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 and rights for 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 in enabling 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 cultural settingsterritory, 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

point of departure by examining the way in which different political assemblages across time and space institutional- ize the organization of territory, 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.