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Dependency theory or dependencia theory is a body of social science theories predicated on the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "world system."
The theory arose around 1970 as a reaction to modernization theory, an earlier theory of development which held that all societies progress through similar stages of development, that today's underdeveloped areas are thus in a similar situation to that of today's developed areas at some time in the past, and that therefore the task in helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market. Dependency theory rejected this view, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy, whereas the developed nations were never in an analogous position; they never had to exist in relation to a bloc of more powerful and economically advanced countries than themselves. Dependency theorists argued, in opposition to free market economists and modernization theorists, that underdeveloped countries needed to reduce their connectedness with the world market so that they can pursue a path more in keeping with their own needs, less dictated by external pressures.[1]
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The premises of dependency theory are that:
Dependency theory states that the poverty of the countries in the periphery is not because they are not integrated into the world system, or not 'fully' integrated as is often argued by free market economists, but because of how they are integrated into the system.
Dependency theory originates with two papers published in 1949 – one by Hans Singer, one by Raúl Prebisch – in which the authors observe that the terms of trade for underdeveloped countries relative to the developed countries had deteriorated over time: the underdeveloped countries were able to purchase fewer and fewer manufactured goods from the developed countries in exchange for a given quantity of their raw materials exports. This idea is known as the Singer-Prebisch thesis. Prebisch, an Argentine economist at the United Nations Commission for Latin America (UNCLA), went on to conclude that the underdeveloped nations must employ some degree of protectionism in trade if they were to enter a self-sustaining development path. He argued that Import-substitution industrialisation (ISI), not a trade-and-export orientation, was the best strategy for underdeveloped countries.[2] The theory was developed from a Marxian perspective by Paul A. Baran in 1957 with the publication of his The Political Economy of Growth.[3] Dependency theory shares many points with earlier, Marxist, theories of imperialism by Rosa Luxemburg and V.I. Lenin, and has attracted continued interest from Marxists. Matias Vernengo, a University of Utah economist, identifies two main streams in dependency theory: the Latin American Structuralist, typified by the work of Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Anibal Pinto at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC, or, in Spanish, CEPAL); and the American Marxist, developed by Paul A. Baran, Paul Sweezy, and Andre Gunder Frank.[4]
The theory was popular in the 1960s and 1970s as a criticism of modernization theory (the "stages" hypothesis mentioned above), which was falling increasingly out of favor because of continued widespread poverty in much of the world.
Many dependency theorists advocate social revolution as an effective means to the reduction of economic disparities in the world system.
Poor nations are at a disadvantage in their market interactions with wealthy nations. There are several aspects to this. One is that a high proportion of the developing nations' economic activity consists of exports and imports from the developed nations—in many cases with only one or a few developed nations. By contrast, only a small proportion of the economic activity of the developed nations consists of trade with the developing nations; a developed nation's trade consists mostly of internal trade and trade with other developed nations. This asymmetry puts a poor nation in a weak bargaining position vis a vis a developed nation. There are also historical aspects: the poor nations are almost all former colonies of the developed nations; their economies were built to serve the developed nations in a twofold capacity: as sources of cheap raw materials and as highly populous markets for the absorption of the developed nations' manufactured output.
