Introduction: The term “developing countries” refers to countries located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Several labels have been applied to these countries, including underdeveloped countries, developing countries, Third World countries, and countries of the Global South, among other terms. These countries share several characteristics. Economically, they are marked by low average per-capita income, unequal income distribution, dependence on agriculture, and specialization in producing and exporting primary raw materials. Socially, they are characterized by low educational and cultural levels among citizens, the prevalence of tribalism, clan-based identities, and inherited traditional customs, along with high birth rates. Politically, developing countries are characterized by the absence of democracy, low levels of political participation, political instability, weak legitimacy of ruling regimes, governments’ inability to meet the needs of the public, political dependency, lack of national integration, and the prevalence of military coups. Important questions emerged about the best ways to improve the conditions of these countries and lift them out of poverty and underdevelopment. Several approaches arose in response. Within the context of competition and the Cold War between the Western capitalist bloc and the Eastern socialist bloc, theories of development and change began to take shape. In the 1940s, supporters of capitalism began laying the theoretical foundations of progress and modernity, which later developed into what became known as the modernization school. In contrast, the views of advocates of modernization and capitalism sparked extensive debate among Marxists and thinkers from the Third World, who saw the propositions of modernization theorists as a call for developing countries to become dependent on their former colonial powers.^([1]) While these thinkers rejected the propositions of modernization advocates, they engaged in in-depth discussions about, on the one hand, the general characteristics shared by developing countries, and, on the other, the negative effects of their connection to Western imperialist states and of unequal exchange between developed countries and the Third World. These discussions later developed into what became known as dependency theories. In the following pages, we will explain these two theories in some detail.   Firstly:: Modernization Theory By the end of the Second World War, it had become clear that, despite developing countries’ ties to colonial capitalist states, many of them had not been able to achieve an adequate level of the desired development. This raised many questions about the usefulness of ties to capitalist countries in the post-independence period, prompting some Western thinkers… ^([2]) to formulate what came to be known as Modernization Theory. Modernization Theory had two main objectives:: First: To explain why the poorest countries fail to develop, focusing on the cultural and economic conditions that may constitute “barriers” to development. Second: To provide a non-communist solution to poverty in the developing world by proposing that economic change within capitalism, together with the introduction of Western values and culture, could play a central role in achieving modernization. The basic assumptions of the modernization school:: The modernization school is based on a number of assumptions, including:

• The main cause of underdevelopment in developing countries is the presence of cultural and economic barriers that prevent traditional societies from progressing. These barriers include the dominance of traditional values that hinder genuine economic growth and change, as well as religious beliefs and social traditions that resist change.
• There are also economic barriers that hinder development in developing countries, such as weak infrastructure, lack of technology, insufficient workforce skills, and a shortage of capital within the country.
• Politically, developing countries are characterized by fragmentation and internal division—what is known as a crisis of national integration—as well as closed political elites, the absence of political participation, political instability, lack of legitimacy, and reliance on instruments of coercion and repression.
• Western culture is the reason behind the development seen in advanced countries. Modern values prevail in these societies, inspiring social change and economic growth. Policies in these countries are made on a rational basis, weighing costs and benefits. They also enjoy freedoms that lead to innovation and creativity, as well as plural political structures, broad political participation, and a departure from fatalistic views of the world.
• The modernization school proposes following the same development policies adopted by today’s advanced Western countries, because development proceeds in a linear direction and all countries pass through the same stages of progress and growth.
• To achieve the desired development in developing countries, certain resources and capacities must flow from advanced industrialized countries to developing countries. The resources and capacities required for growth fall into four main areas: capital; modern Western technology and the skills associated with it; institutional development, meaning the establishment of institutions resembling Western capitalist institutions; and the spread of the cultural and behavioral values and characteristics that distinguish capitalist society in developing countries.

