60 Examples of Central, Peripheral and Semi-peripheral Countries

The ranking of countries among the central and the peripherals It is a distinction that responds to an ideological criterion that assumes that the different development that countries have achieved throughout history does not respond to chance or linearity in a path that will eventually be traversed by all, but on the contrary, to a cluster from dependency relationships that are established among them, by which some countries will be at the head of the world production scheme and others will be around them. For example: United States, Senegal, Brazil.

Dual context

The duality between the center and the periphery does not have to do with the spatial location of the countries on a planet that has a spherical shape, but rather is related to a symbolic duality relative to the inequality in the development of the productive forces of each place , considering that this has an impact on the way of life established in each of these countries.

The center-periphery scheme It was the predominant one in the 20th century, but when the process ended it turned to a rather multipolar world, with a very strong expansion of some countries of the old periphery.

Examples from core countries

The core countriesThose that are known as developed are those that extend their dominance throughout the world system, being influential in different ways in the rest of the countries: the capitals that come from there are the largest in the world, as well as different cultural patterns that are embedded in the entire world system.

The essential characteristic of the central countries is to have faced the industrial development process before all the others, leaving the rest of the countries as suppliers of raw materials. From there, it was precisely the set of central countries that gave rise to the industrial revolution, and more towards the present of technology. Although the core countries are no longer the only producers of industrialized goods, they remain at the forefront of the production of cutting-edge technology.

Here is a list of some core countries:

Examples of peripheral countries

The peripheral countries They are specialized in the production, and also in the export of raw materials or industrial products of little value, at the same time that they must import products made precisely in the central countries.

The subjection of products that are produced in the periphery to the conditions of nature, against the central countries that have a potential much more relative to the evolution of productivity, contributed to the structural theory for which the peripheral countries would always be, and the intention of becoming a central country would end up producing cyclical economic crises.

At the time of the transnationalization of capital, where large companies do not have a single headquarters but distribute production throughout the world, it places peripheral countries as workforce providers, since the salary in dollars is always cheaper there.

Here are examples from peripheral countries:

Examples of semi-peripheral countries

Among the groups of the periphery and the center appear some other countries, those categorized as the semi-periphery. These countries have some features of backwardness and others of modernity, and they are precisely those that are closest to crossing the barrier of economic restrictions on development.

In some areas they are very productive, which endows them with a greater growth potential than the dry peripheral countries: however, there are no very specific indexes to define the border between the peripheral and the semi-peripheral.

The quality of life indicators They tend to be better, and the peripheral countries are those that gained potential at the end of the 20th century, when the world geopolitical structure changed after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Here is a list of countries in the semi-periphery: