Development Theories and Development Strategies: An Alternative Theoretical Framework

Abstract

The study of economic development in the Third World has been dominated by the comparison of import-substitution industrialization (ISI) and export-led industrialization as two "alternative strategies' of development. Using the theory of the internationalization of capital and Marx's expanded reproduction, I argue that ISI and export-led industrialization are two stages of the internationalization of production as opposed to two alternative strategies and that, in both cases, developing capitalist countries inherit a built-in instability in the process of accumulation.