[D]espite the relevance of dependency theories to European problems, they have made little headway in our universities. There are other reasons, apart from our parochialism and [ā¦] linguistic weaknesses [ā¦]. First, an explicitly interdisciplinary school does not fit readily into the typical unidisciplinary syllabi and research programmes. Perhaps more important, its style runs counter to prevailing academic fashions. An economist, in particular, who picks up a book by a dependency theorist is likely to notice the lack of algebra. [ā¦] The fashionable models are mathematical, and to the greatest extent possible, quantifiable. This is understandable. It would be very convenient if only social problems could be reduced to algebraic functions: the solutions would then be straightforward. [ā¦] Many of the propositions of dependency theory cannot easily be cast in mathematical terms, still less are they readily quantifiable. The theory is in large part about hierarchies, institutions and attitudes. (Seers 1981: 15)
Dudley Seers, the eminent representative of a group of researchers I subsume as āEuropean Dependency Schoolā (EDS) in this book, emphasized the importance of coreāperiphery relations in Europe and for the Western European integration process in as early as the 1970s. Coreāperiphery relations in development studies reflect uneven socio-spatial developments. Behind the appearance of spatial hierarchy between regions and states in ālateā or āmonopolyā or ātransnationalā capitalism, there lies a matrix of actorsā relations with unevenly distributed political, economic, and military power such as governments, classes, and transnational companies (TNC). These uneven power relations make coreāperiphery relations a complex issue. Coreāperiphery relations run through all countries and produce dependency relations within core and periphery countries alike.
This book inquires into coreāperiphery relations in the European Union from the perspective of the dependency paradigm. Uneven development, manifested in coreāperiphery relations in Europe and the integration model that would become the EU, has never disappeared. The way these coreāperiphery relations are being discussed, however, has changed distinctively. Crisis of Keynesian capitalism in the 1970s brought to the fore that despite the postwar boom with substantial economic growth structural uneven development had not been eliminated. EDS authors would talk of āgrowth without developmentā. EDS did show that structural problems of global uneven development were also visible on European soil but EDS did not prevail in establishing a lasting dependency paradigm of European research and alternative policy-making. Instead, the radical liberal paradigm of neoliberalism succeeded Keynesianism. The first enlargements of the Western European integration project happened during this paradigmatic change in the midst of the global crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. We will encounter the doubts in Southern European countries concerning the integration into the EC before they became member states (Greece in 1981, Portugal and Spain in 1986). These Southern enlargements were paralleled in their accession by austerity programs. However, the hope of leaving fascist dictatorship behind and joining a common prosperous and democratic future seems to have pushed hopes in integration high for many. When Central and Eastern European countries from the former Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) entered the union, the integration model was in the tight grip of the neoliberal doctrine, which pictured a future of convergence if the forces of competition that now included territories (regions and states) could prevail. For the Southern periphery, a pseudo boom, made possible by low-interest capital import, appeared to make up for the austerity programs to meet the conditions of the currency union.
In the 1990s, the fact faded that behind the narrative of convergence there was still structural uneven development between core and periphery. With the defeat of the dependency paradigm, coreāperiphery relations were marginalized as analytical categories. Only recently, with the global economic crisis, that had started in the United States in 2007 and reached Europe in 2008, coreāperiphery relations have reentered discussions on uneven development in Europe, and the EU, respectively. However, the influence of core countries, governments, and companies have largely remained absent from discussions as if there was a periphery without a core.
This book focuses on coreāperiphery relations in Europe by readopting the notion of the dependency paradigm that relations between core and periphery form an analytical whole. It revisits the early analysis of coreāperiphery relations in the uneven development of Europe and the Western European integration project from the perspective of the dependency paradigm (history of theory). It will furthermore unfold, why such an approach is still important for an analysis of contemporary Europe, and will consequently estimate the current coreāperiphery relations in the EU empirically in order to offer a coreāperiphery typology. As a conclusion, it will consider the impasse of current European capitalism and perspectives of socio-ecological transformation.
Whether one uses the terms ācenterā or ācoreā depends pretty much on the linguistic frame of reference. Based on the literature in English that I mostly refer to, I will use the term ācoreā in this book. Historically, Werner Sombart used distinctions between core and periphery in capitalism early in the twentieth century. He did not provide, however, a theoretical explanation of such relations. It was theory building from the periphery, namely Latin American structuralism (above all RaĆŗl Prebisch and Celso Furtado), beginning in the 1940s, which started constructing such a theoretical framework. About the same time, however, in the āglobal northā, āpolarization theoryā began deliberating on coreāperiphery relations: FranƧois Perroux in the 1940s, and Gunnar Myrdal and Albert Hirschman in the 1950s. In Latin America, the dependency paradigm gained momentum in the 1960s, when optimistic expectations on peripheral capitalism by Latin American structuralists (e.g. that import substitution would counter polarizing effects of international trade) were disappointed.
I am using the terms dependency paradigm or school, because some of the dependency authors explicitly denied the significance of working on a dependency theory. In the past, discussions of this heterogeneous group of authors used terms like school, conceptual framework, analysis, or perspective. Referring to Thomas Kuhn, Ronald Chilcote (1978: 56) suggested the use of dependency model, in the sense of the paradigm of a scientific community. The dependency paradigm has never become, however, a hegemonic ānormal scienceā. If a predominant paradigm generally shows persistent resistance against change, in social science, things are more complicated and resistance against a new paradigm is fiercer. As Paul Sweezy pointed out, a paradigm can break down not only due to internal factors but also if the society which is reflected in a paradigm changes. Other than with (natural) science, societal reality as a matter of social science is produced by interests of individuals, groups, classes, and nations. Thus revolutions in social sciences seem to correspond to changes in the social and political sphere (cf. Hurtienne 1984: 8f.).
Building on Latin American structuralist thinking, authors of the Latin American dependency school continued inquiries into the nature of core and periphery relations in the 1960s. They did so, however, without the structuralistsā vision of a catching-up development. Industrial development and even convergence was and may be possible for peripheral countries but ādevelopmentā of societies in a broad sense was seen unlikely: the role models of modernization theories themselves, capitalist core countries, kept facing ongoing social conflicts and contradictions. One global capitalist system, they argued, was reproducing social and spatial relations of dependence with different socio-spatial consequences or situations.
TNC have become the most powerful global players, therefore I will use the term TNC capitalism. Companies have developed certain features of core and periphery in global commodity chains. This did not happen in a void. Such commodity chains run through core and (semi-)peripheral countries and regions, an argument elaborated by world-systems theorists (in this book above all Giovanni Arrighi) who followed dependency thinking. Core companies came into existence in symbiosis with core states, modeling a coreāperiphery scheme that made climbing the ādevelopmentā ladder from periphery to core difficult and unlikely. After World War II, a time when many peripheral countries gained formal independence, a new quality of coreāperiphery relations left a direct colonial rule behind. In Latin America, where most countries had reached independence during the nineteenth century already, dependency authors observed the ability of TNC to integrate and control economic sectors globally. We will see how they described the functional integration of peripheral countries into TNC capitalism with the penetrating and disintegrative effects that went along with this process of asymmetrical power. Osvaldo Sunkel called the ongoing symbiosis between TNC and core states neo-mercantilist. As we will see, he suggested a socio-spatial concept of āstructural heterogeneityā. Uneven socio-spatial development thereby runs through both, core and peripheral states, which produces core and peripheral regions and privileges or marginalizes respective social classes. Johan Galtung called the core in the periphery a ābridgehead in the Periphery nationā for the core in the core state. He observed a āharmony of interestā between the core of a core state, and the core of a peripheral stat...