Dependency theory
Dependency theory and world-systems analysis challenged the treatment of countries as societies or units of analysis and the assumption that each country develops separately through stages from agrarian to industrial, from authoritarian to democratic, from backwards to advanced, by raising historical evidence. The development of an uneven division of labor (world-economy) shows factors of causality that account for changes within countries indicating that countries are part of a larger society or historical social system with systemic patterns that account for global inequality.