According to Vernengo, the Latin American Structuralist and the American Marxist schools had significant differences but agreed on some basic points:
[B]oth groups would agree that at the core of the dependency relation between center and periphery lays the inability of the periphery to develop an autonomous and dynamic process of technological innovation. Technology – the Promethean force unleashed by the Industrial Revolution – is at the center of stage. The Center countries controlled the technology and the systems for generating technology. Foreign capital could not solve the problem, since it only led to limited transmission of technology, but not the process of innovation itself.[5]
Baran and others frequently spoke of the international division of labour – skilled workers in the center, unskilled in the periphery – when discussing key features of dependency.[6]
Baran placed surplus extraction and capital accumulation at the center of his analysis. Development depends on a population's producing more than it needs for bare subsistence (a surplus). Further, some of that surplus must be used for capital accumulation - the purchase of new means of production - if development is to occur; spending the surplus on things like luxury consumption does not produce development. Baran noted two predominant kinds of economic activity in poor countries. In the older of the two, plantation agriculture, which originated in colonial times, most of the surplus goes to the landowners, who use it to emulate the consumption patterns of wealthy people in the developed world; much of it thus goes to purchase foreign produced luxury items—automobiles, clothes, etc. -- and little is accumulated for investing in development. The more recent kind of economic activity in the periphery is industry—but of a particular kind. It is usually carried out by foreigners, although often in conjunction with local interests. It is often under special tariff protection or other government concessions. The surplus from this production mostly goes to two places: part of it is sent back to the foreign shareholders as profit; the other part is spent on conspicuous consumption in a similar fashion to that of the plantation aristocracy. Again, little is used for development. Baran thought that political revolution was necessary to break this pattern.[7]
In the 1960s, members of the Latin American Structuralist school argued that there is more latitude in the system than the Marxists believed. They argued that it allows for partial development or "dependent development" – development, but still under the control of outside decision makers. They cited the partly successful attempts at industrialisation in Latin America around that time (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico) as evidence for this hypothesis. They were led to the position that dependency is not a relation between commodity exporters and industrialised countries, but between countries with different degrees of industrialisation. In their approach there is a distinction made between the economic and political spheres: economically, one may be developed or underdeveloped; but even if (somewhat) economically developed, one may be politically autonomous or dependent. More recently, Guillermo O'Donnell has argued that constraints placed on development by neoliberalism were lifted by "the military coups in Latin America that came to promote development in authoritarian guise" (Vernengo's words, summarising O'Donnell, 1982).[8]
The importance of technology, multinational corporations, and State promotion of technology were emphasised by the Latin American Structuralists.
Fajnzybler has made a distinction between systemic or authentic competitiveness, which is the ability to compete based on higher productivity, and spurious competitiveness, which is based on low wages.[9]
The third-world debt crisis of the 1980s and continued stagnation in Africa and Latin America in the 1990s caused some doubt as to the feasibility or desirability of "dependent development".[10]
Vernengo (2004) has suggested that the sine qua non of the dependency relationship is not the difference in technological sophistication, as traditional dependency theorists believe, but rather the difference in financial strength between core and peripheral countries – particularly the inability of peripheral countries to borrow in their own currency. He believes that the hegemonic position of the United States is very strong because of the importance of its financial markets and because it controls the international reserve currency – the US dollar. He believes that the end of the Bretton Woods international financial agreements in the early 1970s considerably strengthened the United States' position because it removed some constraints on their financial actions.[11]
"Standard" dependency theory differs from Marxism, in arguing against internationalism and any hope of progress in less developed nations towards industrialization and a liberating revolution. Theotonio dos Santos described a 'new dependency', which focused on both the internal and external relations of less-developed countries of the periphery, derived from a Marxian analysis. Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso wrote extensively on dependency theory while in political exile, arguing that it was an approach to studying the economic disparities between the centre and periphery. The American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein refined the Marxist aspect of the theory, and called it the "World-system." It has also been associated with Galtung's Structural Theory of Imperialism.
"The inflow of capital from the developed countries is the prerequisite for the establishment of economic dependence. This inflow takes various forms: loans granted on onerous terms; investments that place a given country in the power of the investors; almost total technological subordination of the dependent country to the developed country; control of a country's foreign trade by the big international monopolies; and in extreme cases, the use of force as an economic weapon in support of the other forms of exploitation."
With the economic growth of India and some East Asian economies, dependency theory has lost some of its former influence. It is more widely accepted in disciplines such as history and anthropology. It also underpins some NGO campaigns, such as Make Poverty History and the fair trade movement.
