Dependent Development and Foreign Policy: The Case of Jamaica

Dependency theory contends that Third World states which are economically dependent on core capitalist countries will develop foreign policy positions consistent with the interests of core countries. Economic dependence produces this outcome, it is argued, because the structures of dependence produce economic and political elites in the peripheral countries whose interests coincide with those of multinational corporations and core country political elites. This article examines the case of Jamaica, which, although extremely dependent economically on the United States, has experienced dramatic changes in its foreign policy since its independence in 1962. The causes of these changes are examined based on interviews with Jamaican elites in 1962, 1974, and 1982, on historical evidence, and on interviews with American policy makers and aluminum company executives. The evidence shows that though the Jamaican business elite strongly favored a very pro-U.S. foreign policy throughout the period, a large segment of the political elite affiliated with Michael Manley's People's National Party moved to a militantly Third World-oriented position that included a major offensive against the aluminum multinationals when the party was in power in the 1970s. It is argued that this policy change was a direct product of the contradictory outcomes of Jamaica's successful pursuit of a dependent development economic strategy in the 1950s and 1960s, and that such challenges to core country economic interests in foreign policy are an inherent feature of dependence which is likely to appear in other cases of successful dependent development.