Dependency Theory

Andrew Hurrell

Dependency theory is a body of ideas about the role of developing countries within the global economic system, about the nature of development, and about patterns of unequal power. It dominated much Latin American social science (including the analysis of the region's international role) in the 1960s and 1970s. Its popularity was increased by the vociferous criticism in both North and South America of U.S. interventionist policies, especially the Vietnam War and the U.S. role in deposing the Salvador Allende government in Chile. Dependency theory formed one part of the broad critique of liberal and Western ideas of economic development (modernization theory), which argued that the less developed parts of the world could and would follow essentially the same growth path as the industrialized world and that participation in the global economy was fundamentally positive. More precisely, the emergence of dependency theory from the mid-1960s reflected both growing dissatisfaction with ...

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