9 Urban Governance and Politics in a Global Context: The Growing Importance of Localities

One of the intriguing paradoxes of the multifaceted phenomenon called globalization is the marked tendency in many countries (in both the North and the South) toward increased public concern with institutions and issues of a local nature. By local we refer to jurisdictions at the level of municipality, district, local community, or lower still. To capture the binary nature of this emerging tendency, some writers have popularized a Japanese business term of the 1980s, glocalization (Borja and Castells 1997; Luke 1995; Parnwell and Wongsuphasawat 1997; Robertson 1995). ' Others (many of them environmentalists) have reminded us of the popular slogan "think globally, act locally " (Gilbert and others 1996, pp. 17-18); while still others have systematically examined the extensive evidence of local and community initiatives in response to international forces (Douglass and Friedmann 1998; Eade 1997; Gould, Schnaiberg, and Weinberg 1996; Pile and Keith 1997; Taylor 1995). Whatever the approach taken, however, local politics and governance has proved to be a central preoccupation of both scholars and developmental activists at the beginning of the 21st century. In light of the increasing importance of local initiatives and municipal institutions, this focus on local politics and governance can be traced through three major trajectories: civil society, local democratization, and the new localism. While these trajectories are related, and each in turn relates the local to the global, they all offer different perspectives on th