Dependency theory’s argument is that in the core economies cultural,
legal and political institutions are the product of indigenous development in
the way that they are not in peripheral and particularly ex-colonial societies.
Here institutions have developed from those originally imposed from out-
side; the class structure of dependent societies is also more a reflection of
external economic interests than of the distribution of material resources
and interests within the country (Larrain, 1989, p. 180). What is significant
in Third World dependency is the representation in some general sense of
external foreign interests rather than a class structure – and political config-
urations representing it – which are purely contained within the borders of
that country.
But does this provide a firm analytic base for distinguishing dependent
from non-dependent politics? Class relations in poor countries, where the
rich benefit from mutual interests with the rich in rich countries, seem com-
parable to class relations in developed countries. So perhaps all societies are
in the pyramid of social, political and economic dominance with the apex
occupied by the most powerful capitalist country and the bottom by the
poorest countries. It is difficult to find some special dividing line horizon-
tally which separates dependent from independent economies and societies.
This debate has yet to be resolved.
Conclusion
The critique of neo-colonialist explanations and dependency theory can be
summarized as a doubt that dependence can be causally related to under-
development. Dependence is either so general that it fails to have any
explanatory value in the context of poor societies, or it arbitrarily selects
certain features of international capitalism to produce a definition of
dependence. Those features similarly do not allow the important distinc-
tions between rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, independent
and dependent to be made in the way that dependency theory wants to.
Nevertheless, dependency theory served an important function in the
analysis of development, especially in Latin America (Larrain, 1989,
pp. 193–200). Its emphasis on the weak and relatively dependent position of
the less advanced economies of the world was timely and a necessary
corrective of much development theorizing at the time, especially ideas
about unilinear economic development and ‘dual economies’ (Luton, 1976).
It called attention to the ideological implications of pluralistic and
structural–functional development theorizing, challenging the conventional
106 Understanding Third World Politics