(Rosen and Jones, 1979). For example, between 1985 and 1992 the net
transfer from developing to developed countries exceeded US$250 billion
(UNDP, 1992).
The profits which foreign investors and multinationals earned were often
used only in small part to finance new enterprises, adding to the sector
owned or controlled by foreign interests. Investment also tended predomi-
nantly to be in equipment, tools, plant and personnel imported from the
‘metropolitan’ country, thus contributing to the expansion of the metropoli-
tan market rather than the development of the post-colonial economy.
In the early post-independence years foreign technology tended to be cap-
ital intensive and labour saving. But as this is the only way for a developing
country to compete on the world market the high cost of such technology has
to be met despite the fact that it displaces an already over-abundant supply of
labour. Furthermore, a monopolistic control over advanced technology gives
the multinationals additional leverage through the supply of industrial
processes, machinery, patents, blueprints and spares.
The politics of neo-colonialism
Thepoliticalmanifestations of foreign economic involvement proved diffi-
cult to describe in concrete terms, except for those for whom politics was
merely an epiphenomenon of the economic. One reason for this was that
much contemporary political science accepted the constitutional formalities
as accurate representations of reality. Another was that the economy was
seen as a completely separate sphere or system of action. In 1973 Henry
Bretton, writing mainly about Africa but in terms that had wider applicabil-
ity, complained that ‘The degree of economic power at the disposal of the
decolonising state vis-à-visthe nominally independent one is not consid-
ered. The political influence that flows from that power is not even remotely
acknowledged.’ Liberal political science, represented most potently by the
functionalists, acknowledged that the formation of new states had been
profoundly influenced by the existence of old ones but did not allow that
conclusion to lead to ‘the logical question of how precisely an old state
might influence the formation of a new one’ (Bretton, 1973, pp. 22–4).
Even if this is thought too harsh a judgement, it will nevertheless probably
be accepted that political science had largely concerned itself with institution-
building during the decolonization process and the ‘preparations’ for inde-
pendence in those colonies where the relationships between nationalists and
the imperial powers could be described as such, involving more or less
78 Understanding Third World Politics