The savvy investor and wise financial advisor have long been searching for ways to minimize risk. One tactic is diversification, which includes international investing strategies.

Globalization and the worldwide financial crisis make it abundantly clear that risk comes in many forms. News outlets devote a considerable amount of coverage to the ups and downs of foreign markets and companies, whether they are found in Germany, Shanghai or Malaysia.

Indeed, political risk is a critical factor to consider when making investment decisions. That's the premise of The Fat Tail, a new book by Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat, the president and director of research, respectively, of the Eurasia Group. While investors and financial decision-makers realize the importance of political events on capital markets and portfolios, they have no way to factor that impact into their strategies, Bremmer and Keat write.

"In no area is political risk more relevant than in the analysis of globalization and the rapid growth of emerging markets," the authors say. And there are ways to analyze political risk to markets, Bremmer and Keat argue.

The authors cite Brazil, India, Mexico, South Korea and even many of the former Communist states that have recently joined the European Union as true emerging market economies. They have political stability, rule of law and established fiscal and monetary policies.

But countries such as Turkey and Israel are more problematic because of their political and national security challenges. The authors also argue that Russia and Venezuela, so-called "resource nationalists," are "governments [which] have leveraged their countries' energy wealth to consolidate power at home and to flex their muscles abroad." Then there are authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia and China, whose governments are controlled by a few elites.

With all that in mind, I urge you to read this month's cover story entitled, "Going Global: Where in the World Can You Put Money to Work?" Writer Elizabeth Wine talks to strategists who explain why they are betting on investments in places like Norway and Brazil and avoiding Spain and Ireland. Their views are interesting, varied and exclusively their own.

But as investing continues its global pace, remember, as Bremmer and Keat note, that "political risks are likely to become more, not less, relevant to both governments and corporations."