First World-Third World linkages: external relations and economic development

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Abstract
Recent efforts by North American social scientists to devise systematic empirical tests for a series of propositions purportedly drawn from structural theories of dependency have focused largely on the consequences of foreign economic linkages for the economies of developing countries. Although the results of these tests have been received with considerable skepticism by dependentistas and neo-positivists alike, cross-national, quantitative studies of the dependence-development relationship are not without value: they have focused research on a central problem, namely the effects of various forms of economic linkages on rates and types of economic development. This concentration of research activities, in particular the current spate of replications, has yielded new empirical knowledge concerning these relationships, plus some intriguing conflicting evidence. This is now sufficient to support further inquiry in itself, independent of the confines of dependencia theories which gave rise to the research originally.