21. The ebbing of the Pink Tide or permanent underdevelopment? Dependency theory meets uneven and combined development
- Author:
- Felipe Antunes de Oliveira
- Publication Date:
- 05-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
- Abstract:
- Latin America is once again passing through a crisis. After initially showing promising results, the neodevelopmentalist strategy adopted in Brazil and Argentina has reached its limits. The attempt at 21st century socialism in Venezuela derailed, tearing the country apart. Finally, the neoliberal path dutifully followed by Mexico, Chile, Colombia and smaller countries perpetuated social inequalities, and is now menaced by President Trump's protectionist turn. The current Latin American crisis goes much beyond the reversion of the so-called "Pink Tide". It affects all ideological colours, raising again an old theoretical-political question that stood in the core of dependency theory: is development even possible in Latin America? The key to answer this question – a concept of development that captures non-converging transformation – was not available to Frank, Marini, Bambirra and Dos Santos, among other dependency theorists. Too easily conflating development with catching-up, they reached a dead end. Indeed, as they could see, Latin America was constantly changing, but not in the expected ways. In this paper, I suggest that the concept of uneven and combined development allows for a renewed engagement with dependency theory's core problem, by representing mixed forms of development as the norm, not the exception.
- Topic:
- Debt, Development, Economics, International Development, and Economic growth
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Colombia, Latin America, Venezuela, Mexico, and Chile