Multinational corporations and dependency: a dialogue for dependentistas and non-dependentistas

Abstract

Three assertions about relations between multinational corporations and host countries in the Third World frequently appear in the dependencia literature: 1) that the host countries receive too few benefits; 2) that foreign investment causes distortions in the local economies; and 3) that foreign investment distorts host countries' political processes. These propositions can be reformulated as testable hypotheses, to which non-dependency studies of oligopolistic competition, bureaucratic politics, and transnational relations are relevant. Identifying critical areas of disagreement between dependency and nondependency approaches may help scholars to design their research in such a way as to enrich the dialogue between dependentistas and non-dependentistas .