Overview

In this book, Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny combine the social scientific approach with a broad, interdisciplinary scope to address some of the most intriguing and important political, economic, and environmental issues of our times. Their book employs formal and statistical methods to study the interactions of economic globalization, democratic governance, income inequality, economic development, military violence, and environmental degradation. In doing so, Li and Reuveny cross multiple disciplinary boundaries, engage various academic debates, bring the insights from compartmentalized bodies of literature into direct dialogue, and uncover policy tradeoffs in a growingly interconnected political-economic-environmental system. They show that growing interconnectedness in the global system increases the demands on national leaders and their advisors; academicians and policy makers will need to cross disciplinary boundaries if they seek to better understand and address the policy tradeoffs of even more complex processes than the ones investigated here.

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9780511804953

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Reviews

'Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System represents a brilliant attempt to tackle some of the world's most fundamental issues with academic candor, statistical eloquence, and policy insights, heightening the awareness of human promises, limitations, and opportunities as well as contributing to an ever-enriching research platform that cuts across disciplines and fields. It is an important book to read and share.' Yi Feng, Claremont Graduate University 'Motivated by important theoretical debates, systematic in the way it analyzes complex combinations of causal relationships, and sophisticated in the panel regression methods and formal theoretic reasoning it applies, Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System is a major contribution to political economy. The book is a must-read for scholars, international policy makers, and global activists.' John Freeman, University of Minnesota 'This ambitious political economy volume opens our eyes to the complex, interactive, and frequently unexpected effects that democracy and economic openness have on development, income inequality, environmental degradation, and military conflict. As expected, trade openness and democracy reduce income inequality. Yet FDI increases income disparity. Again, as expected, democracy reduces military conflict, but concurrently military conflict reduces democracy. Once more, consistent with prior expectations, environmental pollution declines with democracy and economic openness but deforestation rises. These are only examples of many tantalizing empirical results that emerge from the general theoretical structure developed explicitly in the book. For the first time a comprehensive political economy model incorporates explicitly economic degradation and demonstrates how economic, political, and military actions affect our future. This is a must-read book for any serious student of political economy. Bravo!' Jack Kugler, Claremont Graduate University 'A superb example of careful theory development and sophisticated empirical testing. Increasingly we are confronted with the problem of accurately specifying relationships within a complex matrix of interrelated variables. Li and Reuveny have analytically resolved this problem in convincing fashion. Not only are the concepts of democracy, economic development, environmental degradation, military conflict, and globalization of supreme importance, but they are juxtaposed here in novel ways yielding equally novel insights. I heartily recommend this book to any and all who have an interest in these critical areas of inquiry.' Manus I. Midlarsky, Rutgers University 'Methodologically, this book rigorously employs a quantitative approach, and thus tests hypotheses with the use of statistics and large-n real world data analysis ... This book is a theoretically grounded, interdisciplinary-oriented and methodologically rigorous investigation of arguably the most important problem in the social sciences today. The complex and often misunderstood relationship between globalisation and democracy ... Utlimately, Democracy and Economic Openness is essential reading for social scientists and policy makers interested in addressing the world's most important issues, such as globalistation, democracy, interstate conflict and environmental degradation.' Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr, Political Studies Review

'Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System represents a brilliant attempt to tackle some of the world's most fundamental issues with academic candor, statistical eloquence, and policy insights, heightening the awareness of human promises, limitations, and opportunities as well as contributing to an ever-enriching research platform that cuts across disciplines and fields. It is an important book to read and share.' Yi Feng, Claremont Graduate University 'Motivated by important theoretical debates, systematic in the way it analyzes complex combinations of causal relationships, and sophisticated in the panel regression methods and formal theoretic reasoning it applies, Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System is a major contribution to political economy. The book is a must-read for scholars, international policy makers, and global activists.' John Freeman, University of Minnesota 'This ambitious political economy volume opens our eyes to the complex, interactive, and frequently unexpected effects that democracy and economic openness have on development, income inequality, environmental degradation, and military conflict. As expected, trade openness and democracy reduce income inequality. Yet FDI increases income disparity. Again, as expected, democracy reduces military conflict, but concurrently military conflict reduces democracy. Once more, consistent with prior expectations, environmental pollution declines with democracy and economic openness but deforestation rises. These are only examples of many tantalizing empirical results that emerge from the general theoretical structure developed explicitly in the book. For the first time a comprehensive political economy model incorporates explicitly economic degradation and demonstrates how economic, political, and military actions affect our future. This is a must-read book for any serious student of political economy. Bravo!' Jack Kugler, Claremont Graduate University 'A superb example of careful theory development and sophisticated empirical testing. Increasingly we are confronted with the problem of accurately specifying relationships within a complex matrix of interrelated variables. Li and Reuveny have analytically resolved this problem in convincing fashion. Not only are the concepts of democracy, economic development, environmental degradation, military conflict, and globalization of supreme importance, but they are juxtaposed here in novel ways yielding equally novel insights. I heartily recommend this book to any and all who have an interest in these critical areas of inquiry.' Manus I. Midlarsky, Rutgers University

Author Information

Quan Li is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program on International Conflict and Cooperation (PICC) at Texas A & M University, which he joined in 2008. Previously, he was a faculty member at the Pennsylvania State University, where he co-directed the Multidisciplinary Seminar Series on Globalization in the College of Liberal Arts and served on the inaugural Faculty Governing Council of the School of International Affairs. Professor Li served on the editorial board of the Journal of Politics and is serving on the editorial boards of International Studies Quarterly and International Interactions. Professor Li holds a PhD in Political Science and International Relations. His research interests focus on the causes and consequences of economic globalization (international trade, foreign direct investment, financial openness, and capital account liberalization), democratic governance, political violence (interstate military conflict, civil conflict, transnational terrorism), and macroeconomic policymaking and cooperation. His research has appeared in numerous journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research, the Journal of Politics, and Political Research Quarterly. Professor Li was the co-recipient of the 2003 Best Article on Democratization Award from the American Political Science Association. Rafael Reuveny is Professor of International Political Economy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, Bloomington. His research focuses on the causes and effects of economic globalization, democracy, international military conflict, and sustainable development. He is the author and co-author of numerous articles and book chapters. Professor Reuveny's work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Ecological Economics, and Environmental and Resource Economics. He is the coauthor or coeditor of five books, the most recent of which is North and South in the World Political Economy (2008). He was also a guest coeditor of a special issue of International Studies Review (2007). Rafael Reuveny was program chair of the 2006 meeting of the International Studies Association and the North America program chair of the 2008 meetings of the Global International Studies Conference. Reuveny has won two teaching awards at Indiana University and was the 2007 co-recipient of the Award of Excellence in World Society Research, First Place, given by the World Society Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland. Professor Reuveny was also the co-recipient of the 2003 Best Article on Democratization Award from the American Political Science Association. He holds a double-major PhD in Business Economics and Political Science.

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