a society are made to appear, not as manners of behavior, but as pieces of machinery to be transported about the world indiscriminately”, “one of the most insidious current misunderstandings of political activity.” (1991:30)
In his book, “Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order”, Robert Kagan declares that “on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” And he goes on saying that “they agree on little and understand one another less and less." First published as a journal article in June 2002, before the Iraq crisis came to dominate trans-Atlantic relations, Kagan's formulation has proven ever more influential as the U.S.-Europe divide over Iraq has grown. On the book’s opening page, he offers this succinct distillation of his bold, and controversial, argument:
“On the all-important question of power –the efficacy of power, the morality of power and the desirability of power –American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and international negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant's ‘perpetual peace’. Meanwhile, the United States remains mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable, and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.” (Kagan, 2003)
It is also of great interest to mention that Paul Wolfowitz, an academic and deputy secretary of defense for policy, supervised the drafting of a 1992 policy statement on America's mission in the post-Cold War era. Called the “Defense Planning Guidance”, it is an internal set of military guidelines that typically is prepared every few years by the Defense Department. This policy guidance is distributed to military leaders and civilian Defense Department heads to provide them with a geopolitical framework for assessing their force level and bugetary needs. The 46-page classified document circulated for several weeks at senior levels in the Pentagon. But controversy erupted after it was leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post and the White House ordered the Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to rewrite it. According to these ideas, the three key points of US foreign policy (…and neoconservatism) are: 1. “The number one objective of U.S. post-Cold War political and military strategy should be preventing the emergence of a rival superpower.”2. “Another major U.S. objective should be to safeguard U.S. interests and promote American values.”3. “If necessary, the United States must be prepared to take unilateral action.”
Now, in the aftermath of Sept 11 and with G.W.Bush as a President for the second time, Wolfowitz's ideas have become policy. According to Will Hutton, Europe and America share a great liberal tradition that runs much deeper than the temporary phenomenon engendered by the occupation of the White House by an Administration whose foreign policy has been hijacked by the Neoconservatives. Hutton's thesis is that the current rift between the Bush Administration and its European allies over the war in Iraq is really a sharp split between this consensus of US/European foreign policy liberalism and the presently prevailing Neoconservatism of the Bush administration. He quickly gets to the points that America has to give up its hyper-individualistic creed in favour of the recognition that people within nations are interdependent. (Hutton, 2003)
However, what we should question here is whether the “Neoconservative hijacking of US foreign policy” will prove to be as temporary as Hutton evidently hopes. My personal opinion is that foreign policy in the Bush Administration will prove to be even more driven by Neoconservative ideology and even more disconnected from realities on the ground. Neoconservatives determined that one of the ways to achieve power and put their ideology into practice was to have the American Religious Right hijack the Republican Party. The influential Neoconservatives are not religious at all; they are disproportionately secular Jews or secular “nominal” Christians and they are unlikely, in either case, to allow the tenets of the faith (some of them admit to professing) to get in the way of their political ideology. But the problem is that having decided to use religious extremism as a means towards achieving power, the Neoconservatives have unleashed one of the most elemental and pernicious forces known to mankind. History is littered with examples of rulers who have sought to “use” the power of religious extremism to their ends and have ended up being overwhelmed by the force they set in motion. Finally, we should also take into account that the USA has steadily become a state where corporate power and the state are melding into one. The policies of government are now built in alliance with the corporations and directed to their objectives. That is a well-known phenomenon which goes by a very ugly word: fascism…


References

Deutsch K. L. and Sofer W., 1987. The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Hayek F. A., 1984. Why I am not a Conservative. In Nishiyama and Leube, 1984:281-298.
Hoeveler J. D., Jr., 1991. Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagon Era. The University of Wisconsin Press.
Huntington S. P., 1957. Conservatism as an Ideology. American Political Science Review, 51:454-473.
Hutton W., 2003. A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America should join the World. London: W. W. Norton and Company.
Kirkpatrick J. J., 1982. Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics. American Enterprise Institute.
Kirkpatrick J. J., 1983. The Reagan Phenomenon and Other Speeches on Foreign Policy. American Enterprise Institute.
Kagan R., 2003. Paradise and Power: America, Europe and the New World Order. Atlantic Books.
Kristol I., 1995. Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. New York: Free Press.
Kristol W. and Kagan R., 1996. Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. Foreign Affairs, 75(4):18-32.
Oakeshott M., 1991. Rationalism in Politics and other Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.
Podhoretz N., 1996. Neoconservatism: A Eulogy. Commentary, 101(3):19-28.
Quinton A., 1978. The Politics of Imperfection. London: Faber and Faber.
Strauss L., 1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

What is meant by Manifest Destiny? What influence has it had on American foreign policy?

