Editing World on Fire (book) (section)

== Reception ==
Chua's thesis and conclusions have been disputed by George Leef<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.carolinajournal.com/cjcolumnists/display_author.html?id=29 |title=Print Columnist |publisher=[[John Locke Foundation#Carolina Journal|Carolina Journal]] |access-date=March 2, 2007 |archive-date=August 8, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070808142858/http://www.carolinajournal.com/cjcolumnists/display_author.html?id=29 |url-status=dead }}</ref> of the [[John Locke Foundation]], who proposes that many other factors may account for ethnic violence, including the most simple motivation of pure [[racism]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.johnlocke.org/news_columns/display_story.html?id=1759 |title=No. 152: World on Fire: Government Fails to Protect Society's Scapegoats |author=George Leef |author-link=George Leef |publisher=[[John Locke Foundation]] |date=Aug 26, 2004 |access-date=March 1, 2007 |archive-date=May 28, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080528142340/http://www.johnlocke.org/news_columns/display_story.html?id=1759 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Leef argues in his review:

<blockquote> Nothing does more to reduce violence and many other social ills than the rising [[standards of living]] that capitalism alone makes possible. What a tragedy it would be if nations were to forego the tremendous long-run benefits of capitalism out of fear that there might be violence in the short-run against those who take advantage of business opportunities the earliest. All that ''World on Fire'' proves in the end is that governments cannot be depended upon to prevent violence against people who have been, for whatever reason, demonized by others. That's nothing new.</blockquote>

[[Andreas Wimmer]] and Brian Min, criticizing the book, state:

<blockquote>By contrast, our analysis shows that what has been observed in recent decades may simply be more of the same old story. Although history never repeats itself, the same process patterns may be operating at different times and in different historical contexts (cf. Collier and Mazzuca 2006). The dismemberment of empire and the formation of the nation-state have led to wars since the time of [[Napoleon]]. The patterns of warfare in the Caucasus and the Balkans in the 1990s resemble those on the Indian sub-continent in the 1940s, those of [[Eastern Europe]] during and after [[World War I]], and so on. The return of the "Macedonian syndrome," as [[Myron Weiner]] (1971) has called the intermingling of ethnic conflict and [[irredentist]] wars, explains such recurrent patterns of war much better than any variant of globalization theory. To treat them as a fundamentally new phenomenon, brought about by the end of the [[Cold War]] or increased globalization, represents yet another example of the widespread tendency among social scientists to perceive their own times as unique and exceptionally dynamic (on "chrono- centrism," see Fowles 1974).</blockquote>

They also note that several studies support a variant of the [[democratic peace theory]], which argues that more democracy causes a general decrease in systematic violence, at least for the most democratic nations. However, intermediately democratic nations do have a higher tendency for conflicts such as civil war than autocracies.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Dec06ASRFeature.pdf |title=From Empire to Nation-State: Explaining Wars in the Modern World, 1816–2001 |author=Andreas Wimmer |author2=Brian Min  |journal=American Sociological Review |date=December 2006 |volume=71  |issue=6 |pages=867–897 |doi=10.1177/000312240607100601|s2cid=85521711 }}</ref>

International law scholar [[Tom Ginsburg]] states: "the wide appeal of Chua's argument does not mean that she is correct. When one looks at the trees rather than the forest, many of the phenomena tied together by her theory do not in fact belong there... The book lacks the methodological rigor that must ultimately support any compelling conclusion about the complex relationships between democracy, development and ethnicity."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ginsburg |first1=Tom |title=Democracy, Markets, and Doomsaying: Is Ethnic Conflict Inevitable? (reviewing Amy Chua, World on Fire : How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2003)) |journal=Berkeley Journal of International Law |date=2004 |volume=22 |pages=310– |url=https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles/2698/}}</ref>