NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE SPATIAL DIMENSIONS OF ECONOMIC COORDINATION -TENSIONS BETWEEN GLOBALIZATION AND SOCIAL-SYSTEMS OF PRODUCTION

This article argues that the coordination of economic institutions is occurring simultaneously at various spatial levels (e.g. subnational r egion, nation-state, transnational region, global). The institutional arrangements which at one time were congruent at the national levels a re now more dispersed at multiple spatial levels. Impressive economic performance now requires that economic actors be well coordinated in a ll spatial areas simultaneously. In short, actors are increasingly nes ted in institutional arrangements which are linked at all levels. The parts of each system have become far more interdependent than was the case only two decades ago, and the increasingly complex distribution o f power and resources across geographical levels is further evidence o f how economic institutions have become nested in multiple worlds. Thi s perspective about the diffusion of power suggests that there is slow ly evolving a set of institutions for the governance of societies at m ultiple levels, but this process is poorly understood and its long-ter m consequences are rarely discussed. The future is very much open, but a perspective on long-term historical trends suggests that one of the major challenges ol: our time is to create a new theory of governance involving institutions and local territories nested in a world of unp recedented complexity, one in which subnational regions, nation-states , continental and global regimes are all intricately linked.