Dependency Theory and the Critique of Neodevelopmentalism in Latin America

• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211066531
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Mariano Treacy
• Subject Matter: Articles: Contemporary Theoretical Debates

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211066531

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 242, Vol. 49 No. 1, January 2022, 218–236

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211066531

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

218

Dependency Theory and the Critique of

Neodevelopmentalism in Latin America

by

Mariano Treacy

Translated by

Victoria Furio

A number of writers have pointed to the importance of recovering aspects of depen-

dency theory to explain the persistence of Latin American underdevelopment after 40

years of neoliberal hegemony and profound change and crisis in the world economy. Just

as dependency theory emerged in the 1960s in response to attempts to achieve development

in Latin America through neodevelopmentalist projects, its reappearance represents a

challenge to the development model and a theoretical and political necessity. In light of the

resurgence of neodevelopmentalism and prospects for progress and economic development

led by the state through economic growth with social inclusion, dependency theory allows

the evaluation of the potentialities, tensions, and limitations of this type of project.

Diversos autores han señalado la importancia de recuperar aspectos de los análisis de

la teoría de la dependencia para poder explicar la persistencia del subdesarrollo latino-

americano luego de 40 años de hegemonía neoliberal y de fuertes transformaciones y crisis

de la economía mundial. Así como en los años ’60 la teoría de la dependencia surgió como

una objeción a los intentos desarrollistas de alcanzar el desarrollo en Latinoamérica, con

proyectos neodesarrollistas el resurgimiento de los enfoques dependentistas representa a

la vez una impugnación al modelo de desarrollo y una necesidad teórica y política. Frente

al surgimiento del neodesarrollismo y de perspectivas de progreso y de desarrollo económico

dirigido desde el estado a través del crecimiento económico con inclusión social, la teoría

de la dependencia permite evaluar las potencialidades, tensiones y limitaciones de este tipo

de proyecto.

Keywords: Dependency theory, Dependency, Neodevelopmentalism, Globalization,

Latin America

Dependency theory, a robust theoretical and political construct in the field of

international political economy, is firmly established as a reference for critical

thinking in Latin America to identify the inherent consequences of capitalist

development in peripheral economies. Debates over the nature of the effects of

the expansion of capitalism in Latin America date back to the early twentieth

century, when the Peruvians José Carlos Mariátegui1 and Víctor Raúl Haya de

la Torre formulated a set of questions regarding the progressiveness of capital-

ist development, the coexistence and coordination of different means of

Mariano Treacy is a researcher and professor at the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento

in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Victoria Furio is a conference interpreter and translator located in

Yonkers, NY.

1066531LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211066531Latin American PerspectivesTreacy/DEPENDENCY THEORY AND THE CRITIQUE OF NEODEVELOPMENTALISM

research-article2021

Treacy/DEPENDENCY THEORY AND THE CRITIQUE OF NEODEVELOPMENTALISM 219

production, and, most important, the possibility or impossibility of capitalist

development in “backward” regions (Kay, 1989).

In order to cope with the changes of the post–World War I and World War II

years, many backward nations had adopted import-substitution industrializa-

tion development models. Industry was seen as a complement to traditional

exporting that would generate employment and an internal social cohesion

that would distance the masses from communist influence.

As H. W. Arndt pointed out, “since 1945 economic development of underde-

veloped nations, which had barely received cursory treatment at the end of

World War I, had become an accepted objective of national and international

policy of the developed countries” (Arndt, 1992: 142, quoted in Altamirano,

2001: 71). However, the concept of economic development did not become gen-

eralized until 1949, the year in which U.S. President Harry S. Truman, in his

inaugural address on January 20, proposed development and improvement in

underdeveloped areas through fair democratic trade that would extend the

benefits of scientific advances and technical progress to these areas, leaving the

age of imperialism behind. With the postwar period and the establishment of

the Bretton Woods system after 1945, the predominant discussion in academia

worldwide was about underdevelopment and, especially, the so-called under-

developed nations. The Latin American development theories that arose in the

postwar years posed the novel challenge of explaining the specific functions of

peripheral economies as part of the international division of labor in coordina-

tion with local and foreign political actors. Qualitative differences operated as

systemic and structural obstacles, and it was impossible to evaluate the possi-

bilities for development of the peripheral countries with the tools used for the

core countries (Prebisch, 1986).

Between 1948 and 1975 an “upsurge of thought in the regional social sciences

on the development of underdevelopment” emerged in Latin America and the

Caribbean (Nahón, Rodríguez, and Schorr, 2006: 6) that culminated in the

adoption of Latin American structuralism, based in the Economic Commission

for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as the paradigm of dominant

economic thought. Debate on the development of the peripheral economies or

delayed industrialization within this paradigm resulted in a surge in the pro-

duction of economic literature reflecting a certain consensus about the need to

industrialize in order to develop the forces of production in backward coun-

tries. The gradualism promoted by developmentalism2 as the mirror image of

this process began to face a series of obstacles, both economic and political, that

eventually produced a radical critique of structuralism (Arceo, 2011).

Dependency theories emerged in the geopolitical framework of a polarized

world and a questioning of theories of development and the developmentalist

experiment3 in Latin America. The originality of this approach consisted of

having questioned and set aside the view of underdevelopment and develop-

ment as independent phenomena. Dependency theory demonstrated that

peripheral capitalism did not follow an evolutionary line parallel to that of

metropolitan capitalism and consolidated a Latin Americanist and antistagist

analytical line.

Both structuralism and dependency theory identified characteristics specific

to Latin American economies and their relation to the global system that