The Theoretical Emergence of Dependency Theory

After World War II, the vast number of Asian, African, and Latin American countries previously colonized by the Eurocentric countries successively gained political independence and established nation-states with independent sovereignty. However, analyzed economically, these countries were either underdeveloped or economically attached to the developed Western countries. The Dependency Theory emerged as an economic explanation for this state of affairs in the world economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Dependency Theory has been widely developed, and it can be said that it has become a radical doctrine in the contemporary Western school of development economics theory.

Dependency theory was first proposed by Argentine scholar Raul Prebisch (raulprebisch) in the 1960s and 1970s. The theory sees a relationship of dependence, exploitation and exploitation between the vast number of developing countries and developed countries. There is a center-periphery level in the world economy. The developed capitalist countries constitute the center of the world economy, while the developing countries are at the periphery of the world economy, exploited and controlled by the developed countries. This theory is one of the important theoretical schools of neo-Marxism.