Evaluate explanations of development and under-development put forward by dependency theorists 

Last Updated on January 11, 2019 by

The plan below is just one suggestion as to how you might go about answering this essay.

Briefly introduce Dependency Theory

Dependency theory is a Marxist theory, developed in the 1970s as a criticism of Modernisation theory. The best known dependency theorist is Andre Gunder Frank

Underdevelopment is because the West exploits labour and resources in the developing world. The West gets rich at the expense of the developing world. This is in contrast with the modernisation theory which tends to assume that lack of development is because of internal cultural and economic barriers.

Dependency theorists see history as essential to understanding the situation that we are in today, pointing out that many civilizations were wealthy and complex before contact with the west –such as Aztec culture in Mexico and Chinese and Indian civilizations. It is only after Colonialism that these countries become poor relative to the West.

During Colonial Rule the core nations of the west exploited the satellite nations of the developing world.

More recently Neo-Colonialism keeps developing countries poor –

The Legacy of Colonialism

Colonialism – Where European Nations (core nations) took over other territories and turned them into satellite nations, essentially becoming the property of those nations and being subject to their laws.

Colonies were then run for the benefit of the core nations, with resources such as gold, silver and exotic foods being extracted from the colonies and exported to the west for immense profit. Local populations were often turned into slaves and controlled by occupying military forces.

This process locked much of Africa, Asia and Latin America into exploitative relationships with Western European Nations from about 1650 – 1900.

When ex-colonies gained independence from their Colonial masters (in Africa through the 1960s) they struggled to develop because of the damage done to them by Colonial rule. Two ways in which this happened are as follows:

Colonial powers turned the colonies into ‘monocultures’ – each country was used to grow and export only one or two products that were best suited to that climate. This has had a lasting consequences – Today, at least two thirds of African countries derive over 50% of their export earnings from only one or two commodities. Today, many African countries are still dependent on low value exports for much of their GDP which prevents them from developing.

Divisions and conflicts between ethnic groups were created during colonialism as those tribes loyal to the colonising powers were given economic and political power. It tended to be those tribes that came to power following independence, causing heightened tension between them and opposing ethnic groups. The worst case of this is the Rwandan Genocide of the 1990s.

Neo-colonialism

According to dependency theorists although colonies have gained political independence, they are still exploited economically by more developed countries – a situation which Frank describes as Neo-Colonialism. Neo-Colonialism takes the following forms

Unfair Trade Rules World trade is not a level playing field – The best example of this is in Agriculture – Agriculture is Africa’s biggest economic sector. It has the capacity to produce a lot more food and export to Europe and America but it can’t because the EU and America spend billions every year subsidising their farmers so imported African products seem more expensive

Tied Aid – Aid packages from the World Bank often come with strings attached – In return for a development loan, for example, a country might be asked to privatise certain sectors and allow Western companies in to run those services, ultimately benefitting western interests.

Western Corporations use their economic power to negotiate favourable tax deals in the developing world. A good case in point here is the mining Company Glencore in Zambia – The company recently arranged a long term contract to mine copper with the Zambian government – it exports $6 billion a year in copper from Zambia, but pays only $50m in tax, while as part of the deal the Zambian government is contractually obliged to pay for all the electricity costs of mining – a total of $150m a year.

STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT

For some dependency theorists, underdevelopment appears permanent; the only way out of dependency is for an underdeveloped nation to escape from the global capitalist system and master-servant relationship with richer countries, taking action itself rather than relying on outside help. Countries need to find alternative pathways to development that protect their fragile economies from Western Capitalist-Industrialist Capitalism. Some alternatives include:

  • Isolation, as in the example of China from about 1960 to 2000, which is now successfully emerging as a global economic superpower having isolated itself from the West for the past 4 decades. Another, different example, is that of Bhutan.
  • Socialist revolution as in the case of Cuba. This resulted in sanctions being applies by America which limited trade with the country, holding its development back.
  • Alternatively there is Associate or dependent development. – Here, one can be part of the system, and adopt national economic policies to being about economic growth such as. Import substitution industrialisation where industrialisation produces consumer goods that would normally be imported from abroad, as successfully adopted by many South American countries.

