This article develops a globalization framework and a model of transnational processes for analysing social change and development, and then applies the model to Central America. The analysis emphasizes determinacy, in the last instance, of social forces in historic developmental outcomes, and documents how social forces in struggles in an emergent transnational environment have shaped Central America's changing profile within the global economy and society. Revolutionary movements, a new class structure, US geo‐political considerations, and the internationalization of East Asian economies, have all contributed to a new model of development; from the 1960s into the 1990s the national model of development is being replaced by a transnational model. Maquiladora garment production, tourism, non‐traditional agricultural exports, and remittances from emigrant workers are coming to eclipse traditional agro‐exports as the most dynamic economic sectors linking the region to globalized circuits of production and distribution. The article also examines Central American migration to the US and gender dimensions of the new transnational model of development.
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William I. Robinson (1998) studied this question.