ABSTRACT
Dependency is very much in vogue in Latin America. Much writing on cultural, political, social, and economic matters adopts as a framework for analysis the concept of dependency. Faced with such an overwhelming mass of writing, it is pertinent to raise a number of questions—what is the background of the dependency school, and why did it emerge when it did? What sort of theory is it? How successful is it in establishing a framework for analysing the dynamics of Latin American society? What are the mechanisms involved? Does available empirical evidence seem to support the theory? What policy implications (if any) can be drawn from the theory? And how new, useful, and important really is the concept of dependency ?
