Democratizing Globalization, Globalizing Democracy: An Interview with Jan Aart Scholte Interview by Jan Aart Scholte is Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at, where he also serves as Acting Director of the. Prior to coming to Warwick, he taught at the University of Sussex, Brighton and the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Aside from his many articles, book chapters, and reports, Dr. Scholte is author of Globalization: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave, 2000; 2nd Edition Forthcoming in 2005) and International Relations of Social Change (Open University Press, 1993), co-author of Contesting Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and editor of Civil Society and Global Finance (Routledge, 2002). Gigafast Wf748-cui Vista Driver. He has two new books on the immediate horizon: Civil Society and Global Democracy, forthcoming from Polity Press in 2005; and the Encyclopedia of Globalization (co-edited with Roland Robertson), to be published by Routledge in 2006. A scholar of considerable learning and expertise in many domains of globalization studies, Scholte's current research focuses on questions of democratizing the governance of globalization. At present, Scholte is also an active member of the Steering Committee of the Photo: Permission provided by Jan Aart Scholte What is 'Global' About Globalization?

Jan Aart Scholte Department of Politics and International Studies. The paper revises the second chapter of Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Jan Aart Scholte: Democratizing Globalization, Globalizing Democracy: An Interview with Jan Aart Scholte.

Aurora: Perhaps we should begin our discussion with a bit of conceptual clarification. As you've argued on various occasions, 'globalization' is one of the most ubiquitous buzzwords in today's political vocabulary, but it is typically employed in very loose and imprecise ways. As a result, our use of this term often tends to collapse together and conflate a number of different historical trends and developments. In your view, what is the best way to conceptualize globalization? Jan Aart Scholte: For me, the most helpful and distinctive way of thinking about globalization is as a process of increasing transplanetary connections between people. By 'transplanetary', I mean a situation in which people anywhere on the planet may have quite direct connections with each other, no matter where on earth they may happen to be located. This restricted meaning, I think, helps us to capture what is characteristically 'global' about globalization.

So often, as you just mentioned, 'globalization' gets conflated with other notions and other terms that, although important, we actually have other vocabulary to cover. Thus, globalization is not simply about 'international' relations between territorial units such as nation-states. Similarly, it is not intrinsically about policies of economic liberalization; nor is it the same as Americanization or westernization.

All of these other attributes can be connected to globalization, but the process of globalization itself is about increasing connections between people on a transworld basis. Aurora: What implications does this definition have for the way that we periodize globalization? Some people, for example, have claimed that the historical roots of globalization are to be found in the centuries-old process of European colonialism and the expansionary dynamics of capitalism itself. Dachshund Battery Doubler Serial on this page. Your conceptualization of globalization seems to imply that it is a much more recent historical process. Jan Aart Scholte: You're quite right: people will have different ideas about the periodization and history of globalization, depending on the different definitions that they might employ. If you define globalization as westernization, for instance, then indeed you might trace it back to imperialism and colonization over a period of several hundred years. Or, if you take globalization to mean liberalization - that is, the removal of state-imposed controls on the movement of goods, money, ideas and people between countries - then you might say that we witnessed a lot of globalization in the 19th Century, followed by a period of retreat, and then by a resurgence of globalization in recent decades.