Peripheral financialization and the transformation of dependency: a view from Latin America

Abstract

A key insight of dependency theorists such as Vania Bambirra and Ruy Mauro Marini was that dependency is not confined to an international relations phenomenon of unequal exchange, but plays out at the level of class relations in the periphery. While emphasising that financialization has exacerbated global uneven development, much of the peripheral financialization literature has disregarded the contributions of dependency theory, whose main object of discussion has precisely evolved around the uneven but combined nature of global capitalist development. Contributing to the pluralization and decolonization of IPE, we revisit dependency theory to analyse peripheral financialization and its political and social impact in Latin America. Drawing on case studies of Brazil and Mexico, we engage with the agency of Latin American ‘dominated-dominant’ ruling classes in reconstructing dependency under financialized conditions. In both cases, power has shifted towards the financial and export-oriented fractions of ruling classes, while financialization has reproduced the key characteristic of dependent capitalism – the super-exploitation of labour. The article updates earlier periodizations of dependency and maps financialized dependence as a new phase of dependency, entailing substantial changes in the role of the state and class relations.