Third World

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The "three worlds" of the Cold War era, as of the period between April 1975 and August 1975.
  First World: United States, United Kingdom and their allies.
  Second World: Soviet Union, China, and their allies.
  Third World: neutral and non-aligned countries.


The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world economic division as "periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the "core" countries.[1]

Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition of the Third World.[1] Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were economically poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil, India and China now more commonly referred to as part of BRIC. Historically, some European countries were non-aligned and a few of these were and are very prosperous, including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland.

Over the past few decades since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has been used interchangeably with the least developed countries, the Global South, and developing countries, but the concept itself has become outdated in recent years as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world.



Third World vs. Three Worlds[edit]


Third Worldism[edit]

Third Worldism is a political movement that argues for the unity of third-world nations against first-world influence and the principle of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs. Groups most notable for expressing and exercising this idea are the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77 which provide a base for relations and diplomacy between not just the third-world countries, but between the third-world and the first and second worlds. The notion has been criticized as providing a fig leaf for human-rights violations and political repression by dictatorships.[5]


Most Third World countries are former colonies. Having gained independence, many of these countries, especially smaller ones, were faced with the challenges of nation- and institution-building on their own for the first time. Due to this common background, many of these nations were "developing" in economic terms for most of the 20th century, and many still are. This term, used today, generally denotes countries that have not developed to the same levels as OECD countries, and are thus in the process of developing.



Foreign aid and development[edit]



However, despite decades of receiving aid and experiencing different development models (which have had very little success), many Third World countries' economies are still dependent on developed countries, and are deep in debt.[8] There is now a growing debate about why Third World countries remain impoverished and underdeveloped after all this time. Many argue that current methods of aid are not working and are calling for reducing foreign aid (and therefore dependency) and utilizing different economic theories than the traditional mainstream theories from the West.[9] Historically, development and aid have not accomplished the goals they were meant to, and currently the global gap between the rich and poor is greater than ever,[10] though not everybody agrees with this.[11]

Some scholars argue the problem of development amongst many third world states through socioeconomic perspectives which study how individuals form organizations amongst each other for all kinds of goals, such as economic matters. Scholars like North and Weingast claim that modern states are composed of natural states and open access order states whereby open access order states have more positive development than natural states, because in these states, legally binding institutions (rules of the game, customs) allow individuals to freely form impersonal organizations that can attract a large group of people who work or compete with each other economically.[12] The more competition, the more wealth and growth is created. Examples of open access states are many Western countries like America and Germany.[13]

In contrast, a natural state (which compromises much of the third world) consists of political elites who try to protect their special privileges by restricting access to the ability to form organizations amongst individuals.[13] These elites must rely on personal communication and the threat of violence to both maintain order and recruit "desirables" into the organizations. Such a set-up not only weakens good governance (as leaders are less accountable) but also leads to weak institutions, where peace is not always assured, as those in control of the means to inflict violence simply restrain themselves out of trust or loyalty, and can easily resort to violence, as has happened in the past (e.g., Biafra against the rest of Nigeria, Bangladesh against the rest of Pakistan).[14]


Great Divergence and Great Convergence[edit]

Density Function of the Worlds Income Distribution in 1970 by Continent, logarithmic scale: The division of the world into "rich" and "poor" is striking, and the world's poverty is concentrated in Asia.
  Asia and Oceania
Density Function of the Worlds Income Distribution in 2015 by Continent, logarithmic scale: The division of the world into "rich" and "poor" was vanished, and the world's poverty can be found mainly in Africa.
  Asia and Oceania

Many times there is a clear distinction between First and Third Worlds. When talking about the Global North and the Global South, the majority of the time the two go hand in hand. People refer to the two as "Third World/South" and "First World/North" because the Global North is more affluent and developed, whereas the Global South is less developed and often poorer.[15] To counter this mode of thought, some scholars began proposing the idea of a change in world dynamics that began in the late 1980s, and termed it the Great Convergence.[11] As Jack A. Goldstone and his colleagues put it, "in the twentieth century, the Great Divergence peaked before the First World War and continued until the early 1970s, then, after two decades of indeterminate fluctuations, in the late 1980s it was replaced by the Great Convergence as the majority of Third World countries reached economic growth rates significantly higher than those in most First World countries".[16]

Others have observed a return to Cold War-era alignments (MacKinnon, 2007; Lucas, 2008), this time with substantial changes between 1990–2015 in geography, the world economy and relationship dynamics between current and emerging world powers; not necessarily redefining the classic meaning of First, Second, and Third World terms, but rather which countries belong to them by way of association to which world power or coalition of countries — such as G7, the European Union, OECD; G20, OPEC, BRICS, ASEAN; the African Union, and the Eurasian Union.

See also[edit]


  3. ^ Literal translation from French
  7. ^ a b Westernizing the Third World (Ch 2), Routledge
  8. ^ "First, Second and Third World"
  10. ^ a b Westra, Richard (2011). "Renewing Socialist Development in the Third World", Journal of Contemporary Asia, 41(4): 519-543.
  13. ^ a b North, D.C; Wallis, J.J; Weingast, R. (2009). Violence and social orders a conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 18. 
  15. ^ Mimiko, Oluwafemi (2012). "Globalization: The Politics of Global Economic Relations and International Business". Carolina Academic Press: 49. 
  16. ^ Phases of global demographic transition correlate with phases of the Great Divergence and Great Convergence. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Volume 95, June 2015, Page 163.

Further reading[edit]

  • Aijaz, Ahmad (1992). In theory: Classes, nations, literatures. London: Verso. 
  • Bauer, Peter T. (1981). Equality, the Third World, and economic delusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 
  • Buchanan, Pat J. (2006). State of emergency: The Third World invasion and conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. 
  • Escobar, Arturo (2011). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World (revised ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 
  • Furtado, Celso (1964). Development and underdevelopment. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
  • Huffington, Arianna S. (2010). Third World America: How our politicians are abandoning the middle class and betraying the American dream. New York: Crown Publishers. 
  • Melkote, Srinivas R. & Steeves, H. Leslie. (1991). Communication for development in the Third World: Theory and practice for Empowerment. New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
  • Sheppard, Eric & Porter, Wayland P. (1998). A world of difference: Society, nature, development. New York: Guilford Press.
  • Rangel, Carlos (1986). Third World Ideology and Western Reality. New Brunswick: Transaction Books. 
  • Smith, Brian C. (2013). Understanding Third World Politics: Theories of Political Change and Development (4th ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • Aijaz, Charles K. (1973). The political economy of development and underdevelopment. New York: Random House. 

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