In this context, Walt Rostow states: ^([3]) Development is an evolutionary process through which countries pass in five stages:

• The stage of traditional society.: At this stage, a backward agricultural economy prevails, relying on primitive means of production and aiming at self-sufficiency. There is little surplus wealth available for investment and limited technological and industrial capacity, along with cultural barriers to development. Traditional institutions, such as the family and tribe, play a central role in the state’s social organization. The value system is based on fatalism and resistance to change. This stage is relatively long and marked by extreme slowness.
• The preconditions for take-off stage.: During this stage, tendencies toward transformation begin to emerge in society. Although it does not differ greatly from the first stage, Western support—through aid and expertise, along with improvements in infrastructure and communications—prepares society for take-off and enables it to take the initiative.
• The take-off stage.: During this stage, the obstacles to progress that prevailed in the two previous stages disappear, and new modern practices become the norm. Profits are reinvested in infrastructure, a new class of entrepreneurs emerges, and urban areas expand. The country shifts from producing merely to meet its own needs to exporting its production to other countries, generating further wealth that strengthens its investment capacity.
• The maturity stage.: During this stage, the country has completed the growth of all economic sectors and has succeeded in raising production levels, with a noticeable increase in the technological capacity of the domestic economy and the establishment of many basic industries, such as electronics and chemical industries. At this stage, Rostow says, there is a marked shift from rural areas to cities, along with an increase in the proportion of technicians and skilled workers.
• The stage of high mass consumption.: At this stage, the country has achieved a substantial degree of progress. It produces more than it needs and therefore turns to exports. The population’s economic conditions improve, incomes rise, and people begin purchasing consumer goods, increasing average per-capita consumption of such goods. Intellectual, literary, and artistic interests also emerge during this period, and production in these areas increases as well.

Critiques of Modernization Theory: Modernization Theory has been criticized on several grounds, including:

• The term “modernization” itself is among the most complex terms. The modernization discussed by the West presupposes Westernization as a necessary, fundamental, and inevitable condition for development. This claim is open to serious doubt from every angle. The economies of the Asian Tigers combined elements of traditional culture with Western capitalism, yet still achieved high growth rates that were considered among the fastest in the world during recent decades.
• The modernization school assumes that underdeveloped countries need assistance from external forces, especially experts from abroad. This diminishes the role of local knowledge and initiatives, and implies that people in developing countries are incapable of creativity and innovation and unable to address their own problems. This amounts to a form of colonizing minds and seeking to render them paralyzed and incapable of positive thinking.
• Western interventions did not produce any real form of development. Instead, they led to the corruption of government officials, who did not direct the funds provided by the West toward productive projects; rather, the money went into their own pockets. The resulting debts continued to burden people in developing countries. A large portion was also used to purchase instruments of repression to silence public voices—what has come to be known as “odious debt.” Even projects that were established, such as mining and forestry projects, led to environmental destruction. Likewise, dams built in some of these countries resulted in the forced displacement of citizens, with little or no compensation.
• It is difficult to prove the validity of the historical stages proposed by Rostow; therefore, they amount to no more than assumptions carrying substantial ideological implications.
• Rostow treats underdevelopment as merely a matter of temporal delay, ignoring the histories and particular circumstances of developing countries, as well as their differing positions on the scale of development.
• Rostow overlooked the principal factor that enabled Western capitalist countries to take off: colonialism. The colonial powers’ plundering of the resources of developing countries created their opportunities for growth, and it was the same factor that led to the underdevelopment of Third World countries.

