The term "third world" originated during the Cold War to define non-aligned countries that did not become part of either NATO or the communist bloc. The USA, the countries of Western Europe and their allies represented the "first world", while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and their allies were part of the "second world". This terminology offered a way of broadly categorizing the peoples of the earth into three groups, based on social, political, cultural, and economic divisions.
The group of "Third World" countries, as a rule, included many countries in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia with a colonial past. Sometimes, the term was used as a synonym for the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement. In dependency theory by thinkers such as Raul Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos and André Gunder Frank, the "third world" was associated with the world's economic division into "periphery" countries and "core" countries that dominate the former.
Due to the complex history of the evolution of meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed definition of the "third world". Some countries in the communist bloc, such as Cuba, are often viewed as "Third World" countries. Because many of these countries were poor and unindustrialized, the stereotype was created that "Third World countries" were poor countries. In addition, the term "Third World" is very often applied to newly industrialized countries such as Brazil, India and China. Historically, some countries in Europe were not part of any of the blocs and, at the same time, many of them were and remain 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 to refer to the least developed countries"global south" and developing countries, to describe the poor states that sought to achieve sustainable development economy. Moreover, the term often included "second world" countries such as Laos. However, in last years the use of the term in this context is less and less common.
The French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L "Observateur, on August 14, 1952, introduced the term "Third World" (French: Tiers Monde), referring to countries that did not were attached to neither the communist Soviet bloc nor the capitalist NATO bloc.This usage was a reference to the third estate, namely the commoners of France, who before and during the French Revolution opposed the clergy and nobles, who respectively constituted the first and second estates. wrote, "This 'third world' was ignored, exploited and despised, as was the third estate, which also wanted to be something." He linked the concept of political non-alignment to both capitalist and communist blocs.
The "Three Worlds Theory" developed by Mao Zedong is different from the Western "Three Worlds" or "Third World" theory. For example, in Western theory, China and India respectively belong to the second and third worlds, but in Mao's theory, China and India are part of the third world, which he defined as a world made up of exploited peoples.
Maoism (Third Worldism) is a political movement that advocates the unity of the nations of the Third World against the influence of First World countries and for the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. The groups that are most visible in the expression and implementation of these ideas are the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77. They provide the basis for relations and diplomacy not only between third world countries, but also with first and second world countries. This idea has been criticized for hiding human rights violations and political repression by dictatorships.
Most third world countries are former colonies. After gaining independence, many of these, especially the smaller ones, faced problems of nation and institution building that they had never faced before. Because of this common background, many of these peoples held the status of "developing" in economic terms throughout most of the 20th century, and many of them continue to be at that level. Today, the term generally refers to countries that are not developed at the same level as OECD countries, and thus are still in the process of development.
In the 1980s, economist Peter Bauer proposed a competing definition of the term "third world". He argued that the use of the term of this term, in relation to a particular country, was not based on any stable economic or political criteria, but was, in the main, an arbitrary process. Most of the countries that are considered to be part of the "third world" - from Indonesia to Afghanistan - have different levels of development, from economically primitive to advanced countries, as well as from countries that have not joined any of the blocs, or are pro-Western. The dispute may also arise over parts of the US that are more like third world countries.
The only characteristic that Bauer sees as common to all Third World countries is that their governments "request and receive assistance from Western countries", which he vehemently opposes. Thus the collective term "Third World" has been challenged as misleading, even during the Cold War, because it was not based on any coherent or collective identity of the countries it purported to encompass.
During the Cold War, unaligned third world countries were viewed as potential allies by first and second world countries. Thus, the United States and the Soviet Union made great efforts to establish ties with these countries, offering economic and military support in order to create strategically advantageous alliances (for example, the United States of America in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Cuba). By the end of the Cold War, many third world countries had borrowed capitalist or communist economic models and continued to receive support from their chosen side. Throughout the Cold War, and also after its end, the Third World countries were the priority recipients of foreign Western aid and the focus of economic development through the prism of mainstream theories such as modernization theory and dependency theory.
By the end of the 1960s, the idea of a "Third World" had embraced the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, which were considered, according to Western countries, underdeveloped based on various characteristics (low economic development, low life expectancy, high level poverty and disease, etc.). These countries have become recipients of assistance and support from governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals from wealthier countries. One popular model known as the stage theory economic growth Rostow, argues that development occurs in 5 stages (traditional society; prerequisites for "takeoff"; "takeoff"; transition to "maturity"; the era of "high mass consumption"). W. Rostow argued that "rise" is a critical stage, which is either absent in the process of development of the countries of the "third world", or with which countries are now struggling. Thus, foreign aid was essential to kick-start industrialization and economic growth in these countries.
