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The industrialization of developing countries has fundamentally transformed work, employment, and labor for millions. Despite the industrialization of most of the developing world, we present evidence that Latin America has experienced stagnating industrial employment in the past few decades. Benefiting from recently available data on industrial employment as a percentage of total employment from 1980 through 2006, we analyze fixed-effects models for 20 Latin American countries. Specifically, we examine three theoretical explanations: productivity/comparative advantage, institutionalism, and dependency/world-systems. Our analyses demonstrate that the prevailing productivity/comparative advantage explanation has limited value. By contrast, we find supportive evidence for a combination of institutional and dependency/world-systems variables. In particular, the stagnating industrial employment share in Latin American countries has been driven by the negative effects of (in order of magnitude) the Mercosur trade agreement, mineral and ore exports (as a percentage of total exports), the duration of the current political regime, military spending (as a percentage of GDP), and inward foreign direct investment flows (as a percentage of GDP). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new commercial globalization changed the map of the global industry. Today's world is different from yesterday. North does not dominate South in the same way. In the South there are large heterogeneities between developing countries, the emerging Asian and Latin American countries, etc. Some countries in the South have come to impose their own rules. However, not all emerging economies in the South have the same capacity prevail, as Latin America. Some Asian countries benefit temporarily from high growth, but experience a process of deindustrialization that weakens them. Some theories and analytical tools have become outdated or inaccurate, such as the center-periphery approach. Countries that yesterday belonged to the periphery have acquired characteristics of the old center and even exercise control over developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]