ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how to understand and engage with political hybridity, because it has been unable to get past the unhelpful binary of tradition and modernity which lies at its core. In response, the newly independent countries formed the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as a vehicle to promote their unique political interests in the international arena, strategically using their majority presence in the United Nations General Assembly. Nonetheless, while NAM had many individual political successes, it did not successfully challenge the underlying power structures that disadvantaged its Third World member nations. The development industry has taken a very different approach, where the emphasis is less on political change through popular support and more on the bureaucratic approach of introducing a particular 'model' of liberal democracy through international intervention. There practical issues that arise when the institutions of Western-style liberal democracy are introduced in a political context where there are pre-existing customary laws, institutions and understandings of political community.
