THINKING LOCALLY, ACTING GLOBALLY: LOCAL DEMOCRACY IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION

This essay rethinks local democracy in the context of globalization. I reject unduly negative assessments of the prospects for local democracy because they derive from a model of globalization which ignores that local responses to globalization vary with local conditions. A multidimensional model, in contrast, does justice to the complexity of globalization processes, including their impact on subnational democracy. However, the longstanding tradition of democratic localism provides a weak conceptual basis for local democracy in the context of globalization. An adequate conception of local democracy should transcend the parochial outlook of democratic localism and accommodate a transnational action orientation. In such a cosmopolitan local democracy, local communities are primarily sources of political mobilization rather than arenas of political action. A transnational campaign by Canadian aboriginal peoples against the militarization of their homeland provides reassuring as well as disturbing lessons about the prospects for cosmopolitan local democracy.