Abstract

Many voices now proclaim that we live in a global age. Doubts are cast on this view in this paper, particularly insofar as it suggests that the nation-state has lost its functional salience for modernity. A first argument suggests, by means of varied figures and analytic consideration, that the world economy is far from globalized. A second argument adds to this an insistence of national diversity within capitalism. None of this is to suggest that nothing has changed. To the contrary, the internationalization of the world economy is now embedded more firmly than it was in the past - as the result of a stable geopolitical settlement.