Evaluation

Some countries benefited from Colonialism – India for example benefitted from the transport networks put in place under British Colonial Rule, whereas many countries that were never colonised, such as Afghanistan, are much less developed.

Modernisation theory would argue that at least some satellite nations have benefited from TNC investment, as with the Asian Tiger economies such as Korea benefited from investment by Japanese TNCs.

Neoliberalism points out that it would be wrong to purely blame western TNCs for the dependency of Satellite Nations. Corrupt governments are just as much to blame today.

Paul Collier’s theory of the bottom billion suggests there are more reasons other than

Colonialism that explain why certain countries are underdeveloped. Two of these include the ‘resource curse’ and ‘corruption’

Conclusion

It is important to recognise that the history of colonialism has held some countries back, and that isolation has worked as a route to development for some nations such as China. However, in today’s rapidly changing, ex-colonial world, in which many ex-colonies are developing successfully and even due to overtake European Nations by 2050 (India and Brazil) it is clear that in the long term Dependency Theory is not sufficient to explain why some countries are developed and others are developing.

Having said this it does need to be recognised that in many countries neo-colonialism does seem to prevent development, and the idea that the west needs to look at how its policies affect developing countries is also sensible. and moreover it is unclear that this model of development which defines development as being characterised by industrialisation, strong nation states, and economic growth is applicable today – It might be the case that alternative models and notions of development are the only way to guarantee the long term sustainable future of the 7 billion people on earth today

Related Posts.

Dependency Theory – detailed class notes 

Dependency Theory

Dependency Theorists argue that rich countries accumulated their wealth through exploiting poorer countries. Initially this was through colonialism and slavery, later on through neo-colonialism. To develop, poorer countries need to break free from these exploitative relations.

Last Updated on June 5, 2023 by Karl Thompson

This post is a brief summary of the Dependency Theory view of Development and Underdevelopment. It is, broadly speaking, a Marxist theory of development.

Andre Gunder Frank (1971), one of the main theorists within ‘dependency theory’ argued that developing nations have failed to develop not because of ‘internal barriers to development’ as modernisation theorists argue, but because the developed West has systematically underdeveloped them, keeping them in a state of dependency (hence ‘dependency theory’).

Dependency Theory is one of the major theories within the Global Development module, typically taught in the second year of A-level sociology.

The World Capitalist System

Frank argued that a world capitalist system emerged in the 16th century which progressively locked Latin America, Asia and Africa into an unequal and exploitative relationship with the more powerful European nations.

This world Capitalist system is organised as an interlocking chain: at one end are the wealthy ‘metropolis’ or ‘core’ nations (European nations), and at the other are the undeveloped ‘satellite’ or ‘periphery’ nations. The core nations are able to exploit the peripheral nations because of their superior economic and military power.

From Frank’s dependency perspective, world history from 1500 to the 1960s is best understood as a process whereby wealthier European nations accumulated enormous wealth through extracting natural resources from the developing world, the profits of which paid for their industrialisation and economic and social development, while the developing countries were made destitute in the process.

Writing in the late 1960s, Frank argued that the developed nations had a vested interest in keeping poor countries  in a state of underdevelopment so they could continue to benefit from their economic weakness – desperate countries are prepared to sell raw materials for a cheaper price, and the workers will work for less than people in more economically powerful countries. According to Frank, developed nations actually fear the development of poorer countries because their development threatens the dominance and prosperity of the West.

Colonialism, Slavery and Dependency

Colonialism is a process through which a more powerful nation takes control of another territory, settles it, takes political control of that territory and exploits its resources for its own benefit. Under colonial rule, colonies are effectively seen as part of the mother country and are not viewed as independent entities in their own right. Colonialism is fundamentally tied up with the process of ‘Empire building’ or ‘Imperialism’.

