Center-Periphery Approach

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY

Alex Wilhans Antonio Palludeto | The Sage Encyclopedia of Environmental Justice

The center-periphery (or core-periphery) approach constitutes a comprehensive theoretical framework designed to comprehend the hierarchical and asymmetrical structure of the capitalist economy across specific regions or countries. More precisely, this approach focuses on a detailed examination of the historical and analytical dimensions of the nature of capitalist economic relations among regions or countries, which give rise to the formation of a rich and developed center, alongside a poor and underdeveloped periphery. This entry provides an overview of the center-periphery approach and its origins and how it contributes to an understanding of the asymmetrical structure of global capitalism.

Background

The center-periphery approach can be traced back to a series of critical contributions of the latter half of the 20th century to the predominant economic paradigm, prominently authored by scholars from the Global South. This approach finds its primary roots in Latin American structuralism and dependency theories, which emerged as a critique of traditional neoclassical economic models that failed to account for global inequality.

The origins of the center-periphery approach within Latin American structuralism are linked to the economic analysis conducted at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in the postwar period. The seminal 1949 work of Raúl Prebisch, most notably his influential publication El Desarrollo Económico de la América Latina y Algunos de sus Principales Problemas (The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems) is widely acknowledged as the cornerstone that established the groundwork for the center-periphery approach in the structuralist tradition. Contrary to the conventional economic thinking of his time, Prebisch argued that the prevailing international division of labor did not lead to an equitable distribution of the benefits derived from technical progress through international trade. The periphery, as a supplier of food and raw materials, was unable to capture the benefits from technical progress, thus remaining in a systematically subordinate position. Meanwhile, the industrialized center appropriated the productivity gains, reproducing the asymmetric international economic structure of which it is a part. From this perspective, industrialization is seen as a means to capture the gains of technical progress and raise the standard of living.

Dependency Theories

The dependency theories, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, drew from Latin American structuralism and Marxist perspectives, notably the Monopoly Capital school, which is associated with the works of the Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy and their collaborators in the socialist journal Monthly Review, combines insights from Marx, Keynes, Kalecki, and Steindl to analyze contemporary capitalism. More broadly, dependency theories were further developed by André Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ruy Mauro Marini, Samir Amin, Theotonio dos Santos, and others, focusing on the dynamics of center-periphery relations by considering the monopoly power exercised by advanced capitalist economies, the varying levels of development in the productive structures of peripheral countries, and the formation and autonomy of the national bourgeoisie in these countries.

Despite their differences, for both Latin American structuralism and dependency theories, the underdevelopment of the periphery is understood as an outcome of its position in the international division of labor that emerged alongside the global expansion of capitalism led by advanced countries. Both groups are concerned with the exploitation of the periphery by the center and the mechanisms of economic surplus transfer to the center, largely influenced by the center’s control over technical progress and global trade. From this perspective, underdevelopment is not perceived as a temporary stage that capitalist societies must undergo on the path to development. Rather, it is the very process of capitalist development in the center that fosters the underdevelopment of the periphery.

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