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Inequality, Democracy, and Economic Development. Edited by Manus Midlarsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 281p. $64.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.
This collection of essays provides a multifaceted perspective on the process of economic development and its connection to politics and inequality. The reader is exposed to a number of approaches whose results challenge existing connections among these elements and open new vistas on the complexity of such interactions. A number of possible paths for future analysis are followed. This collection, however, does not provide a unified structure that could be used to build a theory of development; rather, it encourages readers to research and resolve the paradoxes of democratic development.
A useful way to approach this volume is to consider many of the counterintuitive insights about democracy and development. Evaluations of politics in ancient times by Bollen and Paxton, for example, show that hunting and gathering societies achieved levels of participation and equality still unmatched in developed societies. Using the ethnographic and anthropological record, Ember, Ember, and Russett argue compellingly that in ancient societies social equality strengthens democracy. This result challenges modern findings that equality weakens participation. They also show that female participation increases in peacetime and declines during conflict. Such evaluations again challenge suggestions that war mobilization opens new opportunities for women. Likewise, Midlarsky and Midlarsky find that the availability of rainfall fosters democracy, while frequent exposure to conflict and permeable borders among landlocked nations diminish the likelihood of democracy. While these works do not reach a consensus regarding the source of democratic evolution, they demonstrate that the...