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A funny thing happened on the way to the market: thoughts on extending dependency ideas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Richard R. Fagen
Richard R. Fagen
Affiliation:
professor of Political Science at Stanford University.
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Extract

Despite the efforts of the editor to cast the theoretical net as widely as possible—to include an eclectic mix of structural and behavioral dimensions of the concept of dependence—the bulk of the writings in this volume respond in some fashion to what I have elsewhere called “the dependency way of framing the question of development and underdevelopment.” It could hardly be otherwise, for the majority of authors represented here have had their primary research experience in or on Latin America. And it is out of the Latin American developmental experience—and its multiple failures and frustrations—that the main body of dependency ideas has grown.

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Comment
Information
International Organization , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Winter 1978 , pp. 287 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1978

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References

1 “Studying Latin American Politics: Some Implications of a Dependencia Approach,” Latin American Research Review Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer 1977): 3–26.Google Scholar In general, the word “theory” should be used with caution when discussing dependencia. Epistemologically— as suggested by the phrase “way of framing”—dependency theory is in reality a conceptual framework, a set of concepts, hypothesized linkages, and above all an optic that attempts to locate and clarify a wide range of problems. With overtones of anger—and even desperation at times—the literature sought to move to the center of attention aspects of reality currently unattended to in developmental thinking. It sought to recover for both thought and action the dark, exploitative, asymmetrical, and difficult-to-change elements in the developmental equation. As such, the literature was in part counterparadigmatic in its origins—an alternative way to model or represent the causes, consequences, and persistence of underdevelopment. (Ibid., p. 7).

A very useful discussion of the epistemological and methodological requirements of dependency “theory” can be found in the essay by Duvall, included in this volume.

2 As Duvall points out, however, the entire McGowan-Smith cross-sectional exercise, and others like it, are fatally flawed by errors of conceptualization and methodology.

3 These linkages are, in general, more clearly seen (if not always clearly analyzed) in the Spanish and Portuguese language literature on dependencia. For complex reasons, not the least of which is the overall weakness of Marxist thought and scholarship in the United States, the ultimate inseparability of capitalist relations of production and distribution, nationally and internationally, is only dimly sensed and poorly understood in the US academic community (but not so poorly understood, one might add, in business and government).

4 These three topics are obviously not exhaustive. They are simply three which seem to me particularly relevant to the subjects treated in this volume. Furthermore, on the pages that follow, reference will be made almost exclusively to conditions and problems in the periphery—for that is where the dependencia literature and the essays presented here take us. It should be emphasized, however, that analogous work is very much warranted and needed on the political economy of nations of the center—both those that are openly capitalist and those that call themselves socialist.

5 See, for example, McGowan and Smith, Table 5, where they present the correlations of 23 indicators of economic performance with four indicators of “dependence.” Even their indicators of economic welfare (a subset of the performance indicators) are aggregate or per capita, not distributional, measures.

6 “Energy, Raw Materials, and Development: The Search for Common Ground,” Speech delivered December 16, 1975. (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

7 Chenery, Hollis, et al., Redistribution with Growth (London: Oxford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar It should be noted that the title of the book is misleading. Chenery and his associates are not talking about redistribution in the strict sense of taking from some to distribute to others. They are talking about more equitable patterns of distributing future increments of growth.

8 Admittedly, ideas about the non-viability (in terms of solving critical problems) of peripheral capitalism are not too well developed in the dependency literature, but that they are implied when not made explicit can be grasped by reading essays such as Fernando Cardoso, Henrique, “Associated Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications,” in Stepan, Alfred, ed., Authoritarian Brazil (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973),Google Scholar and Sunkel, Osvaldo, “Transnational Capitalism and National Disintegration in Latin America,” Social and Economic Studies (Jamaica) Vol. 22, No. 1 (03 1973): 132–76.Google Scholar

9 The partial exception to this generalization is Gereffi who discusses the somewhat pitiful, late-in-the-game attempts of the government to ensure that peasants engaged in the cultivation of barbasco receive some larger fraction of the value created by its chemical transformation. But in general, Gereffi concentrates on the reasons why the host country and local capital never succeeded in capturing much of the “action” generated by the steroid hormone industry. He also does not pay much attention to the “academic” question of what difference it would have made if the host government or national capital had been more successful—and who would have benefited therefrom.

11 In this section I have drawn freely from a much longer presentation of these ideas in “Equity in the South in the Context of North-South Relations,” in Diaz-Alejandro, Carlos, Fagen, Richard R., Fishlow, Albert, and Hansen, Roger D., Rich and Poor Nations in the Global Economy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).Google Scholar

11 As persuasively argued by even the most liberal neo-classicists, the function of the market is efficiency in the allocation of resources and rewards, not equitable distribution. In fact, it is quite vigorously argued at certain points in neo-classical theory that increments of new income should accrue disproportionately to certain sectors of the population (entrepreneurs and/or big consumers) so that savings, investment, demand, and ultimately growth will be maximized. The concepts of “equity” and “equitable distribution” refer in what follows to developmental patterns which lead to the amelioration of the linked problems of poverty, maldistribution, and reduced life chances.