The main purpose of this essay is to analyze the meaning of Manifest Destiny and explain how it has influenced the US foreign policy. It also attempts to provide logical evidence that Manifest Destiny can be argued as the sole reason for why America itself has a history. Few Americans had never assumed that the boundaries of the United States would stand forever unchanged. Manifest Destiny was the driving force responsible for changing the face of American history. It was the philosophy that created a nation.

As far as the outline of my argument is concerned, I begin with an illustration of what Manifest Destiny means. Apparently, it is essential to take a look back to American history, in order to illustrate the roots of Manifest Destiny, how old it is and the reasons that it was created. In the second part of the essay, I am going to examine the influence of Manifest Destiny on the American foreign policy, including the contemporary foreign policy.

Although, American history was built on a chronological record of significant events, each event had a cause and subsequent effect on one another. Moreover, historical events are presented in history as being tangible, being tied to a date or an exact happening. On the other hand, Manifest Destiny is a philosophical phenomenon. It cannot be tied to a date, event or a specific period of time. Manifest Destiny existed and still exists as the philosophy that embraces American history as a whole. It is an intangible ideology that created American history. Taking this into consideration, and in order for this analytical and explanatory approach to be effective, I need to make a presentation of at least the most important historical events of the 18th and 19th century and combine them with Manifest Destiny. This way the influence that Manifest Destiny had on American foreign policy can be observed more easily and more effectively as well. And of course I consider quite necessary for my analysis to mention recent historical events of the 20th and 21st century; events that reflect the influence of the Manifest Destiny on the US foreign policy up to date.

Additionally, the provision of evidence for this subject would have been unachievable without the inspiring and priceless books and ideas of authors like LaFeber, Michael Dunne, William Earl Weeks, Michael Mann, David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Blum, Alan Brinkley and Michael H. Hunt.
In 1845, a democratic leader and influential editor by the name of John L. O’Sullivan gave the movement its name. In an attempt to explain America’s thirst for expansion, and to present a defense for America’s claim to new territories he wrote:

“…the right of our Manifest Destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federaltive development of self-government entrusted to us. It is right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth.”(Brinkley, 1995:352)

In its simplest form, Manifest Destiny can be defined as a “Movement”. More specifically, it would be the systematic body of concepts and beliefs that powered American life and American culture. The notion of Manifest Destiny was publicized in the papers and was advertised and argued by politicians throughout the nation. The idea of Manifest Destiny Doctrine became the torch that lit the way for American expansion.

Manifest Destiny revitalized a sense of “mission” or national destiny for Americans. The people of the United States felt it was their mission to extend the “boundaries of freedom” to others by imparting their idealism and belief in democratic institutions to those who were capable of self-government. This sense of “mission” for expansion was explained by the Secretary of Treasury Robert J. Walker in 1847 as “a higher than an earthly power”; a power that had guided American expansion and “still guards and directs our destiny, impels us onward, and has selected our great and happy country as a model and ultimate centre of attraction for all the nations of the world.” (LaFeber, 1994:95). However, it excluded those people who were perceived as being incapable of self-government, such as Native American people and those of non-European origin. Blacks, Indians and Mexicans in particular were by the 1830s most often seen as obstacles to progress, incapable of improvement. American nationalism and the dream of Manifest Destiny became defined increasingly in racial terms. “The emerging concept of Americans as an Anglo-Saxon people combined with an increasing pessimism regarding the improvability of nonwhite peoples”, as William Earl Weeks (1996:63) describes it.

