micro-level (Higgott, 1983; Leys, 1996, pp. 48–51). It is too static and
unhistorical to explain successfully the distinctive elements of economic
and political development in backward countries, and the mechanisms of
social reproduction, modes of social transformation, and modes of politics.
Operating at such a high level of generality makes it difficult to focus on the
specifics of a particular country at a particular moment in history and how
important they have been to development prospects (Philip, 1990, p. 490).
Past politics and policy instruments in particular receive only cursory treatment
(O’Brien, 1975, p. 23). The size of a developing country’s population, its eth-
nic or linguistic composition, its degree of self sufficiency in natural resources
particularly energy, its physical location in relation to countries better endowed
in terms of population, technology or military threats – such factors make a
great deal of difference to the prospects for development but tend to be over-
looked by dependency theory. They cannot be described merely as features of
world capitalism or the chain or hierarchy of metropolitan–periphery relation-
ships. As factors affecting the room for manoeuvre which governments have
they would not disappear if the international capitalist system did not exist. So
any explanation which overlooks such details must be deficient (Seers, 1981).
The function of the state in Third World societies cannot be reduced to
external, international economic influences. Legacies of authoritarian gov-
ernment, ideologies of corporatism and populist nationalism, patterns of
patron–client relations, the aggregation of local interests, the internal evolu-
tion of social and political forces – all produce variable styles of state action
that are not wholly externally induced (Long, 1977, p. 91; Smith, T., 1979).
Hence the importance of considering the evidence supporting different
theories of the Third World state (in Chapter 5).
Hierarchy
Dependency theory has also been criticized for restricting the idea of a hier-
archy of domination or influence to relations between rich and poor coun-
tries. Critics have denied that there are qualitative as well as quantitative
differences between rich and poor countries which make their dependency
distinctive in international terms. Dominance, dependence, influence and
the inter-penetration and internationalization of capital apply just as much
at the core or centre of the world capitalist system as at the periphery (Kay,
1975, p. 104; Lall, 1975; Bernstein, 1979). Brewer refers to ‘interdepend-
ence’ and ‘dominance’ because ‘dependence’ implies that some countries
are economically independent, which is not true (Brewer, 1980, p. 178).
Neo-colonialism and Dependency 105