According to Frank the main period of colonial expansion was from 1650 to 1900 when European powers, with Britain to the fore, used their superior naval and military technology to conquer and colonise most of the rest of the world.

Map showing British colonies around 1800.

During this 250 year period the European ‘metropolis’ powers basically saw the rest of the world as a place from which to extract resources and thus wealth. In some regions extraction took the simple form of mining precious metals or resources – in the early days of colonialism, for example, the Portuguese and Spanish extracted huge volumes of gold and silver from colonies in South America, and later on, as the industrial revolution took off in Europe, Belgium profited hugely from extracting rubber (for car tyres) from its colony in DRC, and the United Kingdom profited from oil reserves in what is now Saudi Arabia.

In other parts of the world (where there were no raw materials to be mined), the European colonial powers established plantations on their colonies, with each colony producing different agricultural products for export back to the ‘mother land’. As colonialism evolved, different colonies came to specialise in the production of different raw materials (dependent on climate) – Bananas and Sugar Cane from the Caribbean, Cocoa (and of course slaves) from West Africa, Coffee from East Africa, Tea from India, and spices such as Nutmeg from Indonesia.

drawing of colonial exploitation mining gold.

All of this resulted in huge social changes in the colonial regions: in order to set up their plantations and extract resources the colonial powers had to establish local systems of government in order to organise labour and keep social order – sometimes brute force was used to do this, but a more efficient tactic was to employ willing natives to run local government on behalf of the colonial powers, rewarding them with money and status for keeping the peace and the resources flowing out of the colonial territory and back to the mother country.

Dependency Theorists argue that such policies enhanced divisions between ethnic groups and sowed the seeds of ethnic conflict in years to come, following independence from colonial rule. In Rwanda for example, the Belgians made the minority Tutsis into the ruling elite, giving them power over the majority Hutus. Before colonial rule there was very little tension between these two groups, but tensions progressively increased once the Belgians defined the Tutsis as politically superior. Following independence it was this ethnic division which went on to fuel the Rwandan Genocide of the 1990s.

An unequal and dependent relationship

What is often forgotten in world history is the fact that before colonialism started, there were a number of well-functioning political and economic systems around the globe, most of them based on small-scale subsistence farming. 400 years of colonialism brought all that to end.

Colonialism destroyed local economies which were self-sufficient and independent and replaced them with plantation mono-crop economies which were geared up to export one product to the mother country. This meant that whole populations had effectively gone from growing their own food and producing their own goods, to earning wages from growing and harvesting sugar, tea, or coffee for export back to Europe.

As a result of this some colonies actually became dependent on their colonial masters for food imports, which of course resulted in even more profit for the colonial powers as this food had to be purchased with the scant wages earnt by the colonies.

The wealth which flowed from Latin America, Asia and Africa into the European countries provided the funds to kick start the industrial revolution, which enabled European countries to start producing higher value, manufactured goods for export which further accelerated the wealth generating capacity of the colonial powers, and lead to increasing inequality between Europe and the rest of the world.

The products manufactured through industrialisation eventually made their way into the markets of developing countries, which further undermined local economies, as well as the capacity for these countries to develop on their own terms. A good example of this is in India in the 1930s-40s where cheap imports of textiles manufactured in Britain undermined local hand-weaving industries. It was precisely this process that Ghandi resisted as the leading figure of the Indian Independence movement.

historic drawing of slavery in colonies
Colonialism: An Unequal and Dependent Relationship!

Neo-colonialism

By the 1960s most colonies had achieved their independence, but European nations continued to see developing countries as sources of cheap raw materials and labour and, according to Dependency Theory,  they had no interest in developing them because they continued to benefit from their poverty.

Exploitation continued via neo-colonialism – which describes a situation where European powers no longer have direct political control over countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa, but they continue to exploit them economically in more subtle ways.

