The New Ideologists

Besides creating new independent states the anti-colonial revolutions of the past 15 years have produced a major inflation in the amount of political theorizing being done in the underdeveloped areas of the world.

As nationalist leaders have attempted to establish strong governments and modernize primitive economies, they have expounded their interpretations of the colonial past, their visions of the economic future, and their explanations of the political present. For the most part, their observations are interesting more because of who made them than for the originality or insight of what was said.

Paul E. Sigmund, Jr., who was senior tutor of Quincy House until he became an associate professor of politics at Princeton last month, has edited the first anthology of recent nationalist theory in The Ideologies of the Developing Nations. About one-quarter of his 26 selections were assigned last spring in Reinhold Neibuhr's Government 110, for which Sigmund was the course assistant.

The 26 selections range in importance from a brief, narrowly topical newspaper interview with Premier Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria to a thoughtful critique of communism by President Leopold Senghon of Senegal. Geographically, they deal with Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Ideologically, they include positions from the communism of Mao Tse-tung to the political liberalism of Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Governor-General of Nigeria.

Modernization

In a long introduction Sigmund tries to unify most of this conglomeration as the "ideology of modernizing nationalism." The paramount goal of this ideology, he notes, is national independence followed by rapid economic development. However, Sigmund lists three other goals which are less clearly part of this ideology: (1) "the creation of a nation-state governed by a regime based on a populist identification of leader, party, and people," (2) regional federation, and (3) nonalignment in international affairs. Indeed, Sigmund's anthology itself indicates how wide are the differences in the meanings that various nationalists give to these phrases.

The difference between nationalists appear sharply in the discussions of the single-party state based "on a populist identification of leader, party, and people." On the one hand, several writers defend one-party rule as necessary and democratic. Speaking in Paris in early 1960; Madeira Keita, Mali's radical Minister of Defense, argued that since the objectives of the African people are "common ones and we are in agreement on methods, we must create a single party. It is necessary to create a single party to be efficient...and not to give aid to colonialism...We must have the unified party in order to limit the possibility of corruption and to attempt to destroy opportunism."

Besides, adds the usually moderate Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika, democracy simply means "government by discussion as opposed to government by force" and discussion can take place just as fruitfully within one party as among many.

Need Opposition

However, the book also contains a sharp attack on attempts to eliminate opposition parties by Dr. Azikiwe. "Unless an opposition exists," he writes, "as a 'shadow cabinet' capable of replacing the government--democracy becomes a sham...We should be tolerant and allow our official action to be thoroughly scrutinized no matter how it hurts. Failure to tolerate the existence of an opposition party...Is the easiest invitation to dictatorship...We should not give the impression that we have extinguished British colonial rule only to enthrone in its stead its Nigerian counterpart."

Citing the goal of regional federation as a common strain of nationalist ideology seems slightly less invalid than including the single-party state. True, large regional groups are advocated by all the writers who comment on them, but no one yet has accomplished anything to move regional federation beyond the stage of aspiration.

Simply to add nonalignment to the "modernizing ideology" is misleading. There are too many variations inpractice among the declared nonaligned nations to give the term any specific meaning. Besides, half of Africa, most of Asia, and all of Latin America definitely are aligned with Russia or the West.

However, Sigmund rightly points out the contradictions in the way the word "socialist" is used by the nationalists. By attaching it to everything from the tepid land reform of Bourguiba in Tunisia to the social revolution of Castro they have turned it into a rather empty epithet.

As political theory some of the selections are lightweight, but all have the virtue of timeliness. Although several of Sigmund's short biographical sketches are obsolete only five months after they were written, the selections themselves continue to add significance to news from the third world