World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability is a 2003 book by American legal scholar Amy Chua.

[4] Americans and the United States can also be seen as a global market-dominant minority, in particular when combined with their use of cultural soft power, military strength, economic might, and flaunting political hegemony, thereby causing resentment throughout the world.

"[6] Chua's thesis and conclusions have been disputed by George Leef[7] of the John Locke Foundation, who proposes that many other factors may account for ethnic violence, including the most simple motivation of pure racism.

[8] Leef argues in his review: 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.

That's nothing new.Andreas Wimmer and Brian Min, criticizing the book, state: By contrast, our analysis shows that what has been observed in recent decades may simply be more of the same old story.

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).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.

The book lacks the methodological rigor that must ultimately support any compelling conclusion about the complex relationships between democracy, development and ethnicity.