Explaining Underdevelopment: An Alternative Theoretical Perspective

Historically, the state 1 has played a crucial role in the early stages of capitalist development. However, existing literature explaining underdevelopment in the Third World and especially in Africa, pays limited attention to such a role during social transformation. The result has been generalisations about underdevelopment emphasising the impact of external factors — pressure and exploitation by the global capitalist system — as the cause of underdevelopment and obscuring the role of internal factors. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.