Immanuel Wallerstein formulated world-system theory which argues that development should be analyzed at the global level rather than just at the national level. The world system is divided into a core (developed nations), periphery (undeveloped nations providing raw materials to the core), and semi-periphery (nations in between). Peripheral and semi-peripheral nations have failed to develop because they continue to depend on the core nations economically and technologically. True development requires ending this external dependence, as nations like Japan and South Korea did through selective openness and state-led industrialization and technology development.

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THE END OF EXTERNAL DEPENDENCE TO PROMOTE NATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Fernando Alcoforado*
"Think outside the box" is a phrase from the English. When this expression is used, it is
usually referring to the ability to think of non-standard creative solutions for whatever
problem is presented. Engaging in looking for new things, looking at them from another
angle, looking for new alternatives that meet your needs is the starting point for thinking
outside the box. It was by thinking outside the box that Immanuel Wallerstein, recently
deceased, broke the paradigm of analysis of the development process by formulating the
theory of the world system. Wallerstein argued that the unit of analysis should be the
"world system" rather than the nation state in which the economic, political, and socio-
cultural spheres are viewed as closely connected and not separated according to the
traditional approach. In other words, Wallerstein considered it a methodological mistake
to analyze a nation state in isolation from the context of the "world system".
According to Immanuel Wallerstein, the world economy is governed by a system, the
capitalist world-system that is composed of a division between center, periphery and
semi-periphery and that emerged in the 16th century at the beginning of the
globalization process with the great navigations inaugurated with the discovery of
America. The most developed countries in the world are part of the center of the world
system which is part of the organic core of the world capitalist economy, ie the
countries of Western Europe (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Scandinavia,
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, United Kingdom and Italy), North America
(United States and Canada), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) and Japan. For
Wallerstein, the center is the area of major technological development that produces
complex products; The periphery is the area that supplies raw materials, agricultural
products and cheap labor to the center. The economic exchange between the periphery
and the center is unequal: the periphery has to sell its products cheaply while buying the
products of the center dearly. Semiperiphery is an intermediate development region that
functions as a center for the periphery and a periphery for the center (WALLERSTEIN,
Immanuel. The modern world system - Vol. 1, 2, 3. Berkeley and Los Angelis:
University of California Press, 2011).
The semi periphery is characterized by Wallerstein as a structural element necessary for
playing a stabilizing role between countries in the international system similar to that of
the middle class within the class configuration in a country. The semi-periphery would
also assume a function, in Arrighi's words, of “systemic legitimation”, showing the
periphery that there is the possibility of mobility within the international division of
labor for those who are sufficiently “capable” and / or “well-behaved”. According to
Arrighi, the semi-peripheral condition is described as one in which a significant number
of national states such as Brazil remain permanently stationed between central and
peripheral conditions, and which, despite having undergone far-reaching social and
economic transformations, continues to exist relatively backwardness in important
respects [ARRIGHI, Giovanni. A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The illusion of
development). Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997].
It can be said that one of the reasons for the failure to promote the economic and social
development of almost all peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world can be

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attributed to the fact that the governments of these countries do not think “out of the
box” formulating their development process with emphasis on the analysis of the
internal factors of each country in the promotion of national development, that is, in
isolation from the capitalist world-system. The new theoretical framework for analyzing
a nation's economic system should take into account the capitalist world-system
proposed by Wallerstein, which contrasts with the Cartesian method that formulates the
development of the national economic system in isolation. This is one of the reasons for
the failure of national developmentalism and the establishment of real socialism that
resulted from the fact that its mentors admitted to promoting national economic and
social development without regard for the existence of the capitalist world-system
(WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel. Unthinking Social Science. Cambridge: Polity Press,
1991).
World-system theory was formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein and its main thinkers
André Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi and Theotonio dos Santos,
intellectuals linked to the “theory of dependence”, who claim that “dependence”
expresses subordination of the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries in relation to the
central capitalist countries whose economic backwardness was not forged by their
agrarian-exporting condition or their pre-capitalist heritage, but by the pattern of
dependent capitalist development of the country and its subordinate insertion in world
capitalism. Therefore, overcoming underdevelopment in peripheral and semi-peripheral
countries should result from the end of dependence and not on the modernization and
industrialization of the economy as advocated, for example, by ECLAC (Economic
Commission for Latin America) in the 1950s. This fact confirms, for example, the
misconception of Brazil's development relying on foreign capital and foreign
technology adopted since 1955 with the Juscelino Kubitscheck government and the
deepening of this dependence on the adoption of the neoliberal economic model since
1990.
One fact is evident: the transformation from peripheral or semi-peripheral capitalist
country to the condition of developed is quite difficult to accomplish as Arrighi
demonstrated in his book A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The Illusion of Development).
After World War II, Japan and Italy were the only countries that emerged from the
semiperipheral to the core of developed countries, and South Korea was the only
country on the periphery of the capitalist world-system that evolved into semi-
peripheral condition [ARRIGHI, Giovanni. A ilusão do desenvolvimento (The illusion
of development). Petrópolis: Vozes, 1997]. The thesis, after World War II, that it would
be possible for all peripheral and semi-peripheral nations to reach the high-level stage of
development enjoyed by the central capitalist countries, especially the United States,
was not realized. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, there have been
several attempts to promote economic and social development in many of the world's
countries that have failed be those situated in the framework of capitalism with national
developmentalism, for example, in Brazil and those with the implantation of socialism
It can be said that peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries such as Brazil will
only promote their development if their external dependence (economic and
technological) is brought to an end on the central capitalist countries as did, for
example, Japan, South Korea and China in the second half of the twentieth century.
Achieving the economic and technological break with the central capitalist countries
does not mean autarchic development, but rather to promote the internal development of

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the country with selective foreign economic openness as did Japan, South Korea and
China in the 1970s, 1980 and 1990, respectively. The breaking of dependence means
active state participation in the planning of the national economy aiming at the
development of the productive forces of the country and the internal market, the
domestic production in substitution of imported products and for export, the
development of own technology and the formation of internal savings in the amount
necessary not to depend on foreign capital for investment. This strategy would enable
the national economy to expand by generating enough business and jobs to meet the
country's needs, as well as mitigating the impact of crises occurring in the world
economy as a result of the US-led trade war against China and possible explosion of the
world debt bubble.
Countries, such as Brazil, that have not overcome their foreign dependency by adhering
to the neoliberal economic model are threatened with the consequences of global
economic crises that tend to worsen over time. In Brazil, the results are: negative
economic growth, external imbalances, deindustrialization of the country,
denationalization of state-owned enterprises, stagnation of productivity, widespread
corporate failure, mass unemployment, high domestic debt and fiscal crisis of federal,
state and municipal governments.

Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System,
member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional
Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of
strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the
books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000),
Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento
(Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos
Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the
Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável-
Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do
Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática
Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas,
Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo
Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de
Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora
CRV, Curitiba, 2019).