460 Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action
for democratic demands. What sort of complex overall pattern of conflict and
stability, competition and cooperation, will emerge from this process—in particular,
whether the state will, despite its changing roles, remain a key element in a
stabilizing, plurilateral web of levels and institutions or whether its decay will
exacerbate a long-term trend toward greater instability—is not yet clear. We are
only now in the first stages of a complex, worldwide evolutionary process of
institutional selection.