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The author presents a historical and theoretical analysis of the rise of politico-economic corruption in dependent states. She defines dependence as the state of reliance on an external power for a needed good or service. She notes that dependency theory claims that First World nations enriched themselves by extracting raw materials and resources from the Third World. She stresses that political corruption is a barrier to international development of developing countries.

When Cardoso became President of Brazil in 1995, he implemented a model of development under the Washington Consensus that reproduced and accelerated Brazil's situation of dependency, shifting control of the most dynamic sectors of Brazil's industrial structure to transnational corporations. In this paper, I examine the contradictions between Cardoso's theories as an academic and his actions as a politician. Adopting Cardoso's own historical materialist framework, which recognizes the imperatives of the world market and the socio-political limits imposed on capitalist expansion by class struggle, I analyse the political economy of Brazil from its transition to democracy in 1985 to the end of Cardoso's presidency in 2002. I argue that with their power to influence the industrial strategy of Brazil badly eroded, those domestic capitalists disenfranchised by Cardoso's development model abandoned it in the presidential election of 2002 to ally themselves with Lula and Brazil's subaltern classes, fracturing the unity of the capitalist classes, creating a crisis of hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of nation-states experienced colonial rule at some point during the last two centuries, with well-studied economic, political, and social consequences after decolonization. This study examines a different form of the colonial legacy, involving the stability of international borders after independence. We present and test three competing expectations about the colonial legacy, focused around the legitimacy of the international norm of uti possidetis juris, postcolonial solidarity, and dependency. We find the most support for the dependency-based argument that colonial legacies have worsened the prospects for former colonies after independence, as territorial claims based on colonial legacies appear to be longer and more militarized than claims that lack such legacies, although such claims are no more likely to produce changes in the territorial status quo. We conclude by discussing how these findings contribute to our understanding of territorial claims and of colonial legacies, as well as by discussing promising directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional change is often studied through the perspective of path dependency or rational choice. In reality, however, the shape and configuration of institutions is often a combination of both deliberate decisions and institutional crafting by state leaders, and also, especially as those institutions age, institutional layering and changes initiated from within the institutions themselves. As the cases of the Revolutionary Command Council in Egypt (1952) and Council of Revolution in Iran (1978) demonstrate, institutional choices made at the inception of states or at other “critical junctures” in the state-building process determine the overall structural make-up of the state. Once these state institutions are strong enough to stand on their own feet, new and existing institutions are adapted to fit into and build on emerging institutional patterns and preferences. As the process of political consolidation gets underway, new institutions are added to existing arrangements in order to enhance their efficacy and staying power, especially in the face of evolving circumstances and challenges. When and if state institutions lose their efficiency or become counterproductive insofar as the agendas of state leaders are concerned, as was the case in Egypt after 1967 and in Iran in the late 1980s, or confront shocks or crises of one kind or another, agency and deliberate choices once again become the dominant factors in determining their shape and configuration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Center and periphery have been associated with dependency theory and issues of development and inequality discussed in international political economy. More recently, these concepts reemerged in debates about the deepening assymetries and new modes of domination in contemporary world politics. Neomarxian and postcolonial critiques have reinterpreted the reconfiguration of international power regimes in the light of new (or not so new) readings of the place of colonial and imperial practices in the structuring of the modern state system. The paper discusses the critical depth of these theoretical maneuvers while considering the recurrence of center/periphery metaphors underlying conventional and non-conventional narratives of the constitution of the international. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The critical turn in IR contributed to an awareness of the spatial representations deployed by the field in its conceptualization and constitution of the international. This paper evaluates the relevance of the concept of margins, as it is proposed by post-positivist literature, as a place from which alternative representations of space can be formulated. As a second move, the paper explores the possibilities of a critique of the center / periphery duality that structures contemporary world politics, from a marginal perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data over the period from 1950-2000 we estimate a gravity model of bilateral international trade to explore the linkages between a) alliances, b) joint memberships in international institutions, c) mutual cooperation and d) conflict, e) mutual economic freedom and f) democracy and bilateral trade. Our novel contribution to the literature is the incorporation of exporter and importer effects as well as reciprocity into a gravity model of international trade. We cross-validate this model against out-of-sample data on an annual basis. The resulting, empirical findings are substantially stronger than typically obtained from gravity model estimations. Second and third order dependencies in bilateral trade are important; models which do not include these effects may lead to misleading results. Military alliances, membership in IGOs, and mutual economic freedom are shown to enhance bilateral trade. Further, speculation about the positive synergy between international cooperation and trade is supported by our results. On the other hand, conflict and the level of democracy do not appear to have strong, discernable effects on bilateral trade. We speculate about the global implications of freer trade among countries without latent tendencies to have high levels of bilateral commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American general perceptions of the outside world were initially heavily influenced by the central hypothesis of dependence theory: the peripheral insertion of the region into the world economy and the very limited margins of action the countries had to change that state of affairs. However, during the 70’s and 80’s the development of a more independent international relations discipline gave scholars and practitioners a new conceptual toolset which allowed them to develop and practice a more dynamic foreign policy. At a time when Washington, traditionally, Latin America’s main international partner seemed completely obsessed by the Central American crisis Latin American capitals were able to articulate an alternative policy (symbolized by the Contadora process and the Esquipulas Peace Plan) which gained much support around the world. Foreign donors -governmental and private-served as a driving force either by promoting scholarship and training or by demanding more sophisticated interlocutors to negotiate with. The paper would retrace this trajectory and explore what foreign donors are doing today --if anything-- to help develop new concepts for better understanding Latin American international relations and developing effective foreign policies in our globalized world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]