Although development issues generally have been considered in a framework of economic theory and politics, in this volume Tedros Kiros looks to European ideas of moral philosophy to explain the underdevelopment of Africa and the persistent African food crisis. He draws upon the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and the concepts of hegemony and counter-hegemony. Kiros points out that Africans and Europeans held opposing worldviews upon their initial contact and agrees with those who explain the present condition in Africa partly as the result of European colonialism. In his concluding chapter he develops principles of moral philosophy to guide Africans and others in the future economic development of the African continent.

The world’s eyes are on Latin America as a place of radical political inspiration, offering alternatives to the neoliberal model. Religion Without Redemption examines the history of religious and political ideas in Latin America, in order to show how and why the continent’s politics and economics work as they do.
            Martínez Andrade focuses on the central role of religion in the region and how it influences people’s interaction with changes in modern economics. Capitalism in Latin America, Martínez Andrade argues, has taken on religious characteristics, with places of worship—shopping malls and department stores—as well as its own prophets. This form of cultural religion is often contradictory in surprising ways: not only does it legitimate oppression, it can also be a powerful source of rebellion, unveiling a subversive side to the status quo. Religion Without Redemption advances the ideas of liberation theory, and challenges the provincialism to which many Latin American thinkers are usually consigned.

How do economic weakness and dependence influence foreign policy decisions and behavior in third world countries? Theories in Dependent Foreign Policy examines six foreign policy theories: compliance, consensus, counterdependence, realism, leader preferences and domestic politics, and each is applied to a series of case studies of Ecuador’s foreign policy during the 1980s under two regimes: Osvaldo Hurtado (1981-1984) and his successor León Febres Cordero (1984-1988).

Hey shows that Ecuador during this period represented the third world in many ways. It was a new democracy, having just emerged from years of military rule, extremely indebted to the West, and dependent on primary product export economy that relied heavily on importers, especially the United States.

Jeanne Hey finds that some of the most popular and enduring theories in western research, such as realism and compliance, poorly account for Ecuadorian foreign policy. She explains that poor countries like Ecuador have substantial foreign policy latitude in the diplomatic area. Drawing on archival research and interviews with policy makers including Presidents Hurtado and Febres Cordero, Dr. Hey convincingly argues that many of the traditional foreign policy theories do not “fit” dependent states, and inadequately account for the complexity of foreign policy in the third world.