Much has been written about the many economic benefits of globalization and the triumph and spread of democratic liberalism with the end of the Cold War, following the demise of the Soviet Union. This work takes issue with such 'wine and roses' perspectives about the future of the Western democracies and their faith-based views on the moral purity of a globalized marketplace. It also questions many of the assumptions found in the status quo reinforcing discipline of international political economy (IPE)-a discipline that focuses on the formal and legitimate economies and the facade they...

Concerns over the changing nature of gangs and cartels and their relationships to states in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has resulted in the emergence of a scholarly body of work focused on their national security threat potentials. This body of work, utilizing the third generation gangs and third phase cartel typologies, represents an alternative to traditional gang and organized crime research and one that is increasingly influencing the US defense community. Rather than being viewed only as misguided youth and opportunistic criminals or, in their mature forms, as criminal...