Cardoso the Political Opponent vs. Cardoso the Politician : Continuity or Rupture?

Cardoso is among the most famous thinkers on development and dependency theory. He successfully combines sociology, economics and political science to build an interdisciplinary view of Latin America's transformations. This paper analyses Cardoso's radical theoretical evolution between two major books, Dependency and Development in Latin America (1970) and Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation (2001). The positions he occupied when he wrote these two books, academician-political opponent and then politician, could explain his evolution. Cardoso claims that new political and economic conditions have taken place and a new theory is thus required in order to chart a new course