Dependency Theory

is based on a Marxist view of the world, which sees globalisation in terms of the spread of market capitalism, and the exploitation of cheap labour and resources in return for the obsolete technologies of the developed world.  The dominant view of dependency theorists is that there is a dominant world capitalist system that relies on a division of labour between the rich core countries and poor peripheral countries. Over time, the core countries will exploit their dominance over an increasingly marginalised periphery.

Modernization theory is a description and explanation of the processes of transformation from traditional or underdeveloped societies to modern societies. In the words of one of the major proponents, "Historically, modernization is the process of change towards those types of social, economic, and political systems that have developed in Western Europe and North America from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth and have then spread to other European countries and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the South American, Asian, and African continents