However, despite decades of bailouts and trials of various development models (which have not been successful), the economies of many Third World countries are still dependent on developed countries and in debt. There is now a lot of discussion about why the countries of the "third world" remain poor and underdeveloped after all the effort and after so much time. Many argue that modern methods of aid do not work, and also call for a reduction in foreign aid (and therefore dependency) and the use of various economic theories and not just the mainstream traditional theories of the West. Historically, development and aid have failed to meet their targets. Thus, at present, the global gap between the rich and the poor is larger than ever, although not everyone agrees.
Some scholars argue the problem of the development of many third world countries through socio-economic perspectives that study how individuals form organizations to realize various goals, such as economic issues. Scholars such as North and Weingast argue that modern states can be divided into natural states and open access states. Thus, open access states develop more confidently than natural states, because in them, legally binding institutions (rules of the game, customs) allow people to freely form faceless organizations that can attract a large group of people working or competing with each other. with a friend economically. Accordingly, the greater the competition, the greater the growth and wealth. Examples of open access states are such Western countries as America and Germany.
In contrast, the state (which compromises much of the third world) is made up of political elites who try to protect their special privileges by restricting access to the ability to organize among individuals. These elites must rely on personal connections and threats of violence not only to maintain order, but also to recruit "desirable individuals" into their organizations. Such an attitude not only weakens effective governance (because leaders become less accountable), but also leads to weak institutions, where peace is not always ensured. Also, those who wield violent instruments may only restrain themselves out of trust or loyalty, but at the same time may resort to violence, as has happened in the past (eg Biafra v. the rest of Nigeria, Bangladesh v. Pakistan).
Over the past few decades, population growth has been largely concentrated in third world countries (which often have higher birth rates than developed countries). As populations grow in poor countries, rural residents flock to the cities in a process of extensive urban migration that results in the creation of massive slums.
In many cases, there is a clear distinction between the first and third worlds. When it comes to the Global North or the Global South, for the most part they go hand in hand. People refer to the "Third World" as the South and the "First World" as the North because the Global North is richer and more developed, while the Global South is less developed and most often poor. To counter this way of thinking, some scientists began to propose the idea of changing the world dynamics, which began in the late 1980s. This idea was called the Great Convergence. Jack A. Goldstone and his colleagues put it: "in the twentieth century, the Great Divergence reached its peak before World War I and continued until the early 1970s, and then, after two decades of uncertain fluctuations, in the late 1980s it was replaced by The Great Convergence, because most third world countries have achieved significantly higher rates of economic growth than most first world countries.
Others have seen a return to Cold War levels (McKinnon, 2007; Lucas, 2008), this time with significant changes between 1990-2015 in geography, the world economy, and the dynamics of relations between current and emerging world powers; without necessarily revising the classical sense of the terms first, second and third world, but keeping in mind which countries belong to each of these worlds, by associating them with large countries or coalitions of countries - such as, G7, European Union, OECD; G20, OPEC, BRICS, ASEAN; African Union and Eurasian Union.
The theory of three worlds is a conditional concept.
Today there is no clear division of the territory according to this principle, however, there is a ranking of countries according to the level of GDP (the value of the domestic national product per inhabitant of the country).
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So, conditionally, the states are divided into three groups:
The third group includes third world countries. Wikipedia, referring to data from Morgan Stanley, claims that now all developing countries account for half of the world's GDP.
The division of all countries into groups according to political and economic criteria was proposed by Mao Zedong. To the first world, he attributed the superpowers - the USSR and the USA, the second world was represented by intermediate forces - Europe, Canada, Japan. The third world is all of Africa, Latin America and Asia.
There was also a Western theory of division into worlds, its author Alfred Sauvy. March 5, 1946 began a cold confrontation between the US and the USSR. Differences arose in military, economic, ideological and geopolitical issues. In the Cold War, each side had allies. The Soviet Union cooperated with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, China and other countries.
Many European states, as well as Thailand, Turkey, Japan, and Israel, were on the side of the United States. Some countries remained neutral in the Cold War, and it was they who were called the third world or developing countries.
Since 1952, states with a low level of economic development have been classified as developing. By the end of the 20th century, some countries of this group were able to make a leap in the economy and overtook the developed countries.
According to the UN terminology, developing countries are called the third world. They share common characteristics in economics, politics and culture. The colonial period played an important role in the formation of common features.
In these territories, manual production prevailed, after independence, a sharp transition to industrial methods of labor organization began. Since there was no sequence of phases of economic development, industries National economy developed disproportionately.
In developing countries, pre-industrial and modern types of production coexist. In most third world countries, there is practically no foreign and private investment, the state itself has to play the role of an investor to increase the rate of economic growth. Except general characteristics, developing countries have a number of inconsistent characteristics.