Secondly:: Dependency Theory: As a reaction to the propositions of the modernization school, what came to be known as Neo-Marxism, or Radical Political Economics, emerged at the beginning of the 1960s. Within this new orientation, Dependency Theory took shape. This trend was reflected in the writings of Paul Baran, André Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Charles Bettelheim, Arghiri Emmanuel, Immanuel Wallerstein, and others. The first to study and examine the issue of underdevelopment was Paul Baran, an American Marxist economist. Baran believed that underdevelopment was produced by capitalism, rather than by the modes of production prevailing in developing countries before capitalism. This is because the development of capitalism divided the entire world into two parts: advanced capitalist countries and underdeveloped capitalist countries. The interaction between them takes place on three levels: trade, the movement of surplus, and political domination. According to Baran, trade provides cheap raw materials to advanced industrial countries. In order to preserve the dependence of developing countries, advanced countries seek to obstruct industrial growth in underdeveloped countries and transfer surpluses, in the form of profits, to advanced countries. To ensure the flow of these surpluses, advanced countries planted and supported governments in underdeveloped countries that encouraged foreign investment and obstructed or halted local development. To demonstrate the negative role of ties to capitalist countries, Baran compared India and Japan. He concluded that India remained economically underdeveloped because British colonialism plundered and exploited its resources and wealth, whereas Japan was able to become a major capitalist power because it remained independent. Although Baran was an early and insightful analyst of underdevelopment and its causes, his views and ideas remained confined to academic circles until André Gunder Frank… ^([4])developing and applying them to analyze the situation of Latin American countries and the causes of their underdevelopment. The ideas of Baran and Frank were further developed into what became known as Dependency Theory through the contributions of Arghiri Emmanuel and Samir Amin, who formulated the theory of “unequal exchange,” aimed at analyzing and explaining underdevelopment in economic terms. As noted earlier, the American sociologist of German origin, André Gunder Frank, sought to analyze conditions in Latin America on the basis of Dependency Theory. Frank argued that developing countries failed to develop not because of the “internal obstacles to development,” as modernization theorists claimed, but because the advanced West systematically sought to keep them underdeveloped, leaving them in a state of dependency. Frank stated that the global capitalist system emerged in the sixteenth century and gradually drew Latin America, Asia, and Africa into an unequal, exploitative relationship with developed European states. The global capitalist system consists of two sides: wealthy European countries representing the “center,” and poor countries representing the “periphery.” Through this unequal relationship, advanced and wealthy countries are able to exploit peripheral countries because of their superior economic and military power. Colonialism is a process by which a stronger state controls the territory of another state, politically dominating the colonized country and exploiting its resources for its own benefit. Under colonial rule, colonies are regarded as an integral part of the mother country rather than as independent entities in their own right. Colonialism is fundamentally linked to the process of “empire-building,” or what is called imperialism. According to Frank, the main period of colonial expansion was from 1650 to 1900, when European powers—led by Britain—used superior maritime and military technology to conquer and colonize vast regions of the world. During that period, European powers treated the rest of the world as a source from which to extract raw materials and, consequently, wealth. For example, Portugal and Spain extracted enormous quantities of gold and silver from colonies in South America, while Belgium benefited greatly from rubber extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The examples are countless. In other parts of the world, where there were no raw materials to extract, European colonial powers established plantations in their colonies. Each colony produced different agricultural goods for export to the colonial power. As colonialism developed, different colonies became specialized in producing different raw materials, depending on climate: bananas and sugar cane from the Caribbean; cocoa from West Africa; coffee from East Africa; tea from India; and spices from Indonesia. To establish plantations and extract the required resources, colonial powers set up local systems of government to organize labor and maintain social order. At times, colonizers used brute force to achieve this; however, they also adopted a more efficient tactic: employing willing local citizens to administer local government on behalf of colonial powers and rewarding them financially, in order to maintain peace and ensure the continued flow of resources from colonial territories. This led to enormous social changes in colonized regions. Some contemporary dependency theorists believe that these policies reinforced divisions among ethnic groups and planted the seeds of ethnic conflict in the years following independence from colonial rule. In Rwanda, for example, the Belgians strengthened the position of the Tutsi minority, enabling it to inherit colonial power and control the Hutu majority. Colonial powers sought to support certain tribal groups in Africa over others. The criterion they used was these groups’ attitude toward the colonial system, in addition to the degree of strength or weakness of the tribal group itself. As a result, certain privileged groups emerged, such as the Creoles in Sierra Leone, the Baganda in Uganda, the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Barotse in Zambia, and the Issa in Djibouti. Benefiting from the status granted to them by colonialism, these groups were able to attain power after the colonizers left. Other ethnic groups, however, refused to submit to these privileged groups and “began to view any policies or programs put forward by the central government to achieve national integration as nothing more than a call for these groups to transfer their ethnic loyalties to loyalty toward the dominant group to which the head of state belongs…” ^([5]). This colonial policy created a state of “ethnic sensitivity” between privileged and dominant groups on the one hand, and other groups deprived economically, socially, and politically on the other. As a result, all