The Origins of Dependency Analysis

Abstract

It is widely recognised that dependency analysis developed out of two traditions of economic thought, Marxism and Latin American structuralism, associated with the UN Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). Although structuralism is acknowledged as a progenitor, Marxism is usually viewed, implicitly or explicitly, as the primary tradition from which dependency arose. This is perhaps because dependency per se is so widely perceived as having begun with two books for which Marxist antecedents were claimed. Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina(1969), by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, and Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America(1967), by Andre Gunder Frank, ‘stood out as the leading theoretical and systematic efforts to construct a dependency perspective for Latin America’, and remain ‘the landmarks to which assessment of dependency perspectives inevitably return’. ¹