Dependency Theory

hi my name is Alan sense and I'm standing outside the Leo Institute for global issues at the University of British Columbia welcome to the global politics instructional video series in this series we're exploring a number of key concepts in the study of international relations and global politics today we are looking at dependency theory now dependency theory emerged in the 1960s and 1970s out of Central and South America but it was part of a larger movement that was asking a lot of questions about international relations at the time and one of those questions was why are so many countries in the world not developing now the traditional answer to the question was well that's because these countries are not pursuing the right economic policies or their governments are authoritarian and corrupt but dependency theorists want to know if that was all there was to it and they began to argue that in fact countries weren't developing around the world because the international system was actually preventing them from doing so that in fact this international system was exploitative it was characterized by the dominance of some countries over others so what I thought we'd do today is to look a little bit more at dependency theory and their argument let's begin ok dependency theory now there's many different ways of describing dependency theory and what I'm going to describe to you today is actually more of an assembly of different theories including world system theory historical structural Theory Neel Marxist theory there are components of all of those theories in dependency theory now dependency theorists first of all argue that there are a number of different kinds of states in the world and each of them forms a different function or performs a different function in the world economy first of all there are states that are at the center of the center and these are the richest most powerful countries the United States United Kingdom France and so on then there are countries that are on the periphery of the center these are modern industrialized wealthy countries like Canada for example or the Netherlands and perhaps Japan and these countries have a little less global power than the center countries do but it nevertheless still quite rich then you have countries that are at the center of the periphery these are countries that are still developing but they have a fair amount of wealth countries like South Africa or India or Brazil for example then you have countries that are on the periphery of the periphery and these are the poorest countries the Cambodia's of the Zambia's the El Salvador's and what dependency theorists argue is that there is an international division of labor between all of these countries and their argument is that the core countries the center of the center countries dominate in terms of industry in terms of technology there are the countries that have all of the research technology and capital intensive industries meanwhile countries in the periphery especially pretty much are characterized by resource extraction economies agricultural production and providing cheap labor and as a result the structure of the world economy is one in which the periphery of the center countries serve the economic interests of the richest countries the countries on the centre of the periphery serve the interests of both the core countries and the periphery of the center countries and naturally the countries on the periphery of the periphery they serve the economic interests of everybody else so it's sort of an all roads lead to Rome kind of situation in the international economy the periphery countries all serve the interests of the more wealthy countries the second argument that dependency theorists make is that there is a class distinction and what they mean by that is that in each of these different type of countries around the world there is a clear divide between the rich and the poor so I'm going to draw a small rich class and then the larger working class or the poor the masses if you like and this is the same in each of the different types of countries that exist around the world and what dependency theorists argue is that these rich people the political and economic elites of the countries around the world all cooperate with one another and they cooperate with one another to ensure that they stay in power and if they increase their own wealth so they collaborate with one another to maintain this system to keep the system the way it is the third argument made by dependency theorists is that all of this all of these structures the international division of labor the class distinctions and all the countries of the world all exist within a wider global system and this wider global system is characterized by global capitalism and what that means is that in this system liberal economic theory dominates theories of trade theories of Finance which of course all serve the interests of the core countries in addition multinational corporations and banks in the system are instruments of rich peoples in the core countries international institutions like the World Bank in the International Monetary Fund again all serve the interests of the richest countries and the richest peoples of the world even things like education systems of the global media also are structures that serve the interests of the most powerful countries and the richest people in the world and so as a result this entire system the International division of labor the class distinctions and global capitalism all serve the interests of the wealthy they don't serve the interests of developing countries they do not promote development or equal opportunity instead this system promotes dominance and exploitation and so from a dependency theory perspective how can States possibly develop in this kind of a system the system is actually designed to prevent them from developing and dependency theorists call this under development and so as a result the system promotes under development of countries around the world and this is why we are not seeing countries develop in the way that traditional economic theory describes okay that was dependency theory now dependency theory isn't as well-known as it once was but that may be a mistake because today dependency theorists have a lot to tell us about why there's so much poverty and inequality in world politics they make the same argument today that they would have back in the 1960s and 1970s that the international system actually prevents countries from developing I hope you enjoyed this video join me next time

Channel: allensens

Views: 468,514

Rating: 4.9219017 out of 5

Keywords: Clip3, Dependency, Theory, mov, HD

Id: JN6LlMY2ApQ

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 27 2012