Spreading good ideas with someone you know is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation.

Permalink for this idea

•  BUZZ
•  DELICIOUS
•  DIGG
•  FACEBOOK
•  LINKEDIN
•  EMAIL

Sign up for the Big Think newsletter in order to get pertinent thoughts and commentary delivered to your email.

Get Daily RSS Newsletter Get the Big Think Brief

Select the content feed of your choice in order to get pertinent thoughts and commentary flowing into your RSS reader.

• business and economics
• Shashi Tharoor
• These Comments
• All Experts
• Big Think Blog

Follow these topics and ideas elsewhere

• Find on Google

  • Shashi Tharoor
  • business and economics

• Find on Twitter

  • Shashi Tharoor
  • business and economics

• Find on Wikipedia

  • Shashi Tharoor
  • business and economics

Spreading good ideas with someone you know is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation.

• 
  Jen Something replied on 04:13 AM on January 13, 2008
  If the American voting system is still broken how can you talk about democracy at all with a straight face any way?... www.blackboxvoting.org
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #1
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3
• 
  Jen Something replied on 09:13 AM on January 13, 2008
  If the American voting system is still broken how can you talk about democracy at all with a straight face any way?... www.blackboxvoting.org
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #2
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3
• 
  baraca yo-bama replied on 04:31 AM on January 26, 2008
  He is absolutely correct.
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #3
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3
• 
  baraca yo-bama replied on 09:31 AM on January 26, 2008
  He is absolutely correct.
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #4
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3

Sign up or log in to post a response to this idea.

Sharing good ideas with peers is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation. Please share good conversation starters here for others to discuss.

Sign up or log in to post a response to this idea.

Should global democracy be a prerequisite for economic globalization?

Shashi Tharoor fmr. U.N. Under Sec. Gen. for Communciations; Author

• All My Ideas
• Contact Me

Question: Should global democracy be a prerequisite for economic globalization?

Shashi Tharoor: I’m not sure what the question means by “global democracy”. Because if it means global institutions should be run democratically, well we don’t have global democracy. In the U.N. for example, five countries have a veto. In the World Bank or the IMF, the U.S. has a preponderant voice. Global institutions are run in varying degrees of equality, and we don’t have global democracy in the sense of one man-one vote, or one person-one vote across the planet; which would give Chinese and Indians a heck of an advantage, but we don’t have that. So I don’t think that it can be a pre . . . prerequisite. I think economic realities are, to some degree, independent of the political connections that give you democracy. We have a sort of economic democracy because you can move money across the world with the press of a button. And . . . and . . . and that’s something which has actually affected human beings’ lives in many parts of the world. But we don’t have global democracy. I don’t think we’re likely to have global democracy in the political sense; but I think economic transformations will go on anyway. And it’s going to be a very interesting few decades ahead. And we hope to be able to see . . . to see how the institutions of the globe adjust to and take account of the economic transformations that we can all see happening.

Recorded on: 9/18/07

Read full transcript »

Shashi Tharoor fmr. U.N. Under Sec. Gen. for Communciations; Author

• Contact Me

Author, peace-keeper, refugee worker, human rights activist and now political candidate for the Indian Parliament, Shashi Tharoor straddles several worlds of experience.

Chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Shashi Tharoor was the official candidate of India for the succession to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, and came a close second out of seven contenders in the race. His career began in 1978, when he joined the staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, and included key responsibilities in peace-keeping after the Cold War and as a senior adviser to the Secretary-General, as well as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

Dr. Tharoor is also the award-winning author of nine books, as well as hundreds of articles, op-eds and book reviews in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek and The Times of India. He has served for two years as a Contributing Editor and occasional columnist for Newsweek International. Since April 2001 he has authored a fortnightly column in The Hindu and since January 2007 in The Times of India.

Born in London in 1956, Dr. Tharoor was educated in India and the United States, completing a Ph. D. in 1978 at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he received the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student. At Fletcher, Shashi Tharoor helped found and was the first Editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs, a journal now in its 31st year. A compelling and effective speaker, he is fluent in English and French.

In January 1998, Dr. Tharoor was named a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He is the recipient of several awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was named to India’s highest honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, in 2004. He serves on the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute India, and the Advisory Boards of the World Policy Journal, the Virtue Foundation and the human rights organization Breakthrough. He is also a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities.

Read more about Shashi Tharoor »

• 
  John McCain on NAFTA NAFTA has created millions of jobs, says McCain.
• 
  Thomas Cooley: How Can You Make The Most Of Technological Revolution? The Dean of the NYU Stern School of Business, Thomas Cooley, on how technol
• Letterman Writer Gives Full Frontal Nudity the OK
• Geithner Answers Questions on His Financial Plan
• Eleven Technologies That Will Revolutionize Business
• Having Sex With Lolita in Tehran
• How to Be a Smart Adopter
• Ricky Gervais on Religion
• Michael Bloomberg Action Plan
• Ray Kurzweil on Living Well Forever
• Eight Ways Microblogging Will Transform Your Company

• 
  Mary Roach Author / Journalist 1
• 
  Eric Kocher Staff Sergeant 2
• 
  Steven Castellano Student Scientist, High Technology High School 3
• 
  Clay Shirky Professor of New Media; Author, Here Comes Everybody 4
• 
  Elizabeth Gilbert Author 5
• 
  Paul Krugman Professor of Economics, Princeton; Columnist, The New York Times 6