This IPE Classic provides a theoretical and historical overview of globalization and its impact upon the global political economy during the final years of the 20th century. It assesses significant developments associated with the changing organizational parameters of private markets and public authority, and connects these issues with themes drawn from philosophical, historical, technological and cultural debates. With a new Preface and Foreword, it provides a framework of analysis that is rooted in the tradition of political economy, but which engages with similarly holistic inter-disciplinary pursuits.