Subordination and Development

Sunanda Sen provides, in the present book, an analysis of subordination faced by the developing countries of the global South, with implications which include their retarded development. Imposed by the advanced industrial countries, subordination of these countries includes an implicit compulsion on their part to follow neoliberal economic policies having broad acceptance from corporate capital as well as the Bretton Woods institutions from the global North.

Compliance with policies as above on the part of the subordinated countries is ensured by the liberalized global market, operating as an agent of corporate capital and the state overseas. Deviations, if any, from the prescribed neoliberal policies in the developing countries often encounter reprisals by the market with reversals of capital flows, mediating signals for the subordinated countries to look for conformity with remedial measures. Subordination as spelt out above is distinct from ‘dependence’ which prevailed in the post-war years till the mid-1970s, when official aid was the major string for overseas governments to exercise direct control over aid-receiving countries.

Moving from dependence, subordination faced by the developing nations came up along with liberalization of capital flows during the 1990s. It achieved for the overseas partners a steady flow of surpluses, while ensuring continuity of the prescribed policies with harmful consequences in the subordinated nations. The book also dwells on the economic dynamics of the structural changes which let finance attain dominance for those economies with deleterious consequences for the real economy.

Analysis in the book includes the conceptual aspects of both mainstream neoliberal policies and their heterodox critiques. The observed links between economic policies and the enabling sociopolitical environment supplement the arguments in the book which hopefully will open up a new dimension for analysing subordination and the lack of development.

Sunanda Sen is a former professor of economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is also a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute, Bard College, USA and a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Her publications include a number of books of which the last two, Dominant Finance and Stagnant Economies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and The Changing Face of Imperialism: From Colonialism to Contemporary Capitalism (co-edited with Cristina Marcuzzo; Routledge, 2018), received the prestigious Japan Society Political Economy (JSPE)–Routledge Prize of 2021.