ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at patterns that allow the explanation of the conditions under which linkages between two or more events exist. Social theorists strive to be scientific when carefully evaluating the relevant facts, often with the help of statistical methods. Post-modernism considers discourse as a social construct through which knowledge and power are connected. In 1950, Prebisch released a document, "The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems," which laid the theoretical groundwork for dependency theory. The criticism led to modifications by dependency theorists such as Cardoso and Faletto, who did not suggest a complete break from the capitalist global system, and tried to identify domestic obstacles to development. The import-substitution industrialization model became the predominant economic development paradigm in Latin America until the 1970s. The neoliberal paradigm was put into practice by Jeffrey Sachs, an economic advisor to a number of Eastern European, Latin American and Asian governments on their economic transformations.
