ABSTRACT
The scions of classical sociological theory, although by no means its only elaborators, were three towering nineteenth-century thinkers—Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. Two factors converged to form the dependency school: discussions of underdevelopment that coalesced in the work of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the revision of orthodox Marxism, which came to be known as "neo-Marxism." The principal architect of bureaucratic authoritarianism (BA), who explained the emergence of authoritarian and military governments regimes was the Argentine political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell who drew, albeit critically, on all three theories: modernization, dependency and Marxism, and corporatism. O'Donnell's work in effect synthesized several intellectual traditions that had tended to remain disparate. This was particularly the case with his uses of modernization, dependency, and corporatist models. O'Donnell's work on BA marks a good stopping point for overview of Latin American theories of development.
