Iran & Dependency Theory

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

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y does not work for Iran’s past economic history. Under both Shah’s until 1968, Iran did not experience a huge classically capitalist economic development when it was isolated and closed off from economic metropoles. The second shah developed Four Plans for Economic Development that spanned from 1951 through 1968. The oil industry was nationalized in 1951 and interrupted the first Seven Year Plan for Economic Development, followed in 1956 by the Second, 1962 by the Third, and 1968 by the Fourth (Rezun 50). Yet, Iran was still a country struggling to change from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. The needed factor for more development was more revenue, and this would come from oil in the 1970s with the advent of OPEC. Therefore, Iran did not begin to take-off economically until the world oil market (mainly from metropoles) supplied the needed capital. The third hypothesis delivered by Frank (99) is that geographic and economic isolation historically presented underdeveloped countries from being more tightly woven into the metropoles “relatively weakly tied to and poorly integrated into the mercantilist and capitalist state.” While Frank (99) argues this is not true for Latin America countries, because those that ha
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Economic Development, Latin America, Gunder Frank, Reza Shah, Middle Eastern, OPEC Iran, Fourth Rezun, economic development, Review Vol, economic policies, underdeveloped countries, crude oil, past economic, CITED Frank, Russia Rezun, industry oil, frank 99, irans economic, capitalist economic development, hypotheses underdeveloped, theory hypotheses, past economic history, plan economic development, rezun 50 iran, irans past economic,
Approximate Word count = 1382
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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