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modernization could lead to bad results—to tyranny, civil war and
mass violence.
There were other reasons why Western modernization theory fell into
disrepute by the 1970s: It came to be regarded as too Eurocentric—
indeed, as too Americentric insofar as it seemed to posit American
society as the pinnacle of modernization. It failed to recognize the
possibility that countries like Japan and China might take roads to
modernity that would look very different from the ones pioneered by
Britain and the United States. But even if one agreed that the end
point of development should be some form of industrialized liberal
democracy, Huntington made it clear that arriving at the desired
destination was far more elusive and complicated than modernization
theorists believed.
The central piece of policy advice that emerged out of Huntington’s
work was the concept of the “authoritarian transition.” If political
systems opened up to democratic contestation too early, before the
development of political parties, labor unions, professional
associations and other organizations that could structure
participation, the result could be chaotic. Authoritarian regimes that
could maintain order and promote economic growth, Huntington
argued, might oversee a more gradual institutionalization of society,
and make a transition to democracy only when broad participation
could be peacefully accommodated. This form of sequencing, in
which economic development was promoted before a democratic
opening, was the path followed by Asian countries like South Korea
and Taiwan, which made democratic transitions in the late 1980s only
after they had succeeded in turning themselves into industrialized
powerhouses. It was also the development strategy recommended by
Huntington’s former student Fareed Zakaria, as well as by the leaders
of many authoritarian governments, who liked the idea of economic
growth better than the idea of democratic participation.3 We will

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