Dependency theory can trace its intellectual heritage to the long-running free trade debate, specifically various forms of economic nationalism and the school of mercantilism. An early statement of dependency theory is found in Henry Clay, architect of the American System, in an 1832 speech:
Gentlemen deceive themselves. It is not free trade that they are recommending to our acceptance. It is, in effect, the British colonial system that we are invited to adopt; and, if their policy prevail, it will lead, substantially, to the recolonization of these States, under the commercial dominion of Great Britain.——Henry Clay, "In Defense of the American System, Against the British Colonial System." 1832, Feb 2, 3, and 6.[13]
Similar sentiments were expressed by German American economist Friedrich List:
Had the English left everything to itself—'Laissez faire, laissez aller', as the popular economical school recommends—the [German] merchants of the Steelyard would be still carrying on their trade in London, the Belgians would be still manufacturing cloth for the English, England would have still continued to be the sheep-farm of the Hansards, just as Portugal became the vineyard of England, and has remained so till our days, owing to the stratagem of a cunning diplomatist.
Two other early writers relevant to dependency theory were François Perroux and Kurt Rothschild. Other leading dependency theorists include Herb Addo, Walden Bello, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Enzo Faletto, Armando Cordova, Ernest Feder, Andre Gunder Frank, Walter Rodney, Pablo González Casanova, Keith Griffin, Kunibert Raffer, Paul Israel Singer, and Osvaldo Sunkel. Many of these authors focused their attention on Latin America; the leading dependency theorist in the Islamic world is the Egyptian economist Samir Amin (Tausch 2003).
Later, world systems theory expanded on dependency arguments. It postulates a third category of countries, the semi-periphery, intermediate between the core and periphery. The semi-periphery is industrialised, but with less sophistication of technology than in the core; and it does not control finances. Capitalism in the periphery, like in the center, is characterized by strong cyclical fluctuations.
The rise of one group of semi-peripheries tends to be at the cost of another group, but the unequal structure of the world economy based on unequal exchange tends to remain stable (Tausch 2003).
Tausch (2003) traces the beginnings of World systems theory to the writings of the Austro-Hungarian socialist Karl Polanyi after the First World War. In its present form it is usually associated with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein.
Ever since the capitalist world system evolved, there is a stark distinction between the nations of the center and the nations of the periphery.
Former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, when he was still a social scientist, summarized his version of dependency theory as follows:
Tausch (2003), based on works of Amin from 1973 to 1997, lists the following main characteristics of periphery capitalism:
The analysis of development patterns in the 1990s and beyond is complicated by the fact that capitalism develops not smoothly, but with very strong and self-repeating ups and downs, called cycles. Relevant results are given in studies by Joshua Goldstein, Volker Bornschier, and Luigi Scandella (Tausch 2003).
Dependency theorists hold that short-term spurts of growth notwithstanding, long-term growth in the periphery will be imbalanced and unequal, and will tend towards high negative current account balances (Tausch 2003). Cyclical fluctuations also have a profound effect on cross-national comparisons of economic growth and societal development in the medium and long run. What seemed like spectacular long-run growth, may in the end turn out to be just a short run cyclical spurt after a long recession. Cycle time plays an important role. Giovanni Arrighi believed that the logic of accumulation on a world scale shifts over time, and that we again witness during the 1980s and beyond a deregulated phase of world capitalism with a logic, characterized - in contrast to earlier regulatory cycles - by the dominance of financial capital (Tausch 2003).
At this stage, the role of unequal exchange in the entire relationship of dependency cannot be underestimated. Unequal exchange is given, if double factorial terms of trade of the respective country are < 1.0 (Raffer, 1987, Amin, 1975). Labor in the export sectors of the periphery is being exploited, while monopolistic structures of international trade let the centers profit from the high prices of their exports to the world markets in comparison to their labor productivity.
While there are many different and conflicting ideas on how developing countries can alleviate the effects of the world system, several of the following protectionist/nationalist practices were adopted at one time or another by such countries: