World on fire: How exporting free market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability - Amy Chua

Amy Chua's remarkable book explores the tensions of the post-Cold War globalising world. As global markets open, ethnic conflict worsens and democracy in developing nations can turn ugly and violent. Chua shows how free markets have concentrated disproportionate, often spectacular wealth in the hands of resented ethnic groups - 'market dominant minorities'. Adding democracy to this volatile mix can unleash suppressed ethnic hatred and bring to power 'ethno-nationalist governments that pursue aggressive policies of confiscation and revenge. 

Chua is not an anti-globalist. But she presciently warns that, far from making the world a better and safer place, democracy and capitalism - at least in the raw, unrestrained form in which they are currently being exported - are intensifying ethnic resentment and global violence, with potentially catastrophic results.