ABSTRACT
This book asserts that the current rapid proliferation of gambling throughout the majority of Western-style democratic nations poses, in the long term, a range of threats to the vibrancy and integrity of the very base that supports their democratic structures and processes. In the previous chapter gambling was compared to other primary extractive industries that, when they are organized on a large-scale commercial basis, have the capacity to create rifts in ecological connectedness and thereby threaten their viability. Commercial gambling is introduced into an already well-established system of financial exchange. This system is intimately connected to systems of social interaction and political involvement. Widespread gambling, therefore, has the capacity not only to impact on patterns of financial transactions, but also to affect ways in which people relate socially and politically. As with the processes of tropical deforestation, the rapid expansion of commercialized gambling poses threats to a political ecology in three important ways. One way relates to the shared interests of governments and gambling industries in the revenues derived from gambling. A second way relates to the broadening opportunities for gambling industries themselves to link globally and build up formidable collective influence. A third way, and the focus of this book, relates to the ways in which benefits from gambling can subtly compromise the integrity of those with key roles in a democratic society and thereby lead to a progressive degradation of a political ecology.1
