Management of hospital accounts receivable : a case study

A review of contemporary literature on international relations revealed three major impediments to the development of theory and a better understanding of international politics. A case was made for the resolution of these problems via data gathering and systematic and empirical research at the regional or subsystemic level. A similar review of literature on inter-American affairs showed a lack of rigorous empirical research and a disproportionate effort toward postulating interrelations and formulating new theoretical generalizations rather than testing and verifying existing ones. Conflicting propositions co-exist in splendid isolation without much rhyme or reason. As a consequence of this latter tendency, and in accordance with the argument for regional analysis, a data bank on inter-American relations was created. And these data were used to subject dependency theory and some of its corollaries to empirical verification. The results were mixed. On the one hand, they illustrated the need for systematic and empirical data and the advantage in practical terms of the regional or subsystemic focus. On the other hand, the inconclusiveness, in a statistical sense, of the empirical findings precluded any definite conclusions. Yet, the evidence, however precarious, has shifted the burden of proof to the proponents of dependency theory; and it has dramatized the need for the specification of empirical relations which would define a dependent situation. Economic and military aid for example was found to be a poor indicator of dependency. Finally, the testing of corollaries of dependency theory related to U.S. and Latin American behavior produced some evidence of the emergence of a "Washington Brazilia" axis, and of the tendency of Latin America to increase its intra-regional cooperation and its ties with Cuba as a means to counteract U.S. and Brazilian influence.