K E RATSHEFOLA 35834242

Modernization theory is a process of social, economic and cultural transformation in which a country change from pre-industrial to a modern society  such as the Western Europe and North American societies. It illustrates that poor countries are poor because they are still to change into modern economies, meaning they are still developing. There are stages of growth, where the theory thinks that at some stage in the process of development there will be diffusing of growth from the MDCs to the LDCs. This theory is criticized because the traditional life is regarded as primitive and Western materialism is wrongly regarded as a goal of development.

Dependency theory is a process where there is a situation in which development and expansion of one economy is due to the economy to which former is subjected. It was formed after the failure of modernization theory to address the underdevelopment of the Third World countries and challenged the basic tenet of Modernization theory that countries fail to modernize .The dependency theory advances that all societies are intergrated into a capitalist. The dependency theory is criticized because it pays too much attention on external variable and ignores the internal factors that explain the underdevelopment of LDCs.