Poverty, Wealth
Dictatorship, Democracy:
Resource Scarcity and the Origins of Dictatorship
by Jack Barkstrom
The Midwest Book Review
Published in the Wisconsin Bookwatch
March 2000
Reviewer: James A. Cox
In Poverty, Wealth Dictatorship, Democracy: Resource Scarcity and the Origins of Dictatorship, Jack Barkstrom presents a fascinating, engaging, informative, ground-breaking, historical treatise on the cause/effect relationship between poverty (the depletion and/or unequal distribution of resources) and the rise of political dictatorships. The relation of economics to politics is well known; what Barkstrom brings to the reader is the realization that dictatorships are not unique to any historical time frame, nor are they the product of any particular ideology or political philosophy. Economics, the abundance or scarcity of resources, is critical to an understanding of why dictatorships rise to power and how levels of violence are driven to escalate. Poverty, Wealth Dictatorship, Democracy is a seminal work that will prove of intense interest and benefit to students of economics, political science, international relations, social dysfunction, and world history.