Dependency And Third World
Dependency And Third World
By considering and studying Modernization and Dependency theories, development theorist are trying to conceptualize which of perspectives could more substantially describe Third World underdevelopment. In my preceding work I will critically evaluate tenets of both perspectives.
The two spheres of dependency paradigm economical and cultural dependence are in my opinion the major contributors to the Third World, particularly Africa’s underdevelopment. As Olayinka Sonaike has defined, “Economic dependence is a term that is widely used to portray the relationship of inequality between the underdeveloped countries and the advanced.” Economic dependency experienced by many African nations totally contradicts to the neoclassical theory of a harmonic among components of the global economy. However, in reality there is no evidence of such a harmony, in contrary dependence and exploitation of the Third World economies by the World leaders. Since many Third World nations are lacking inter-country market place, their economies are heavily relying on the economies of more advanced societies. This in turn gives Western societies a lot of control over the less developed nations’ economies. As the world capitalist expansion continues the robes of dependency are getting longer as well. What economic dependence does to the country is according to Offing “sucking of capital of the dependent countries”, so needed for the further domestic expansion. And this is evident in many Third World societies. The most successful manipulators was Western international conglomerates, supported by the government, they applied a variety of methods and techniques with a primary purpose of wealth maximization. Western nations, realizing their tremendous advantage in technology, and controlling the market for the intermediate goods produced from the raw materials and assembled, probably domestically into the final product, are externally regulate the level of resource utilization in the dependent economies, which in turn affects income distribution, social cohesion, and political stability. On the other hand, the export capacity affects distribution of National Income and the domestic standard of living. So, for most of the Third World countries National Income is determined and could be controlled by external factors. This is a one of the biggest pitfalls for the Third World countries on the way to liberalization. Another inadequacy of the dependency paradigm is a technological dependence “in which domestic technology is dependent on imported technology for its transformation.” This implies that external factors and decisions also determine the real level of modernization.
It is historically...