Methodological debates about the stages of growth and the way in which a country goes through political modernization are long-established and manifold. Globalization and the new international dialectic that it has brought about, between tension that leads to convergence and tension that leads to divergence, have called many of these methods of evaluation into question. Aside from elaborating the most objective criteria possible, the formalization of future possibilities should leave the way open for uncertainty and a subjective approach.