It is becoming increasingly evident, if it is not clear already, that one of the most critical problems in the overall modernization of the developing countries is political development. In South Vietnam, in the Congo, in Brazil, in Indonesia—all over the underdeveloped world, the capacity of countries to cope with their own problems, and consequently the stance of the United States toward these nations, turns in varying degrees on the successes or failures of the political system.

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. INTRODUCTION IS SOCIALISM A MEANS TO ELIMINATE or reduce dependencyand its alleged concomitants? According to a number of authors, including those of the most influential recent approaches to the study of Latin American politics and development, it is. Indeed, for most of these authors socialism is the only desirable or acceptable way to address the problems of dependent capitalism. For them, capitalism is inherently exploitative and repressive; socialism is the only desirable or acceptable path to a more autonomous, egalitarian, free and just society (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: ix-xxiv, 209-216).As some of the foregoing implies, and as is obvious to anyone familiar with the literature, for many authors the truth or falsity of this view is not a matter amenable to resolution by anything so mundane as reference to historical experience. For such analysts, this view is true by definition. The analyst using this perspective first "assumes" it to be true and then "demonstrates" that it is true by citing data that support it (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: x). In this interpretation, the practice of comparing hypotheses against evidence and rejecting or modifying the hypothesis if the evidence fails to be supportive is "formal," undialectical, positivist, ethnocentric, and bourgeois (Cordoso, 1977:15).Additionally, there is another problem with a different origin but the same result. Edy Kaufman (1976:14-15) has noted that manypolicymakers and partisans of both Communist and capitalist countries reject, apriori, the possibility of any analogies, parallels, or comparisons of the influences exerted by the two superpowers on smaller countries. "Extreme partisans of both camps," Kaufman reports, INTRODUCTION IS SOCIALISM A MEANS TO ELIMINATE or reduce dependency and its alleged concomitants? According to a number of authors, including those of the most influential recent approaches to the study of Latin American politics and development, it is. Indeed, for most of these authors socialism is the only desirable or acceptable way to address the problems of dependent capitalism. For them, capitalism is inherently exploitative and repressive; socialism is the only desirable or acceptable path to a more autonomous, egalitarian, free and just society (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979: ix-xxiv, 209-216).As some of the foregoing implies, and as is obvious to anyone familiar with the literature, for many authors the truth or falsity of this view is not a matter amenable to resolution by anything so mundane as reference to his...

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Interest in the politics of the developing areas has increased steadily since World War II, and scholars have now produced a sizable collection of single-country monographs, several regional studies, and at least one attempt at a global synthesis.1 This literature has tended to stress various conditions as the primary correlates or determinants of political development. This research note offers a taxonomy of five approaches to the study of political development. The taxonomy draws upon both traditional and contemporary sources, and studies of both “developing” and “developed” areas, to derive a framework for ordering the literature on political development produced in the past two decades. The five approaches are (I) “legal-formal,” (2) “economic,” (3) “administrative,” (4) “social system,” and (5) “political culture.”

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