Compare modernisation, dependency and other theories of development and evaluate their explanatory power

What this dot point is asking

SEAB wants you to compare the main theories that explain why countries develop unevenly, modernisation, dependency, and later neoliberal and people-centred approaches, and to evaluate their explanatory power. The central insight is that each theory locates the cause of underdevelopment differently (inside the country, in global relations, in markets, or in people's capabilities), so the most convincing account integrates internal and external factors.

The answer

Modernisation theory

Associated with Rostow's stages of economic growth, modernisation sees development as a linear path that every country can follow through stages: traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption. Development comes from investment, the adoption of modern (Western) values and technology, and industrialisation. It locates underdevelopment inside the country, as an early stage to be overcome.

Dependency and world-systems theory

Associated with Frank and Wallerstein, dependency theory sees underdevelopment as created and maintained externally. Poorer (periphery) countries are locked into a global economy dominated by richer (core) countries through colonial legacies, unequal trade, debt and reliance on exporting raw materials. On this view, the development of the core actively underdevelops the periphery. World-systems theory adds a semi-periphery of intermediate states.

Neoliberal approaches

From the 1980s, neoliberalism argued that development is best driven by free markets: trade liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation and a smaller state, the logic behind structural adjustment programmes. It harnesses market efficiency and global integration, but imposed austerity and rapid liberalisation often deepened poverty and inequality and cut social provision.

People-centred and capabilities approaches

Associated with Amartya Sen, these define development as the expansion of people's freedoms and capabilities, achieved through participation, empowerment, education, health and bottom-up projects. They restore the human goal of development, though they can be hard to scale and fund without wider growth.

Evaluating the theories

• Modernisation is criticised as ethnocentric, assuming a single Western path and ignoring external constraints.
• Dependency understates internal factors (governance, policy) and struggles to explain the rise of the Asian Tigers within the global system.
• Neoliberalism captures markets but neglects equity; people-centred approaches restore wellbeing but need economic underpinning.

A convincing account combines internal conditions and external relations, and market dynamism with capability-building and social provision.

Examples in context

Example 1. The Asian Tigers and Singapore. The rapid rise of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, through export-oriented industrialisation, investment in education and active state guidance, is often cited against dependency theory, since they developed strongly within the global economy. Singapore in particular shows how strategic integration with world trade, rather than withdrawal from it, drove development, while the strong state role complicates a purely neoliberal reading.

Example 2. Structural adjustment in the late twentieth century. Many lower-income countries undertook neoliberal structural adjustment programmes, liberalising trade, privatising and cutting public spending. Mixed and often harmful social outcomes, rising inequality and reduced services in some cases, illustrate the limits of a market-only approach and helped prompt the shift toward people-centred development thinking.

Try this

Q1. Outline the central claim of dependency theory. [2 marks]

• Cue. Underdevelopment is created and maintained by the exploitative integration of poorer periphery countries into a global economy dominated by richer core countries, through colonial legacies, unequal trade and debt.

Q2. Give one criticism of modernisation theory. [2 marks]

• Cue. It is ethnocentric, assuming all countries follow a single Western path, and it ignores external constraints such as colonial legacies and unequal trade that limit poorer countries.

Q3. Explain how the capabilities approach redefines development. [3 marks]

• Cue. It defines development as the expansion of people's freedoms and capabilities, what they are able to do and to be, rather than as income or output, achieved through health, education, participation and empowerment.