The purpose of this article is to propose a comparative analytic framework to account for the wide range of contemporary experiences of development and underdevelopment. The concept of dependency, always general and now stretched beyond useful limits, can only depict the Third World in crude universal terms or as a bimodal construct (allowing for dependent development). A typology of three historical and four postcolonial patterns of change is offered as an alternative. The typology is deduced from the different ways in which the autonomous processes of the formation of capital, of states, and of classes interact and combine over time. The four contemporary patterns (authoritarian, nationalist, dependent, and decline) are then justified empirically with reference to an illustrative aggregate data set and by descriptions of the dynamic features and contradictions of each type. The theoretical argument is that indigenous social interests and state policies act upon international dependency situations to broaden options and create distinctive patterns of change.