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 region, nation-state, transnational region, global). The institutional arrangements which at one time were congruent at the national levels are now more dispersed at multiple spatial levels. Impressive economic performance now requires that economic actors be well coordinated in all spatial areas simultaneously. In short, actors are increasingly nested 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 of power and resources across geographical levels is further evidence of how economic institutions have become nested in multiple worlds. This perspective about the diffusion of power suggests that there is slowly evolving a set of institutions for the governance of societies at multiple levels, but this process is poorly understood and its long-term 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 of our time is to create a new theory of governance involving institutions and local territories nested in a world of unprecedented complexity, one in which subnational regions, nation-states, continental and global regimes are all intricately linked.