ABSTRACT
Over the past decade a new perspective of development and underdevelopment has emerged. Labelled by its advocates as dependency theory, this perspective focuses on the problem of foreign penetration in the political economies of Latin America. Generally, this theory explains underdevelopment throughout Latin America as a consequence of outside economic and political influence. More specifically, the economy of certain nations is believed to be conditioned by the relationship to another economy which is dominant and capable of expanding and developing. Thus the interdependence of such economies assumes contrasting forms of dominance and dependence so that dependent nations might develop as a reflection of the expansion of dominant nations or underdevelop as a consequence of their subjective relationship. This explanation approximates the definition of dependency offered by Dos Santos (1968:6) who states:
By dependence we mean a situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subjected. The relation of inter-dependence between two or more economies, and between these and world trade, assumes the form of dependence when some countries (the dominant ones) can expand and can be self-sustaining, while other countries (the dependent ones) can do this only as a reflection of that expansion, which can have either a positive or a negative effect on their immediate development.
