Journal of World-Systems Research_: Volume 1, Number 11, 1995 

                   http://jwsr.ucr.edu/ 

                      ISSN 1076-156X 

 

 

  Models of Integration, Models of Development in the Pacific   

  

                      John Borrego  

              Board of Community Studies  

                       College 8  

               University of California  

                Santa Cruz, California  

                     95064 USA  

                 Fax: (408) 459-3518  

               Email: borrego@cats.ucsc.edu  

            Copyright (c) 1995 John Borrego 

  

  

In order to understand the processes related to integration and   

development in the East Asian and Latin American societies this 

paper attempts to place those processes in the larger context of 

cycles of world accumulation.  Many of the societies in East Asia, 

Latin America, and the South, in general, were integrated into the 

world economy during previous cycles of hegemony and accumulation.  

However, in the  American cycle, and particularly at the height of 

this cycle, East Asia was developed while most of Latin America 

continued to experience truncated development.  How do we 

understand these different trajectories?  We argue that the best 

way to understand the different processes of integration   

 

[Page 1] 

 

and development in these two regions during the current historical 

period  of global capitalist accumulation is to see them all as 

housed in a transition period between the waning American cycle of 

hegemony in the world  economy and a new, as yet undefined cycle.  

We will look at the role that the East Asian region and its 

societies are playing in the transition to the next cycle, as well 

as analyze why these societies should not be viewed as   

successful products of the "modernization process," as proponents 

of that  theory argue.  The "success" of these societies is rooted 

in their historical entry point and the geopolitical importance to 

the United States of the region in which they were housed, and is 

not necessarily repeatable by other Third World societies such as 

those in Latin America.  

  

This paper has four parts.  First, we address the models of 

integration  and development in East Asia and Latin America, key 

regions of the Pacific Rim, through the mid 1970s.  Second, we 

analyze how the descending cycle of American hegemony is rooted in 

the decline of Post-Fordism and the emergence of what we call 

Global Capitalist Accumulation, which has generated a new global 

division of labor in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Three, we explore 

the regional economic structure being generated by the interlinked 

national processes of development in Japan, East Asia,   

Southeast Asia and the Market Socialist Countries in the late 1980s 

and  early 1990s.  Four, we briefly explore the limitations of 

119  Journal of World-Systems Research