Three main types of neo-colonialism:

Frank identified three main types:

Firstly, the terms of trade continue to benefit Western interests. Following colonialism, many of the ex-colonies were dependent for their export earnings on primary products, mostly agricultural cash crops such as Coffee or Tea which have very little value in themselves – It is the processing of those raw materials which adds value to them, and the processing takes place mainly in the West

Second, Frank highlights the increasing dominance of Transnational Corporations in exploiting labour and resources in poor countries – because these companies are globally mobile, they are able to make poor countries compete in a ‘race to the bottom’ in which they offer lower and lower wages to attract the company, which does not promote development.

Finally, Frank argues that Western aid money is another means whereby rich countries continue to exploit poor countries and keep them dependent on them – aid is, in fact, often in the term of loans, which come with conditions attached, such as requiring that poor countries open up their markets to Western corporations.

Dependency Theory: Strategies for Development 

Dependency is not just a phase, but rather a permanent position. The historical colonialists and now the neo-colonialists continually try to keep poor countries poor so they can continue to extract their resources and benefit from their cheap labour, thus keeping themselves wealthy on the back of exploitation.

It thus follows that the only way developing countries can escape dependency is to break away from their historical oppressors.

There are different paths to development with differing emphasis on the extent to which developing countries need to become independent of their historical colonial masters, their neo-colonial ‘partners’ or from the entire global capitalist system itself!

  • Isolation, as in the example of China from about 1960 to 2000, which is now successfully emerging as a global economic superpower having isolated itself from the West for the past 4 decades.
  • A second solution is to break away at a time when the metropolis country is weak, as India did in Britain in the 1950s, following world war 2. India is now a rising economic power.
  • Thirdly, there is socialist revolution as in the case of Cuba. This, however, resulted in sanctions being applies by America which limited trade with the country, holding its development back.
  • Many leaders in African countries adopted dependency theory, arguing that and developing political movements that aimed to liberate Africa from western exploitation, stressing nationalism rather than neo-colonialism.
  • Associate or dependent development – here, one can be part of the system, and adopt national economic policies to being about economic growth such as
  • Import substitution industrialisation where industrialisation produces consumer goods that would normally be imported from abroad, as successfully adopted by many South American countries. The biggest failure of this, however, was that it did not address inequalities within the countries. ISI was controlled by elites, and these policies lead to economic growth while increasing inequality.

Criticisms of Dependency Theory

Some countries appear to have benefited from Colonialism – Goldethorpe (1975) pointed out that those countries that had been colonised at least have the benefits of good transport and communication networks, such as India, whereas many countries that were never colonised, such as Ethiopia, are much less developed.

Colonialism did not prevent India from developing

Modernisation theorists would argue against the view that Isolation and communist revolution is an effective path to development, given the well-known failings of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. They would also point out that many developing countries have benefitted from Aid-for Development programmes run by western governments, and that those countries which have adopted Capitalist models of development since World War Two have developed at a faster rate than those that pursued communism.

Neoliberalists would argue that it is mainly internal factors that lead to underdevelopment, not exploitation – They argue that it is corruption within governments (poor governance) that is mainly to blame for the lack of development in many African countries. According to Neoliberals what Africa needs is less isolation and more Capitalism.

Paul Collier’s theory of the bottom billion. He argues that the causes of underdevelopment cannot be reduced to a history of exploitation. He argues that factors such as civil wars, ethnic tensions and being land-locked with poor neighbours are correlated with underdevelopment.

Signposting/ Related Posts 

Evaluate explanations of development and underdevelopment put forward by dependency theorists – essay plan

World Systems Theory – kind of an updated version of dependency theory which is focussed more on the global system rather than country-country relationships.

The New Rulers of the World – summary of the documentary by John Pilger, which seems to be a pretty unambiguous dependency theory perspective on the role of the World Bank, the IMF, and Transnational Corporations in globalisation. The video focuses especially on their role in underdevelopment in Indonesia.

Sources/ Find out More

This Wikipedia article on Andre Gunder Frank provides a brief summary of his theory and links to his main publications.

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