12 I focus on the equity oriented reform state because it is, for obvious reasons, the most interesting case. The more reactionary peripheral governments make little serious claim to a commitment to the newer developmental goals.

13 Both the Mytelka and Gereffi case studies illustrate many aspects of this process, even though that was not necessarily their intention. Additionally, this perspective helps to explain why simply passing production of certain key goods into the hands of the state, while the basic structure of production and distribution remains intact, makes little difference (and may even result in new inefficiencies and inequities).

14 For a prescient analysis of the Peruvian regime, once considered to be the most “progressive” in Latin America outside of the Cuban, see Cotler, Julio, “The New Mode of Political Domination in Peru,” in Lowenthal, Abraham, ed., The Peruvian Experiment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975).Google Scholar During 1976, the Peruvian state clearly “adjusted” to certain “new realities,” dropping much of the distributional rhetoric and programmatics of earlier years.

15 See, on this topic, Hansen, Roger D., “The Political Economy of North-South Relations: How Much Change?” International Organization Vol. 29, No. 4 (Autumn 1975), particularly pp. 939 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Note that no argument to the effect that developmental strategies will change is being made. Dependent, peripheral capitalism is still viable as a developmental strategy, at least in the short run, and particularly if liberally admixed with repression as it so frequently is. What is being argued is its non-viability as a human-welfare producing way of organizing economy and society. Also note that whatever the desirability of socialist solutions to these problems, the argument as presented includes no predictions of their “inevitability.”

17 One of the most serious and ambitious attempts to analyze these asymmetries and dynamics as if there were no differences in center/periphery relations under capitalism and under socialism is Galtung, Johan, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” Journal of Peace Research No. 2 (1971): 81–117.Google Scholar See also his “Conflict on a Global Scale: Social Imperialism and Sub-imperialism—Continuities in the Structural Theory of Imperialism,” World Development Vol. 4 (03 1976): 153–65.Google Scholar For a relatively standard scolding of dependency theorists for failing to consider “dependence” under socialism, see Ray, David, “The Dependency Model of Latin American Underdevelopment: Three Basic Fallacies,” Journal of Interamerkan Studies and World Affairs Vol. 15 (02 1973): 4–20.Google Scholar For one of the few attempts to meet these criticisms head on, see Gilbert, Guy J., “Socialism and Dependency,” Latin American Perspectives Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1974): 107–23.Google Scholar For our purposes, the relevance of Gilbert's analysis is weakened, however, by (1) his focus on the relationship between the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries, and (2) his theoretical concern with the problem of aggregate growth.

18 As is widely recognized, the Cuban case is somewhat atypical because the massive and sustained hostility of the US conditioned Cuban ties with the USSR very profoundly. One would hope, for example, that the newly emerging web of international relations of Angola and Vietnam would not be so conditioned. One must also be careful of atypical cases at the other extreme. The oft-cited self-reliance and autonomous (almost autarkical) development patterns of China, based as they are on the mainland's immense resource base, scale, diversity, and cultural traditions, are not going to be the common lot of socialist experiments in other less developed countries. Cuba's international relations, for all their particularities, are closer than China's to the modal pattern that is likely to emerge. For more on the Cuba-USSR linkages, see Fagen, Richard R., “Cuba and the Soviet Union,” Wilson Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 1 (Winter 1978).Google Scholar

19 A book length study which implies an argument of this sort, even when it is not explicitly stated, is Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, Cuba in the 1970s: Pragmatism and Institutionalization (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974).Google Scholar For a compatible, updated perspective, see Gonzalez, Edward and Ronfeldt, David, Post-Revolutionary Cuba in a Changing World (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, December 1975).Google Scholar This non-classified report, prepared for the Assistant Secretary of International Security Affairs, Department of Defense, bears the identification number R-1844-ISA.

20 For lack of space I am not attempting to deal with issues of democratic governance as they have arisen in the Cuban developmental scenario—or elsewhere for that matter. In the Cuban case, systematic attention to what I at one time called the “subculture of local democracy” [understood as participatory forms appropriate to socialist construction, see “Cuban Revolutionary Politics,” Monthly Review Vol. 23 (04 1972): 25–48]Google Scholar is relatively recent. In any event, until this process—which since 1974 has been focused on the elections to “popular power”—is more fully developed and understood, it is somewhat premature to pass judgment on issues of democratic governance in Cuba. For more information on popular power and related questions, see Casal, Lourdes, “On Popular Power: The Organization of the Cuban State During the Period of Transition,” Latin American Perspectives Vol. 2, No. 4 (Supplement, 1975): 78–88Google Scholar; and Valdes, Nelson P., “Revolution and Institutionalization in Cuba,” Cuban Studies Vol. 6, No. 1 (01 1976): 1–37.Google Scholar

21 In their search for appropriate technology, the Cubans have held discussions with British, Western European, and Japanese firms. Not only service contracts are under discussion, but also joint ventures leading to manufacturing installations on Cuban soil.