For some, it represents a natural, indeed inexorable, progression towards a 'borderless world' signalling the end of the modern international state system as we know it.
Analysis is underwritten by faith in, and exhortation to, the future.
For others, the concept is over-stated and its benign influences are exaggerated. Indeed, globalisation is dangerous and perhaps even non-existent as a phenomenon. Furthermore, its invocation generates fear and resistance. We identify four definitions of globalisation in common use in both the scholarly and the policy community. As analytical approaches they reflect the ontologies and epistemologies of the definitions from which we argue they are derived and help identify the arenas of power and policy contest and the principal actors involved in the changing relationship between market power and state authority thereby revealing significant contextual, empirical and normative variation in the authoritative relationship between states, markets and civil society.