What are the neo-Marxist dependency theories, and can any of them hold?
The end of the World War II introduced an era of economic expansion and polarization in the world (emergence of the Cold War), and it was in that light that American social scientists were encouraged to study the Third World nation-states with the intention to promote economic development and political stability in the Third World (So, 1990:17)1. However, scholars from countries targeted by this Modernization School of development started to develop their own theories, partly as a result of ‘sub-optimal’ results of policies based on the modernization theories, as well as concluding that imperialism in general “has actively underdeveloped the peripheral societies” (Martinussen, 1997:86) they are living in. Critique on the Modernization School first arose in Latin America as a response to the bankruptcy of the program of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). In short, the ECLA promoted protectionist policies together with industrialization through import subsid