efforts by national elites to create a shared national consciousness failed, because these colonial policies created a crisis of trust among these groups. Thus, colonialism was able to plant the seeds of division and discord within the national community. Through a carefully designed strategy, it encouraged ethnic differences and gave them opportunities to grow. Some argue that the policy of indirect rule, especially as practiced by British colonial authorities, was fundamentally intended to allow ethnic conflicts to develop. ^([6]). Within the overall objective of European colonialism—namely, exploiting colonized regions as reservoirs of cheap raw materials—colonizers, whenever possible, concentrated productive projects in coastal areas. They turned them into plantations for cash crops and mining centers in order to exploit them to the greatest possible extent, due to their proximity to export ports and transportation routes. Consequently, major projects were concentrated in coastal cities, while inland areas were, in most cases, left without such projects. Coastal cities that had existed before colonialism continued to grow and prosper during the colonial period because they served as centers of import and export, while inland cities neglected because of their location declined. To facilitate the transport of these products, colonialism also extended transportation lines more extensively in coastal areas than in inland regions. Colonial administrative centers were established in these areas to oversee the shipment and export of products. At the same time, areas near administrative centers were granted some health-care and educational services, while remote inland areas were deprived of such services. This created new disparities in education, health, and public services generally. Colonialism destroyed local economies that had been self-sufficient and independent, replacing them with monoculture economies geared toward exporting a single product to the mother country. This meant that populations who had previously succeeded in growing their own food and producing their own goods became dependent on wages earned from growing and harvesting sugar, tea, or coffee for export to Europe. As a result, some colonies became effectively dependent on colonial powers for food imports. This naturally generated further profits for colonial powers, since this food had to be purchased with the meager wages received by the colonies. The wealth flowing from Latin America, Asia, and Africa into European countries provided the funds needed to begin the Industrial Revolution. This enabled European countries to start producing higher-value manufactured goods for export, further accelerating the wealth-generating capacity of colonial powers and increasing inequality between Europe and the rest of the world. Manufactured goods eventually reached the markets of developing countries, further undermining local economies and their capacity to develop on their own terms. A good example is India in the 1930s and 1940s, where cheap imports of British-manufactured textiles undermined local textile industries—a development strongly opposed by Gandhi. In general, the fundamental assumptions of Dependency Theory can be summarized as follows: 1. Progress and underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin. Underdevelopment was not an inherent feature of these countries; rather, it emerged at the same moment as progress in capitalist countries, because the underdevelopment of developing countries resulted from development in the capitalist center. 2. The colonial period witnessed the plundering of developing countries’ resources and their transfer to capitalist centers. This led to progress in capitalist countries and underdevelopment in the Third World. 3. There is an imbalance between the center—capitalist countries—and the periphery—developing countries. The emergence and worldwide expansion of the capitalist system created the necessary conditions for underdevelopment in the Third World. 4. There is an alliance of interests between external colonial powers and the forces controlling affairs within developing countries. Political and economic elites in developing countries collude with capitalism in global centers to achieve their common interests at the expense of developing countries’ progress. The strategy of the center is based on creating or supporting particular forces that reinforce dependency, facilitate capitalist penetration into these countries, and integrate them into the global capitalist market. 5. The most underdeveloped regions today are those that had the closest relationships with the centers of the global capitalist system when it was formed at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 6. The presence of multinational corporations in developing countries does not contribute to their growth and development, because these companies transfer the greater part of their profits to their headquarters in advanced countries. They invest only a small proportion of the profits gained through their commercial activities in developing countries. 7. Advanced countries work hard to keep developing countries in a state of dependency in order to ensure the continued flow of their interests amid those countries’ underdevelopment. There is a certain ceiling on development in developing countries that they are not permitted to exceed, even if this requires the use of military force. ^([7]) . Neocolonialism: By the 1960s, most colonies had achieved independence. However, European countries continued to treat developing countries as sources of raw materials and cheap labor, and as markets for their manufactured products. The economic exploitation of developing countries also continued through neocolonialism after European powers had failed to maintain direct political control over the countries they had previously occupied in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Frank identifies three main forms of neocolonialism::They are: First: Trade arrangements continue to benefit Western countries, while developing countries remain economically dependent on exporting primary products, such as agricultural crops including coffee, tea, and others. Second: The growing dominance of transnational corporations in exploiting labor and resources in poor countries. Third: Western aid money is another means through which wealthy countries continue to exploit poor countries and keep them dependent, because aid is often tied to several conditions—most importantly, that these countries open their markets to Western companies. Therefore, proponents of this theory hold that dependency is not merely a stage but a permanent condition. The only way developing countries can escape dependency is by leaving the capitalist system altogether. Within this strategy, there are different paths to development:

