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ather than seeing globalization as the decline of the nation-state, Sassen interprets

globalization as enacted through changes within the state itself, including the

emergence of technical ministries, strengthening of executives and redefinition of

state functions.

It also leads to the formation of new assemblages of bits of territory, authority andrightsfor example, the global city. Such cities, typified as partially

denationalised strategic territorialisations with considerable regulatory autonomy

through the ascendance of private governance regimes (pp. 5455), collectively

form a strategic site for innovations and transforma- tions in multiple institutional

domains (pp. 6970). Globalization does not simply happen; it relies on the

construction of a specific set of institutions to construct and implement it. In this,

global cities are crucial. Global cities are strategic sites for the combination of

resources necessary for the production of these central functions in system

integration (p. 347), operating

as spatial insertions necessary for globalization as a wider system. This can lead to

the emergence of cultures, such as those of financial centres, which are

transnational and yet very much specific to particular geographical spaces (pp.

394395).

assen instead emphasizes that state institutions play an essential role inenabling the process of globalization to unfold. Sassen identiaes two

key aspects of globalizationthe creation of formal global institutions

and the emergence of multifaceted transnational networksarguing

that these institutions and processes are actually facilitated by existing

institutional conditions embedded in the state system.

assen examines three key components of social and political

organization common to al- most all historical periods and culturalsettingsterritory, authority, and rights. She explores how these three

variables are constituted in different historical contexts in an effort to

identify the processes by which domi- nant institutional arrangements

are transformed. By focusing on terri- tory, authority, and rights,Sassen seeks to complicate our assumptions about the relationship

between states and globalization. Sassen treats the nation as a crucial

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point of departure by examining the way in which different political

assemblages across time and space institutional- ize the organization ofterritory, governing authority, and political membership.

askia Sassen argues that to understand contemporary globalization it is

vital to examine how historical assemblages of territory, authority and

rights have been reworked and remade. Her cen- tral thesis is that

national-state capabilities that were themselves complex reworkings of

medieval assemblages have not now been destroyed and

deterritorialized but rather denationalized and re- territorialized as state

practices have increasingly come to serve global economic interests.

he territory, authority and rights of the title which we learn to term

TAR inside).

As the T at the beginning of TAR might suggest, Sassens trinitarian

tropes also enable her to triangulate diverse territorial transformations

too. These include transformations of borders, towns, global cities,

cross-border geographies, and cyber-space, as well, of course, as

transforma- tions of the territorial nation-state itself.