A Dependency Perspective on the United States, China, and Latin America

This chapter develops three mechanisms that lie behind dependency relations: markets, leverage, and linkage. These are useful for understanding the way dependency functions in a particular situation, but they are also useful for making comparisons across time and space. Applying these concepts to the shifting hegemony between the United States and China in the international arena, I study US–Latin American relations in the twentieth century and the difference with emerging China–Latin American relations in the twenty-first century. I argue that the specific characteristics of dependency vary between the two periods, leaving differential spaces for developmental projects in the region.