• Isolation, as in the case of China, which isolated itself from the West for four decades—from 1960 to 2000—then emerged onto the world stage as a global economic power.
• Separation at a time when the colonizing state is weak, as India did with Britain in the 1950s, after the Second World War. India is now a rising economic power.
• Socialist revolution, as in the case of Cuba. This led to U.S. sanctions that restricted trade with it, negatively affecting its development and causing a clear decline.

Many leaders in African countries adopted Dependency Theory and sought to implement national economic policies for growth based on industrialization to replace imports from abroad. This policy was also successfully adopted by several South American countries. Its greatest failure, however, was that it did not address inequalities within those countries, where class disparities became strikingly widespread. Perhaps the African case most strongly confirms what proponents of the dependency school argued, since European practices in Africa caused profound economic, social, and psychological harm. Western capitalism was built on the plundering of African resources, cheap African labor, and the use of African markets for exporting European manufactured goods. In terms of resource extraction, Europeans systematically plundered the continent’s resources and minerals. Portuguese ships focused on extracting gold from West Africa, in addition to exporting gum from Senegal, timber from Sierra Leone, and ivory from Mozambique.^([8]) Regarding the use of Africans as cheap labor, Africans worked for extremely low wages. Racist theories emerged that demeaned Africans, and their aim, as Marx observed, was to justify paying two different wages to two people doing the same work—one African and the other European. “Wherever European settlers were present in significant numbers, wage disparities could clearly be observed: Moroccan and Algerian workers earned 16% and 20%, respectively, of the wages of their European counterparts.”^([9])The working class in Africa suffered harsh conditions. For example, hard labor in South African mines during the colonial period led to the spread of dangerous epidemics among workers because of poor working conditions and the lack of health services. A 2012 tuberculosis mission report on shantytowns in South Africa stated: “It is rare to find a family without at least one member suffering from tuberculosis or dying from it… Hospital services are so inadequate that patients are sent away to die there and spread infection. In some districts, a single doctor must treat 40,000 people. Indigenous residents are required to pay treatment costs, with no facilities available for poor patients, and 65% of indigenous children die before reaching the age of two.” ^([10])At the same time, Europeans routinely exported goods that had already been produced and used in Europe, such as Dutch linen textiles, Spanish iron, English tin, Portuguese wine, German guns, and Venetian glass beads. They were also able to ship goods that were unsellable in Europe—such as worn-out fabrics, old clothing, and obsolete weapons—to Africa.^([11]) . Critiques of the Dependency School: The dependency school has been criticized on several grounds, including::

• It focused on external factors and their impact on the development process, claiming that weak or stalled development results from a single factor—the external one. It therefore neglected internal factors that may cause underdevelopment, such as limited capital and the absence of liberalism.
• It overlooked the role of local elites and domestic economies in these countries’ chronic underdevelopment, as well as the role of corruption and patronage in holding developing countries back.
• By resorting to broad generalizations and focusing on economic relations within the international capitalist system, Dependency Theory overlooked relationships that may be more important, such as the relationship between the state and society and the impact of its nature on economic development.

[1]  Thomas C. Patterson, Change and Development in the Twentieth Century, translated by Ezza El-Khamisi, National Translation Project, No. 803, Supreme Council of Culture, Cairo, 2005, p. 186. [2]  Such as Julian Steward (1902–1972), Walt Rostow (1916–2003), and David McClelland (1917–1998). [3]  An American economist and university professor who lived from 1916 to 2003. He was a prominent member of the U.S. Democratic Party. [4]   André Gunder Frank (1929–2005) was born in Berlin in 1929 and died in Luxembourg in 2005. He was a German-born American historian, economist, and sociologist. His works include Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (1968), The Development of Underdevelopment: Latin America (1970), Lumpenbourgeoisie and Lumpendevelopment (1971), World Accumulation, 1500–1800 (1977), Dependent Accumulation (1978), Reflections on the New World Economic Crisis (1981), and Critique and Anti-Critique (1985). Ibrahim Ahmed Nasr al-Din, “National Integration in Africa and the Sudanese Option,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, Issue 63, May 1984, p. 37. ⁽[6]⁾ Anas Mostafa Kamel, “Ethnic Conflicts in the Nile Basin and the New International Order,” International Politics, Issue 107, January 1992, p. 38. [7]   Talal Abdel-Moati Mostafa, Socioeconomic Studies: Development Between Modernization and Dependency, www.albaath.news.sy/user [8]   Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, The World of Knowledge series, No. 132, National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, Kuwait, 1988, pp. 98–99. [9]  The previous reference, p. 194. [10]  The previous reference, p. 106. [11]  The previous reference, p. 188.