- A Neo-Marxist perspective that maintains that Third World countries are Underdeveloped because of the activities of the First World.
- Dependency theory holds that “the condition of underdevelopment is precisely the result of the incorporation of the Third World economies into the capitalist world system which is dominated by the West and North America” (Randall and Theobald 1998, 120)
- Dependency Theory emerged in the 1950s as a critique of Modernization
- Argues that these Classical theorists failed to recognized that Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism is solely responsible for the development of the First World and the subsequent underdevelopment of the Third World.