Although the movement was named in 1845, the philosophy behind Manifest Destiny always existed throughout American history. According to LaFeber (1994:9), a group of English men and women settled at Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Their leader, John Winthrop said: “We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” Those can be regarded as among the most famous words in American history since they have been quoted repeatedly- from the founding fathers in the 1780s to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s- to define the US mission in the world. If we want to bring an example of how old the concept of Manifest Destiny is, we can go back to the 1820s, at the beginning of the Jacksonian age. In 1818, Andrew Jackson, while taking a broad interpretation of vague instructions from President Monroe, led military forces into the Floridas during the Florida crisis. In a systematic and ruthless way, he punished the Seminal Indians for taking up arms with the Spanish; he destroyed Spanish forces and captured several cities and forts.(LaFeber, 1994:79). According to LaFeber, Jackson was “the ruthless frontier fighter who seized key parts of Florida”. Americans, who had moral reservations about the rough tactics of Jackson, soothed their consciences with a familiar, but not yet named philosophy.

However, in order to understand Manifest Destiny and therefore the reasons that it was created, it is essential to take into deep consideration the America’s need and desire to expand. From that perspective, I think it is worth-mentioning that the United States was experiencing a periodic high birth rate and increases in population during immigration. And because agriculture provided the primary economic structure, large families to work the farm were considered an asset. The US population grew from more than 5 million in 1800 to more than 23 million by mid-century. Thus there was a need to expand in new territories to accommodate this rapid growth. It is estimated that nearly 4 million Americans moved to Western territories between 1820 and 1850. According to LaFeber, this incredible development is called the American “multiplication table” and refers to the combination of the decreasing infant mortality and the production of families of five to ten children (LaFeber, 1994:11). Kennedy told the House of Representatives:

“Go to the West and see a young man with his mate of eighteen; after a lapse of thirty years, visit him again, and instead of two, you will find twenty-two. That is what I call the American multiplication table.”(LaFeber, 1994:12)

In addition to that, the United States suffered two economic depressions-- one in 1818 and a second in 1839. These crises drove some people to seek their living in frontier areas. Also, frontier land was inexpensive or, in some cases, free; expansion into frontier areas opened opportunities for new commerce and individual self-advancement; land ownership was associated with wealth and tied to self-sufficiency, political power and independent “self-rule”; maritime merchants saw an opportunity to expand and promote new commerce by building West Coast ports leading to increased trade with countries in the Pacific. Because of all these factors “countless pioneers rapidly peopled western lands that speedily passed through territorial status to statehood. By 1819, nine additional states had joined the first thirteen, a burst of expansion fueled by cheap land on the frontier and its allure to immigrants from Europe…While westward expansion fueled a major economic boom, it also began to alter the nature of American politics.” US foreign policy was the result of Manifest Destiny. (Heidler, 2003:9)

At the same time, the US foreign policy was heavily influenced by Manifest Destiny. First used in 1845, the term Manifest Destiny conveyed the idea that the rightful destiny of the US included imperialistic expansion:

“One popular way of thinking, however, was to attribute imperialism to determinism of some sort: the hand of God, the instinct of race, the laws of Darwinism, the force of Economics and trade- anything but reasonable decision. Though many Americans deemed willing to surrender to imperialist policies, few would admit that they did so because they wanted to.” (Blum, 1985:536)

Throughout the 19th century, Americans discussed and debated issues connected to expansion. Westward acquisitions began with the Louisiana Purchase, an event of great historic significance for the US. The new nation laid claim to “the entire expanse of the most fertile river valley in the world, dubbed by Jefferson the ‘Valley of Democracy’ that insured the spread of his ‘Empire of Liberty’, without shedding a drop of blood.” (Heidler, 2003:7). Westward expansion continued through the mid-century period with the land gained through the war with Mexico in 1846. Jefferson’s vision of liberty tied to an expansive foreign policy was carried forward by three Tennesseans — A. Jackson, S. Houston and J. K. Polk --, as the Virginians left off. Jackson “consolidated the nation’s hold on the southeast interior”, “…chastened Britain no less than Spain and subdued the Indians…”, as an important presence east of the Mississippi. Polk laid claim to the entire Oregon territory and “pressed to the brink of war with Britain.” After that, in 1846, he turned on Mexico. The war ended with one half of Mexico – California and the New Mexico territories – falling permanently into American hands. “This tripling of the nation’s size”, as Hunt characterized it, “depended on growing American military power that rendered insecure the grip of Russia, Britain, France, Spain, and Mexico on their respective North American territories.” (Hunt, 1987:29) The achievements during the Texas, Oregon and Mexican Wars cultivated the feeling that the possibilities of this “mighty nation” are boundless and that this nation was destined soon to “surpass the greatness of any European power, to exceed the size of any empire and to overtake even the Chinese in population.” (Hunt, 1987:31)

