How Much Space is there for Political Agency in Dependent Economies? Reflections on Papers on Contemporary Development Inspired by Cardoso and Faletto’s Dependencia y Desarrollo en America Latina

Excerpt

Forty years ago, studies of international development were undergoing a radical transformation as modernization theory came under withering assault from the proponents of dependency theory. The most influential writer, for students and scholars who read mostly the English language literature, was the late Andre Gunder Frank. His work, notably Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (1967), formed the views of a generation of students in the 1970s, and is still studied very widely in courses on development theory. Frank’s views on the possibilities of development in the countries of the global ‘periphery’ that were being systematically ‘underdeveloped’ as a result of the way in which capitalist accumulation, driven by the countries of the ‘center’, took place, were bleak: the only way out was through autarky. There is quite strong similarity between Frank’s arguments and those of some contemporary writers, who also suggest that the possibilities of development for many poor countries are severely constrained, now by the forces of economic globalization. The rules under which the global economy operates, determined largely by the interests of international capital that is still centered in the global North, tightly constrain the policy space within which governments in the South can operate; and the autonomy and the capacities of states for pursuing independent courses of action are held to have been quite drastically reduced. …