ABSTRACT
The optimism which guided much of the concern with and many of the studies of underdeveloped areas or new nations, and which assumed that these countries were advancing-even if slowly and intermittently —toward full-fledged modernization and continuous growth, has lately given way to a much more cautious and even pessimistic view. This pessimism has been mainly due to the fact that in many new nations, where initially modern frameworks were established in different institutional fields, especially in the political one, the progress toward mod ernization was not only slow, but also these constitutional regimes faltered, giving way, in their place, to various autocratic and au thoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. In donesia, Pakistan, Burma, and Sudan are perhaps the most important recent exam ples of this trend.*1
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the nature of the social processes in these countries which led to these changes, to what may be called breakdowns in their po litical modernization.
