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Book ReviewGlobalization and DemocratizationA Combustible Mix? World on Fire:
How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global
Instability. Amy Chua. New York: Doubleday Books, 2002: 256 pp., ISBN
0385503024, $ 26.00 (paperback).GEORGE MICHAEL
University of Virginias College at WiseThe subject of globalization has fascinated scholars for over a decade
now. In essence, globalization involves the movement of capital, goods,
services, people, ideas, and even diseases across national borders. Furthermore, globalization suggests a greater level of interconnectedness
among the various peoples of the world on a scale never before seen.
Integral to this development is the new information revolution, which enables people across broad expanses to communicate in real time. Accordingly, both democratization and free market economics are thought to flow
from this process, as information empowers people to seek out new economic opportunities and control their own destinies via free elections. For
the most part, American elites and intellectuals have championed globalization as a trend that promises to lift all boats in the world, albeit not
without some minor disruptions and inconveniences along the way.
However, Yale law professor Amy Chua, herself a paragon of the new
American elite, takes issue with this sanguine view of globalization.Over the years, many observers predicted that the march to modernity
would diminish ethnic and religious affinities among the populaces of the
developing world, thus fostering more tolerant and pluralistic societies.
However, the central thesis of World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market
Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability is that this
assumption is wrong. For a large portion of the world the combination ofPlease address correspondence to George Michael, Department of Administration of Justice, University of Virginias College at Wise, One College Avenue, Wise, VA 24293; e-mail:
[email protected] and Environment, Vol. 25, No. 6, July 2004 2004 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.658POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENTeconomic globalization and democratization is a combustible mix. Generally speaking, various free trade policies and the process of globalization
tend to redound inordinately to the favor of what Chuas dubs market
dominant minorities. Chua, through her previous experience as an international consultant, observed an interesting pattern in much of the developing world. Often very small Diaspora communities in a country will own
or control a wildly disproportionate share of that nations wealth, industry,