Modernization Theory, In Practice

After the World-war Two, the foreign aid policy has been a crucial element of international politic-economic relations. That policy has also been an effective tool for the U.S. to deploy its foreign strategy. The study on John F. Kennedy Administration foreign aid policy enables for us to understand the history of U.S. foreign aid. This thesis analyzes Kennedy Administration South Korean policy which under guidance of Development Assistance Ideal (1961-1963), to crystallize understanding of Modernization theory.Kennedy Administration connived at military junta led by Park Chung Hee in South Korea in May 16, 1961, which became the key factor in South Korean economic take-off. South Koran's so-called"economic miracle"was anchored in Park regime's"Development oriented authoritarianism"and the strategy of export-led growth, the later was very different from the path that the Kennedy Administration had original envisioned. U.S. economic Aid impelled South Korean take-off process. Kennedy Administration South Korean policy gravitated toward preventing local communists from seizing power, promoting economic development, trying to quicken South Korean's receptivity to reconciliation with Japan, and preparing to dispatch South Korean's solders to Vietnam . By analyzing this process, this thesis tackles on the complicated and even confusing course of American policy making and implementing.The South Korean case exemplifies two dilemmas of Modernization theory. First, Kennedy Administration foreign aid policy has swing between long term economic development plan and short term security exigency in the Cold War context. Second, the scientists of modernization theory, as Rostow, suggested that development pattern formed by western developed countries, primarily Great Britain and the United States, has sat the path to every less development countries to follow. The scientism of modernization theory also allowed for a necessary and politically desirable reformulation of the older ideologies on which it was based. Founded, Modernization theory under the background of neo-liberalism that predominated of 60's in American was a renaissance of liberalism which had been repressed by realism during cold war.