DEPENDENCY THEORYBoswell and Dixon (1990) carried the analysis a
step further. Using regression and path analysis,
they examined both economic and military de-
pendency, concluding that both forms contribute
to political instability through their effects on
domestic class and state structures. They asserted
that corporate penetration impedes real growth
while exacerbating inequalities and the type of
class polarization that leads to political violence. In
his analysis of the economic shambles created in
the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, Boyce
(1993) concluded that the development strategies
adopted during the Marcos era were economically
disastrous for the bulk of the populace as ‘‘imper-
fections’’ in world markets precluded even modest
capital accumulation for all but a privileged few.
Though not speaking strictly in terms of depend-
ency theory, Milner and Keohane (1996) point out
that domestic policies are inevitably affected by
global economic currents insofar as new policy
preferences and coalitions are created as a result,
by triggering domestic political and economic cri-
ses or by the undermining of governmental au-
tonomy and thereby control over local economic
policy. Dependency theorists customarily incorpo-
rate attention to all three in addressing the role
international markets play in local economic policy.
Alternative interpretations of underdevelopment
began to gain strength in the early 1970s. The next
step was a world systems perspective, which saw
global unity accompanied by an international divi-
sion of labor with corresponding political align-
ments. Wallerstein (1974), Chirot and Hall (1982),
and others shifted the focus from spatial defini-
tions of nation-states as the unit of analysis to
corporate actors as the most significant players
able to shape activities—including the export of
capital—according to their own interests. Wallerstein
suggested that the most powerful countries of the
world constitute a de facto collective core that
disperses productive activities so that dependent
industrialization is an extension of what had previ-
ously been geographically localized divisions of
labor. World systems analysts see multinational
corporations rather than nation-states as the means
by which articulation of global economic arrange-
ments is maintained. So powerful have multinationals
become that even the costs of corporate organiza-
tion are borne by those countries in which the
corporations do business, with costs calculated
according to terms dictated by the multinational
corporations themselves. Yet state participation is
undoubtedly necessary as a kind of subsidization
of multinational corporate interests and as a means
for providing local management that, in addition
to facilitating political compliance and other func-
tions, promotes capital concentration for more
efficient marketing and the maintenance of de-
mand for existing goods and services. Thus pro-
duction, consumption, and political ideologies are
transplanted globally, legitimated, and yield a thor-
oughgoing stratification that, while it cuts across
national boundaries, always creates precedence at
the local level.Dependency theory and collateral notions have
become dispositional concepts utilized by numer-
ous investigations of the effect of dependent de-
velopment on diverse dimensions of inequality.
Using a liberal interpretation of the model, many
investigators have sought to understand how po-
litical economy affects values, types of rationality,
definitions of efficiency and so on, as well as
evaluations of those who do not share those val-
ues, views, or competencies. The social organiza-
tion of the marketplace is thus thought to exert
suzerainty over many types of social relationships
and will continue to drive analysis of internal
disparities in underdeveloped regions (Zeitlin 1972;
Hechter 1975; Ward 1990; Shen and Williamson
1997). It remains to be seen how the absence of
Soviet influence, often underemphasized during
the formative period of dependency theory, will
play out in analyses of international economic
development in the twenty-first century (Pai 1991).Substituting a figurative, symbolic relation-
ship for spatial criteria, a generalized dependency
model alloyed ideas of internal colonialism and
has been widely employed as an explanatory frame-
work wherein social and psychological distance
from the center of power is seen as a factor in
shaping well-being and other aspects of quality of
life such as school enrollment, labor force partici-
pation, social insurance programs, longevity and
so on. Likely as not, the political economics of
development will continue to inform analysis of
ancillary spheres for some time to come.Gamson’s (1968) concept of ‘‘stable
unrepresentation’’ helped emphasize how the poli-
tics of inequality are perpetuated by real or em-
blematic core complexes. Internal colonialism and