Dependent Development in the Third World in the Decade of Oil

Barry Almark and S. S. Alvarado argue that after a decade of Third World control over oil resources, the economic dependence of most Third World countries has, if anything, increased. Their discussion focuses on the difficulties that confronted the developing countries which import oil while also describing the mixed blessings that high oil prices turned out to be for the oil exporters. The end of the narrative, 1983, finds a developing world with stagnant economic growth where independent Third World policy actions are virtually ruled out by their foreign creditors, both private banks and the governments of the major capitalist countries, the United States above all.

Almark and Alvarado thus shift our focus in this collection from problems of the energy sector per se to the impact of energy developments on the economy at large. The focus also shifts from individual case studies to developments affecting whole groups of countries. Indeed, they have sought to discern the common thread in the experience of many countries. As such they have concentrated on telling a story, not in explaining what forces made it happen. However, the underlying determinant of much that they describe seems to be a stagnating world economy, one in which increasingly severe recessions are followed by weaker and briefer recovery periods. A theory about why that is happening and how the situation might further evolve is the subject of the article which follows A lmark and A Ivarado.