The period following the Civil War up to the late 1870’s was given over to consolidating the territorial lands and integrating them to the political and economic mainstream. In the south, the policies of reconstruction were aimed at a quick reintegration of that region back into the union. In the west, efforts as diverse as the building of a transcontinental train line, federal support for the enterprises and a federal subsidization of land settlement all served to bring western territorial areas within the influence of eastern economic and political institutions. With the election of 1876, southern reconstruction was considered complete, the mechanisms for settling, building and integrating western territories were in place, the prime source of national controversy and division was removed and finally, the beginnings of a new age of industrialism were in evidence. According to Hunt, “after four years of national immobility the old vision of greatness and liberty regained its hold…” (Hunt, 1987:36) At the same time, the industrial growth of certain nations, notably England, Germany, France, Russia and Japan, and their demand for new foreign markets/colonies to sustain growth (especially in the Pacific, East Asia and the Americas) “began to evoke in the United States both alarm and calls for imitation.” (Hunt, 1987:36) It was this tension that fueled foreign policy debates in the latter years of the 19th century and into the early years of the 20th century.

According to LaFeber (1994:171), “the road to Latin America markets and bases was certainly a traditional path for US expansion.” In 1870, President S. Grant tried to annex Santo Domingo and ensure that no other power could control the country, by claiming that Santo Domingo could support “the entire colored population of the US, should it choose to emigrate.” Another, more promising opportunity to seize new territory took land in Cuba, after the Cubans had started a revolution against decaying Spanish control in 1868. Next US target became the Central America. In the late 1870s, the building of an isthmian canal in Panama by the French resulted in the intervention of the US. As LaFeber informs us (1994:174) “the turn to an ocean-to-ocean canal owned and operated by the US occurred in the 1870s and 1880s, long before it was realized in Panama in 1903.” Moreover, the active interventionism of the US in Latin America was displayed by the Chilean and Brazilian affairs. But the most dramatic aspect of this vigorous policy appeared in Venezuela during 1895-1896. The reason is that, during that crisis Washington officials challenged Great Britain, which was the world’s leading power. In addition to that, Great Britain’s long-held interests were replaced by Americans in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, which were economically dominated by 1900. Finally, before the turn of the century, the US fought the Spanish-American war in 1898 and as a result they acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.

By 1900, Americans had also an army on the Asian mainland and had conquered a string of bases across the broad Pacific that linked that mainland to the United States. The magnificent Hawaiian Islands, “the stepping-stone to the growing trade of the Pacific”, as President Cleveland termed the islands, were the first stop and Samoa the second one. (LaFeber, 1994:178) After the 1899 agreement on Samoa, “a key section in its bridge to Asia”, the US traders and missionaries could finally turn their attention to the final destination and last quest for more than 100 years, Asia. The US “scavenger diplomacy” in Asia, the willingness of Seward to use force and his longings to work with European powers, in order to expand the Western interests in Europe, reflected the US diplomacy in Asia for the next eighty years. Asian countries, like China, Korea and Manchuria, were of great strategic importance for America. But no sooner had the Washington officials started to promote their expansion in Asia, than Korea and China were violated by the region’s developing power, Japan. “The US could do nothing about it…but most US officials agreed with Secretary of State W. Q. Gresham in 1894: Japan was the most civilized country in Asia and, as such, could be trusted to respect the US as her best friend.” (LaFeber, 1994:183)

“By the end of the century…activist leaders embraced a broad definition of national security that would carry the nation towards greatness in the world. In this endeavor they ultimately brought Americans to terms with colonies and naval bases, spheres of influence and protectorates, a powerful blue-water navy and an expeditionary army.” (Hunt, 1987:41) During the tumultuous era between the Spanish-American War and the end of World War I, imperialists argued that their destiny as a special people was not limited to the North American continent. Their fate was inextricably tied to the global community. After the Monroe Doctrine (1822), an additional promotion for Manifest Destiny was the Roosevelt Corollary, which stated that in addition to being the military protector the US should be the business protector of the “less civilized” countries as well. Unable to avoid participation, the United States entered World War I in 1917. According to LaFeber (1994: 296),
“Wilson led Americans into the charred fields of Europe, where 50,000 would die so that the president could try to replace revolution with a democratic world based on American principles.” After WWI, the US foreign policy leaned towards isolationism. Fearful of future enlargements, United States didn’t join the League of Nations, a global peacekeeping organization. According to Dunne, this American rejection of membership dominates the historiography of US foreign relations between the first and second World Wars:

