ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief description and definitional overview of dependency theory and provides an analysis of some of the problems with this body of theory. It explores some suggestions about how to further the analysis of dependent development situations. Dependency theory has become one of the foremost interpretations of development as well as a critical challenge to conventional development theory. More explicitly, if the concept of dependency entailed different things in the world, it is likely that the various concepts would relate in different ways to other, independent concepts, the most important of which would be development. The dependency orientation explicitly rejects the unified state-as-actor of the dependence approach. Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto emphasize the functional incompleteness of the domestic economy and the way in which domestic gaps are filled in by an external complement; other definitions of dependency emphasize other factors. Any critical evaluation of dependency theory must start with a definition of the key concept.
