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Dependency and World System Theory

World system theory (so designated by one of its major practitioners, Immanuel Wallerstein, 1975) is derived from the intellectual heritage found in the critique of the developmentalist perspective of liberal political economy. This critique was articulated in the work of Paul Baran (1957), A. G. Frank (1967, 1969), Theot6nio Dos Santos (1971), and other dependency theorists (for a recent review and effort to defend the dependency perspective, see Cardoso, 1977). Recently, dependency has achieved a new status in the attention given to the "unequal exchange" theses of Arghiri Emmanuel (1972), Samir Amin's discussion (1974) of the "accumulation of world capital," and Immanuel Wallerstein's historical interpretation (1974, 1976) of the rise of a ''single capitalist world economy." The basic framework of a world systems theorist is strikingly elementary. The problematic to be explained is the fact that there exist different stages or levels of national development within what appears to be a unified global economy. The key to explaining this phenomenon, it is argued, is to specify the different political and economic roles which a state or geographic area plays within the overall system. This notion gives rise to the basic categories of analysis: core, semiperiphery and periphery; core and periphery; metropole and satellite. The real innovation of the world systems approach lies in the choice of the primary unit of analysis the capitalist world economy. All phenomena are to be explained in terms of their consequence for both the whole of the system and its parts. It is asserted that the internal class contradictions and political struggles of a particular state, like Rhodesia for example, can be explained as "efforts to alter or preserve a position within the world economy which is to the advantage or disadvantage of particular groups located within a particular state" (Wallerstein, 1975: 16). What is important to notice is the direction of generalization in world systems theory, for that is the key to understanding the approach. Specific events within the world system are to be explained in terms of the demands of the system as a whole. Actors are acting, not for their immediate concrete interests, but because the system dictates that they act. As Wallerstein (1975: *The author is a Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Binghamton.