صاغ المصطلح في بادئ الأمر الكاتب الأمريكي أو, هنري للإشارة إلى هندوراس في ملفوف والملوك ليطلق على الحكومات الدكتاتورية التي تسمح ببناء مستعمرات زراعية شاسعة على أراضيها مقابل المردود المالي. أما الاستخدام الحديث للمصطلح فجرى ليوصف به أي نظام غير مستقر أو دكتاتوري «رجعي»، وبالأخص عندما تكون الانتخابات فيه مزورة أو فاسدة، ويكون قائدها خادماً لمصالح خارجية.
Banana republic is a political science term for a politically unstable country whose economy is largely dependent on the export of a single limited-resource product, such as bananas. It typically has stratified social classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy that comprises the elites of business, politics, and the military. This politico-economic oligarchy controls the primary-sector productions and thereby exploits the country's economy.
The term banana republic was coined by the American writer O. Henry to describe the fictional "Republic of Anchuria" in the book Cabbages and Kings. In political science, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile dictatorship that abets or supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation. In economics, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by a collusion between the State and favored monopolies, in which the profit derived from the private exploitation of public lands is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are a public responsibility. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country, and tends to cause the national currency to become devalued paper-money, rendering the country ineligible for international development-credit. Such government by thieves is a kleptocracy; such a kleptocratic government is manipulated by foreign (corporate) interests, and functions mostly as ceremonial government that is unaccountable to its nation. The national legislature is, in effect, for sale, influential government employees illegitimately exploit their posts for personal gain, and the resulting government budget deficit is repaid by the country's working people who earn wages rather than making profits.
American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910)
Author of Cabbages and Kings (1904), a collection of thematically related short stories inspired by his experiences in Honduras, during the 1896–97 period, when he was wanted in the U.S. for bank embezzlement.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