“…the passage from rejection of the League of Nations to the membership of the UN represented a peculiarly American journey: not so much from isolationism to internationalism, but rather the adoption of multilateral means and the retention of the unilateral option to promote American interests in a world where, at the end of WWII, American economic power was unsurpassed and its naval and aerial strength overwhelming.” (Dunne, 2000:34)

However, the two World Wars would seem nothing but skirmishes compared to the struggle ahead. In a world of pure power politics, with the Soviet Union constituting a strategic threat of an altogether new magnitude, conquest of entire world seemed a real possibility. As Hunt illustrates (1987:153), the most important expression of Cold War foreign policy was the doctrine of containment, inspired by the old ideology. That doctrine stated that the chief threat to freedom around the world was Soviet communism – which the US had the duty to combat and defend liberty. For instance, where they saw signs of a dangerous drift to the left, American leaders turned the economic and political screws and as a last resort, sent in the troops or unleashed the CIA (i.e. 1954- Guatemala, 1965- Dominican Republic). Another example of the old impulse to impose on the world the patterns of an ideological foreign policy was the Vietnam War. Apart from containment, American development theory was focused on the modernization of traditional societies, the creation of international organizations (i.e. UN, NATO, World Bank), stable and free societies, common sense of nationhood etc. On January 11, 1989, Ronald Reagan declared: “We meant to change a nation and instead we changed a world. Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech…I have thought a bit of the shining ‘city on a hill’.” (LaFeber, 1994:745) This way president Reagan placed his statement into the historical context of Manifest Destiny.

The collapse of the Soviet Union pointed to the end of Cold War. As a result, “Americans spent the 1990s riding a wave of post-Cold-War triumphalism that made them feel invulnerable.” (Mann, 2003:411) It’s worth-mentioning that the coverage of important overseas events, like the Gulf War, declined by at least one-third between 1989 and 1999. Americans thus preferred to neglect costly foreign policy problems that festered around the world. They only watched Forrest-Gump-type movies, the Monica Lewinski scandal, a post-1995 booming stock market and the ceaseless expansion abroad of their McDonald’s, Pizza Huts, Disneylands and military bases. All these “indications of their global popularity and superiority of their culture” are also reflective of the existence of Manifest Destiny in their minds and thoughts.

To sum up, what we should really question is: Are we to believe that when the task of these frontiersmen was complete in 1890, they also considered their Manifest Destiny complete? Taking into deep consideration the meaning of Manifest Destiny and the forms of the US foreign policy during the 20th century, I strongly support that not only did the idea of Manifest Destiny not end in 1890, it took on a whole new face and it still exists even nowadays. On September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks changed the US and, consequently, its foreign policies, leading to a war in Afghanistan and a second one in Iraq. The US government of G. W. Bush has started a war against international terrorism. According to President Bush, the Middle East is the crucial region of this war on terrorism. In one of his statements, which reflect the ideology of Manifest Destiny, Bush claims:

“Americans are free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world. It’s God’s gift to humanity…”


REFERENCES

Blum, Schlesinger, Jr. (eds.) 1985. The National Experience: A History of the United States. Harcourt Brace Hovanovich.

Brinkley, A. 1995. American History, A Survey Volume I & II. Mc Grawhill.

Dunne, M. 2000. US Foreign Relations in the Twentieth Century: From World Power to Global Hegemony. International Affairs 76:1:25-40.

Heidler, S. D. and Heidler, T. J. 2003. Manifest Destiny. Greenwood Press.

Hunt, M. H. 1987. Ideology and US Foreign Policy. Yale University Press.

Lafeber, W. 1994. The American Age; U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present. W.W. Norton & Company.

Mann, M. 2003. Incoherent Empire. Verso.
Week, W. E. 1996. Building the Continent Empire. Ivan R.