When we look at countries like Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Burma, where substantial progress has been made in creating a minimum supply of modern men and of social overhead capital, and where institutions of centralized government exist, we find a second category of countries with a different set of problems and hence different priorities for policy. The men in power are committed in principle to modernization, but economic and social changes are proceeding only erratically. Isolated enterprises have been launched, but they are not yet related to each other in a meaningful pattern. The society is likely to be characterized by having a fairly modernized urban sector and a relatively untouched rural sector, with very poor communications between the two. Progress is impeded by psychological inhibitions to effective action among those in power and by a failure on their part to understand how local resources, human and material, can be mobilized to achieve the national goals of modernization already symbolically accepted.

Most countries in this second category share the difficulty of having many of the structures of a modern political and social system without the modern standards of performance required to make them effective. In these rapidly changing societies there is also too little appreciation of the need for effort to achieve goals. The colonial period has generally left people believing that government can, if it wishes, provide all manner of services for them -- and that with independence free men do not have to work to realize the benefits of modern life. For example, in accordance with the fashion of the times, most transitional societies have announced economic development plans of varying numbers of years; such is the mystique of planning that people expect that fulfillment of the plan will follow automatically upon its announcement. The civil services in such societies are generally inadequate to deal competently with the problems facing them; and their members often equate a government career with security and status rather than with sacrifice, self-discipline, and competence.