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Dependency and World Systems Approaches

During the 1960s, dependency theory (Cardoso and Faletto 1979; Dos Santos 1971; Frank 1967) and world-system theory (Chase-Dunn 1998; Chirot and Hall 1982; Wallerstein 1974) emerged as competing approaches to development and successfully challenged modernization theory (Portes 1976; Valenzuela and Valenzuela 1978). These new theories highlight the importance of colonial legacies, imperialism, and neocolonial exploitation in explaining the contemporary underdevelopment of Third World countries. In place of culture and consensus, the analytical focus of dependency and world-system approaches centers around economic and political structures and conflicting interest groups. Rather than seeking explanations for underdevelopment in the functioning of internal institutions, these theories give causal priority to relationships of domination-subordination between "core" countries and the "periphery " (Galtung 1972). Dependency theorists rejected the notion that increased contact between core and periphery would foster the diffusion of modern values and argued instead that increased external contact would produce the "development of underdevelopment" (Frank 1967) because of the persistence of asymmetrical economic exchange relations between periphery and the more powerful center (Dos Santos 1971; Hechter 1975). On the level of development policy, dependency theorists suggested the reduction of links to the metropolis and the introduction of "autocentric" economic growth.

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