Modernity: a foundational

principle of Comparative Politics

 Modernity involves a movement from:

Faith Science

heredity Merit

Rural Urban

Agricultural Production
Industrial
Production
The Long 16th Century
1490 – 1600
 The Long 16th Century
1490 – 1600
•The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
Nation States
rights
power
sovereignty
 The Long 16th Century
1490 – 1600
•The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
•The Reformation
•Martin Luther (1517); John Calvin
(1536)
Contested the Power of the Church
“Man will only be free when the last general is strangled with
the entrails of the last priest”…….
 The Long 16th Century
1490 – 1600
The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
† The Reformation
The Enlightenment
Human reason to combat tyranny,
ignorance and superstition in order to create
a better world.
Individual rights, the rise of liberalism.
 The Long 16th Century
1490 – 1600
The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
† The Reformation
The Enlightenment
$ The Rise of Capitalism
Protestant ethic
individual choice
competition
 Modernity involves a movement from:

Faith Science

heredity Merit

Rural Urban

Agricultural Production
Industrial
Production
Marx and Engels: History is the development of material
forces; that part of human activity which involves the
material (or physical) transformation of nature

The movement of these material forces is dialectical in

that it proceeds by generating oppositions between
conflicting powers

Capitalism: class conflict (workers vs. owners)

These oppositions have the power to resolve

themselves, giving rise to new material arrangements:
feudalism capitalism communism
 Marx v. Weber
Capitalism = oppressive Capitalism = rational

This is one of the fundamental debates of comparative

politics and shapes the discourse about which
political/economic systems are most appropriate for
different nation states.
 The Agent/Structure Problem
Do human beings (agents) create and control structures?
“Man (sic) would not have attained the possible unless time
and again he had reached out of the impossible.”--Weber
Or
Do structures compel and constrain human behaviors?
“Men (sic) create history, but not under circumstances of
their own choosing” --Marx
Capitalism Colonialism
labor, resources, trade, new markets

Unequal development poverty, discontent

instability, imposed
order via despotic
regimes
 Colonialism
Created arbitrary borders that paid little
heed to ethnic/tribal organization
Created competition and fueled rivalries
between ethnic groups for the privileges of
modernity
Modernity involves our consciousness of history and progressive
movement toward something better….(paraphrase of Hegel)
 Pre-Modern Modern Post-Modern
conflict conflict

Conflicts today:
Internal conflicts of modernization within nation states
External conflicts between modern states and those (states
and peoples) that resist modernization
So, as you can see, modernity is one of
the fundamental premises of how we
approach the study of comparative politics:
Modernity Political Systems
Economic Development
Gender/Women’s Rights
Human Rights