Theories Of Development And Underdevelopement According to Third World Countries

THE DEPENDENCY THEORY OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT.
In it's earliest conception, dependency is noted as the obverse side of the theory of imperialism. Implicit in this definition is the notion that imperialism has two phases.
The first represents the colonial powers while the other represents the Imperialised or dependent countries. In this sense, theories of dependency were believed to have a potential of explaining social and economic processes in theImperialised or dependent countries. The above conception of dependency must have been influenced by the postulation of V.I. Lenin on imperialism.
As the first scholar to have used the term dependency, Lenin contended that capitalist imperialism is a manifestation of the struggle among colonial powers for economic and political domination as well as the division of the world. Lenin's obversation merely captures the nature of dependency as a logical manifestation of imperialism, but he does not give us an adequate insight for an indepth operationalization of the term.
Therefore, it is important for us to examine the various scholars perceptions of the concept of dependency. P.O Brien articulates the view that dependent countries are those who lack the capacity for autonomous growth, and they lack this because their structures are dependent ones.
This position seems to tally with that of Bill Warren who contends that "dependency represents the complex political economic relationship that bind the advanced capitalist countries of the cemtre and the Latin American countries of the periphery, such that the movement and structures of the former decisively determines those of the latter in a fashion somehow detrimental to the economic progress of the Latin American society."
The definition of dependency by Dos Santos is the most incisive and concise. It encapsulates the central ideas of most radical scholars in the area. According to Santos, the situation in which the economy of a certain country is conditioned by the development and expansion of another country, to which the former is subjected.
The relation of interdependency between two or more economies and between these and world trade assumes the form of dependency, when some countries can do this, only as a reflection of that expansion which can have either a positive or negative effect on their immediate development.
Dos Santos' position has been elaborated by Osvaldo Sunkel. In concrete terms, he observed that "foreign factors are not seen as external but as intrinsic to the system with manifold and sometimes hidden or subtle political, financial, economic, technical and cultural effect inside the underdeveloped countries. Thus, the concept of dependency links the post-war evolution of capitalism, internationally to the discriminatory nature of the local process of development as we know it.
Access to the means and benefits of development is selective, rather than spreading them equally across nations of the world, the process tends to ensure a self reinforcing accumulation or privilege for special groups as well as a continued for
So regardless of how one sees dependency, in essence, it implies a kind of parasitic relationship that exists between the highly industrialized countries and the less developed ones in a manner that ensures continuous advancement of the former to the detriment of the former.
The ORIGIN and aims of the dependency theory.
The theoretical and philosophical foundation of the underdevelopment paradigm could be traced to the works of such radical scholars as Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and V.I. Lenin. Their main work that has inspired subsequent theorists are the Communist Manifesto, The Critique of Political Economy, Capital and Imperialism; the highest stage of capitalism.
There are elaborate analysis of such topical issues as organic composition of capital, labor theory of value, Colonialism and imperialism, have exerted profound impact on the postulations of contemporary writers on dependency. 
Dependency theory arose in Latin America in 1960 as an alternative to the Modernisation theory. Prior to the emergence of the dependency perspective, endogenous paradigms had dominated sociological theorizing  about the possible causes of development and underdevelopment. The major trust of this scholarship was that backward parts of the world were experiencing absence of development due to internal factors ranging from lack of capital, adverse climate condition and absence of motivation to inferior culture.
One of the key agencies that acted as a midwife for the birth of the dependency paradigm was the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (UNECLA) which was headed by Argentine economist, Raul Predisch. The body played a formidable in the rupturing of the old thinking, i.e the modernization theory.
The theorist of the UNECLA argued that there was an immediate and direct link between changes in the industrialized countries of the center and the underdeveloped countries in the periphery. They substantiated this argument by contending that "Latin America had taken the role of supplier of raw materials and food stuff for industrial nations and in return, imported manufactured products."
This situation was regarded as disadvantageous to the former given the fact that it resulted in balance of payment deficit. The UNECLA advocated autonomous national development and import substitution strategy as viable policy option to stimulate development in Latin America countries.
The failure of the import substitution strategy as advocated by the ECLA to foster economic development on one hand and the failure of the modernization paradigm to offer appropriate or adequate mechanism for national development and on the other stimulated the emergency of dependency theory.