Brad De Long wrote:
>If I understand IW's main criticism of Rostow, it was that Rostow
>imagined countries "modernizing" and undergoing similar processes at
>different times--but that the structure of the world system
>prevented a "peripheral" country from becoming a "core" country
>unless it broke out of the system and followed an anti-systemic
>semi-peripheral path that was never adequately explained to me or
>anyone else.
>
>From today's perspective, Rostow looks much better: Italy, France,
>and Japan have joined the core. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the
>Hong Kong SEZ, Spain, and Ireland are joining the core, and there
>appear to be a bunch more lined up behind them...
That's a rather optimistic interpretation. Italy, France, Japan, and
Spain were hardly peripheral in the sense that Haiti or Brazil
are/were; all four were imperialist countries in their own right.
Singapore and HK are small and rather anomalous places that don't
seem easily replicable as models elsewhere. The strongest cases
you've got are SK and Taiwan, but two exceptions out of over 100
countries aren't enough to disprove the general rule. Ireland got
lots of EU subsidies; Mexico should be so lucky.
Doug