In the 21st century, many Third World countries have the opportunity to develop thanks to economic relations with leading countries. The West invests in the economy, education, medicine, but civil unrest often occurs in such countries, which hinders the development of the economy. For many, the question is whether Russia is a third world country. No, Russia currently belongs to the rapidly developing countries.
There are several lists of developing countries:
| Africa | Asia | Latin America and the Caribbean |
| Northern- Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco South - Angola, South Africa, Mauritius, Zambia, Namibia Central - Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Gabon Western - Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Liberia, Nigeria Eastern - Comoros, Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan. | Eastern - K China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam South - India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka Western - Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Omar, Qatar, UAE, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. | caribbean- Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica Mexico and Central America - Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua South America - Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela |
Unlike the UN, the IMF has included among the developing countries of the CIS and Russia, as well as a part of the European states - Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Poland, Lithuania. In turn, the World Bank ranks Russia among the developed countries. Such disagreements once again confirm that it is impossible to strictly divide the world on an economic basis, all classifications are conditional.
In the 21st century, some states that were previously considered lagging behind are separated into a separate subgroup - oil producers. It includes - UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain. They have become the richest countries in the world, the largest oil exporters, but the unidirectionality and imbalance of the economy does not allow them to become developed.
According to the UN, IMF and World Bank countries with negative economic growth rates - Togo, Ethiopia, Chad and other states of Africa and Latin America - join the group with the richest oil exporters. Up to 90% of their economy is the agricultural sector, which is unable to provide raw materials and food for the needs of the local market. Such states are united in a subgroup - underdeveloped.
The largest third subgroup - states with an average level of development - Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Algeria. Foreign trade is developed here, the problem of hunger and poverty is absent. Thanks to domestic resources, these states have great development prospects, but they have a large external debt and a significant technological gap with developed countries.
- confrontation between the USSR and the USA in geopolitical, ideological, economic and military issues. Each side had its own allies: the Soviet Union cooperated with Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, China, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Mongolia and many other countries, and many took the side of the United States. European countries, Japan, Thailand, Israel, Turkey.
In total, about a hundred states participated in this confrontation, which cannot be considered a war in the conventional sense. The confrontation was accompanied by an arms race, at certain moments there were situations that threatened the deployment of a real war, but it never came to that, and in 1991, due to the collapse of the USSR, the Cold War ended.
From the early years of the Cold War, countries not participating in this confrontation were called the third. It was an arena of political action on both sides: NATO and the Warsaw Pact were vying for influence in these territories. Although already in 1952 this term was first used in his modern meaning as undeveloped, backward in economic terms states and territories.
One French scholar compared the world to the third estate in society. And already in 1980, third world countries began to be called those in which there was a low income among the population. Although since then some of these states have managed not only to escape from the third world, but also to overtake economic development the second, the socialist world, and the former states of developed socialism entered a difficult time.
Today, third world countries, according to UN terminology, are called all developing states - that is, those that cannot be classified as developed industrial world. This is a rather subjective characteristic: some have a very backward economy - Togo, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Guiana, Guatemala, Tahiti, others have a good level of development - the Philippines, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Peru.
But all these countries have several common characteristics that allow them to be united. Firstly, they all have a colonial period in their history - that is, they were ever captured by world powers. The consequences of this time are still reflected in their culture, economy and politics. Secondly, in such countries, even despite the developed industrial activity, pre-industrial types of production coexist with it. Many branches of the national economy are developed to an unequal degree. Thirdly, the state actively intervenes in the economy in order to accelerate the growth rate - this process is called statism.
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People often use the term "third world" as a designation for poor or developing countries. In contrast, wealthier countries such as the US or Western Europe, usually described as part of the "first world". Where do these differences come from, and why do we so rarely hear about the “second world”?
Geopolitics is familiar with the "three worlds" model, which first emerged in the mid-20th century as a way of representing different sides in the Cold War. The origins of this concept are complex, but historians tend to attribute it to the French demographer Alfred Sauvy, who coined the term "Third World" in 1952 in an article titled "Three Worlds, One Planet." 
In this original context, the "first world" included the United States and its capitalist allies in places like Western Europe, Japan, and Australia. The "Second World" consisted of the communist Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe. The "Third World" meanwhile covered all other countries that did not actively express their preferences for any of the parties in the Cold War. Basically, this term united the former European colonies, and it included almost all the peoples of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. 
Today, a powerful economy in the West is sometimes called the "first world", but the term "second world" has largely become obsolete after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The term "third world" remains the most common of the original designations, but its meaning has changed. 
It is now a general term for developing countries. Since this term is partly a relic of the Cold War, many modern scholars consider it obsolete. Instead, terms such as "developing countries" or "low- and middle-income countries" are now often used.
