I do not want to get into the specifics of his economic work. Famine is a political outcome where governments fail to commit the resources for its avoidance. Governments who are accountable to their people find ways to deliver food before starvation occurs. In 1998 Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in economics because he found democracies avoided famines. He sees modernization as the development of multiple components necessary for its emergence. But Amartya Sen takes it to its next logical conclusion. Nearly all economists and historians accept this as historical fact.

The consistent application of law was necessary for economic modernization. His insights build on the traditional recognition of the role of law within the development of capitalism and the market economy. For countries who face the challenge of modernization, they become investments into the economic infrastructure which pay strong dividends through economic development. Improvements within education and health care are not simply expenses. Institutions are the foundations of the social infrastructure, so political institutions lay the foundations for a political infrastructure.Īmartya Sen helps explain how economic modernization depends on the development of key components for an economic infrastructure. Political parties, for example, became vehicles for mass political participation not just within democracies but even within nondemocratic political systems. Note it is the institutions which are central for political modernization.

Political modernization for Samuel Huntington involved the creation of political institutions designed to facilitate the professionalization and organization necessary for an expanded role of governance.

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