Thread by @ingridharvold

Is dependency theory relevant today? If yes, what can we learn from it? Why was it dismissed?

That line of inquiry I started as an Econ PhD student at @NSSRNews has now culminated in a @DevandChg article!

Any feedback is very welcome. Here's a thread 👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

First of all, dependency theory as a body of research has often been bastardized and misrepresented. This has led to dismissals of the research on false grounds, as well as confusion regarding its main contributions. Hence the title of the article: "Beyond the Stereotype".

Second of all, there is vast disagreement within "dependency theory". Indeed it is not *a theory*, but a group of theories. So what outsiders think is internal inconsistency, is really just lively debate.

The question then is, what unifies the family of theories?

It took me a while to work out what the unifying elements of "dependency theory" are and how best to categorize the body of research. @nssylla's suggestion of using Lakatos' idea of a "research program" really helped with this!

According to Lakatos, research programmes are collec-tions of interrelated theories that have common hypotheses that form a "hard core". The hard core also establishes a methodology for scientific investigation. So then, the next question becomes, what's in the hard core?

I've identified 4 core elements of the "hard core" of dependency theory:

1) a global historical method
2) theorizing of the polarizing tendencies of global capitalism
3) a focus on structures of production
4) a focus on the specific constraints faced by peripheral economies.

The combination of those 4 elements is essential and it reflects a deep interdisciplinarity and a systemic approach, combined with attention to the particularities of peripheral economies.

As table 1 shows, there are many other theories that contain only 1 or a couple of these.

One reason for dependency theory's demise often brought up by critics is that the world has changed in such fundamental ways since the 1960s that dependency theory is now outdated. Examples used are often 1. The East Asian "miracle" and 2. the spread of global value chains.

While the argument that dependency theory is irrelevant because of empirical changes in the global economy is based on a misunderstanding of what dependency theory is, I figured that exploring precisely those changes might be the best way to demonstrate the program's relevance.

First of all, dependency theorists do not say it is *impossible* to industrialize or to transition to "high-income" status, but rather that it is difficult for developing countries because of the constraints they face related to colonial legacies and capitalist dynamics.

Second, dependency theory offers a fruitful way of understanding South Korea's development trajectory. It forces us to look beyond the "developmental state" literature to how development of capitalist production structures laid the foundations for industry that later emerged.

Korea actively managed its trade, largely following policy prescriptions of dependency theorists. In this way, the structures of production were ultimately shaped in a very different way in Korea than in other parts of the periphery at the time.

In addition, constraints often prevalent in peripheral industrialization that tend to lead to uneven development (e.g. technological dependence, foreign ownership and extraction, financial dependence) were mitigated in the case of Korea, in part because of geopolitical factors.

The second empirical development is the new international division of labour, characterized by the restructuring of global production networks, which has allowed many developing economies to move into manufacturing through participation in global value chains (GVCs).

Altho GVC analysis first emerged as an attempt to account for the structure and dynamics of the global economy within World Systems Theory, it has largely lost its macrohistorical perspective & now centres more on organizational analysis of industries.

The mainstream GVC literature tends to explain the possibilities for development as deceptively straightforward, often drawing on the experiences of the high-performing East Asian economies and assuming replicability.

The Dep research programme offers a fruitful alternative.

Dependency theorists were not primarily concerned with shifting from raw material exports to manufacturing (in contrary to what is often assumed). Also, despite the shift to (largely low-tech) manufacturing by some countries, many fundamental constraints remain.

Drawing on the work of Suwandi and others, I demonstrate that despite having among the world's largest labor share of GVCs, many important insights from dependency theory remain relevant for understanding the constraints of Indonesia's economy.

Beyond claims that the theory is outdated, there are also epistemological critiques levelled against dependency theory. These include questions of agency, tautology, economic reductionism. Generally, these critiques mostly apply to straw-man versions of dependency theory.

The critique of dep theory for ignoring race & gender relations is particularly pertinent in the wake of COVID-19 & the murder of George Floyd. There is an important part of the dependency lit that looks specifically at race - that the research program can & should build on.

I hope that this article can make a contribution towards the revival of dependency research. More broadly, I also hope it can clarify some misunderstandings about dependency theory.

However, as I argue in the paper, the dismissal of dependency theory was largely political, so the revival of dep theory will not happen simply through "clarifying misunderstandings". There is a need to break down the monolithic and Eurocentric core of mainstream Economics.

I am indebted to many colleagues and friends for feedback on this project. Of particular importance is my PhD supervisor @sanjaygreddy who provided the first encouragement & crucial feedback, and also @mariadyveke & @ushehweduk who worked on the dependency theory e-book with me.

Thanks also to @IliasAlami @cacrisalves @sfparr @megiraudo @Terry_Hathaway @anninak82 @KaiKodden @Powell_J_R @_kevinroesch @plbds @shaikhecon @nssylla, Jean Grugel & Daniel Torres for valuable comments. And final thanks to @AndrewM_Fischer & the team at @DevandChg!