From the 1960s at least through the mid-1980s, if not indeed well into the 1990s, a stark contrast was frequently drawn between the development experience of East Asia and that of Latin America. This essay will describe that perceived contrast, and the support it drew from the conditions of the period, as described in works ranging from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, concluding with a brief reconsideration from the perspective of 1998.
East Asia was seen generally as the Third World's economic model and powerhouse. Countries like South Korea, not so long ago among the world's poorest, were seen as making rapid strides towards First World status, following more or less in the wake of Japan, itself a once-poor country that was by the 1980s a leading, modern industrial and post-industrial power. The phrase Newly Industrialized Countries" (NICs) was coined to characterize the development level of the rapidly growing East Asian economies; more colorfully they were refered to as "Asian Tigers."
In contrast, Latin America was seen as a region whose countries, though in global terms far from the poorest of the poor, were not quite able to make the transition to NIC status. Though several had rapidly growing middle classes and modern sectors, taken as a group they were seen as characterized by extremes of wealth and poverty, and consequent social instability.
It was no surprise that, in the 1980s, Latin America was the intellectual home of dependency theory (Stallings, 1992, pp. 44-48), which holds that countries in the so-called periphery of the world economy are held in underdevelopment by the dynamics of the world economic system. The popularity of dependency theory in Latin America--defined in the theory as part of the periphery--thus reflected a widespread self-perception of stagnation. With this outlook went a corresponding readiness to blame outside forces. "There has been a long controversy in Latin America about IMF...