The globalization of the economy has become an irreversible, universally dominant trend. Industrialized and developing nations as well as countries in transformation have to face the challenge of building internationally competitive economic structures. One-sidedly liberalist economic policies do not lead to the emergence of 'systemic competitiveness'. What is called for are active development strategies. But how are they to be implemented, and what is the state of the political governance capacity of societies in the context of the new world economy? The author argues that the countries that will, at the end of the twentieth century, meet with the greatest economic, social, and ecological success will not be unleashed market economies but 'active and learning societies' that attempt to solve their problems on the basis of an organizational and governance-related pluralism. The book analyses its contours, functional logics, as well as creativity and blockade potentials. The narrow sets of categories offered by traditional theories of the market and the state are not adequate to the task of depicting the far-reaching institutional-organizational processes of change facing modern and modernizing societies and economies. The book unfolds the picture of the 'network society'.