Dependence theories and the question about the political aspect: approaches and critics about the internal and external factor and their relationship

Abstract

The present work aims to approach a set of discussions produced within the dependency theories, whose deployment took place in the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America. The central aspect that the article addresses is how dependence theories think about the political question, and what in many of those works is approached as the “internal” and “external” factors, and their relationship.

Debating with perspectives that privilege a questioning dependence theories by the existence of deterministic approaches within it, this work intends to account for the heterogeneity of views that coexisted in the treatment of dependence as a common political problem. In that sense, the article presents a diversity of approaches that contemplate from a mechanical reading of the phenomenon to the inscription in a perspective that tries to connect with the understanding of the national question. In that sense, we will show how different ways of thinking about the political question are configured in the wide spectrum of dependence studies.

For this, classic texts by different key authors of the dependence universe are recovered, such as Fernando H. Cardoso, Enzo Faletto, Osvaldo Sunkel, Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotonio dos Santos, Vania Bambirra, and André Günder Frank, among others. At the same time, some contributions are retaken that, although inscribed in the locus of Latin American dependence, made their contributions in a critical dialogue with that broad and heterogeneous set of theories.