Revisiting Dependency and Development in the Age of Globalization

Does dependency theory no longer offer an analytical and conceptual framework for the study of underdevelopment under the dynamics of modern globalization and the new international division of labor? Has the emergence of newly industrialized countries and a rising proportion of higher value-added manufacturing in the Global South cast the notions of subordination, peripherality, and dependence into the dustbin of history? These questions are today answered affirmatively by a broad consensus. In contrast to this widely-held assertion in the current development discourse, this study aims to bring these notions back to critical development studies by offering an up-to-date and analytically valid theorization of dependency in today’s Global South. Taking the historical-structural dependency perspective as a point of departure, the study revisits the notion of dependent development by drawing on a set of conceptual insights derived from Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, Global Value Chain analyses, and a class-relational articulation of the developmental state. In doing so, the study shows how core and periphery activities have clustered in time and space, leading to polarization in today’s global economy, and how new forms of dependency have been spatially reproduced along hierarchically-structured global value chains through the interplay of transnational corporations, states, and classes.