Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Iran & Dependency Theory

At the end of The Development of Underdevelopment, Andre Gunder Frank (103) presents his opinion for the key to change for underdeveloped countries who wish to truly become developed “It is their people who in the last analysis face the task of changing this no longer acceptable process and eliminating this miserable reality.” At the outset of his theory which presents hypotheses for why underdeveloped countries typically stay undeveloped, Frank (94) also says we cannot fully understand the theory for any country “without first learning how their past economic and social history gave rise to their present underdevelopment.” Like Dickens wrote great opening and closing lines for his novels, when it comes to Iran’s economic policies of the past and its underdevelopment nothing could be truer than Frank’s opening and closing lines.

Frank’s theory has three hypotheses about underdeveloped nations that we shall see lend a fuller understanding to Iran’s development challenges. The first of the three hypotheses offered by Frank argues that within the framework of a world-embracing metropolis-satellite structure, the metropoles or centers of development develop while the satellites underdevelop. This has been the case with Iran’s past economic history. To begin with, there is an over-reliance on oil as a source of revenue and too much money is spent on armaments. Further, Iran’s refusal to tolerate Western ideology (i.e. free markets and tolerance of opinion) has kept it with few trade partners or few foreign sources of aid. Reza Shah did attempt to make Iran economically independent, but he was only partially successful in doing so. His determination to make Iran aware and proud of its pre-Islamic past and to rid it of all foreign influence colored his economic policies “The most important elements of his economic policy—industrialization, state capitalism, and the development of a transportation system—w...

Page 1 of 6 Next >

More on Iran & Dependency Theory...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Iran & Dependency Theory. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 14:47, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685738.html