The Latin American Dependency Theory Compared with Wallerstein's World System Theory

World System Approaches and Analyses

Abstract

The dependency theory which was developed in the mid 1960's in Latin America, has had a remarkable impact on various fields of social science. From it, a number of theories including Immanuel Wallerstein's World System, have been derived. For this reason, it is natural that many scholars see much similarity between the Dependency Theory and the World System Theory. However, despite this, the latter has not yet been widely accepted in Latin America. Latin American dependency theorists tend to take the world system as given and analyze the effects of dependency on Latin America as a whole or each country individually. How can this viewpoint be explained? Our hypothesis is that it is a logical consequence of their criticism against André Gunder Frank's original dependency theory which stresses the tight chain of center-periphery (metropolis-satellite) relations in which the satellite countries are destined to underdevelopment. Some Latin American dependency theorists reject such a simple view, pointing out differences between countries in the grade and effect of dependency. Wallerstein, on the contrary, tends to overlook national differences and emphasizes that the world system fundamentally conditions the process of change in each country; thus staying away from the general arguments of the Latin American dependency theorists. This paper will try to review some basic characteristics of the Latin American dependency theory, comparing them with Wallerstein's World System Theory.