Abstract: Disarticulation, a concept coined by Samir Amin to describe uneven sectoral development has been shown to stand in the way of the progress in human welfare that is frequently associated with economic development. This study offers a quantitative assessment of dependency and conventional modernization accounts of why disarticulation comes into being. Results from cross-sectional analyses set in 1965 show that higher levels of disarticulation are associated with national extraversion and urban primacy. Results from a panel regression analysis between 1965 and 1990, however suggest that changes in disarticulation may be the predictable result of normal economic development with early development being associated with increases in sectoral disarticulation and later development with decreases in disarticulation.