Empire is materializing before our very eyes. Over the
past several decades, as colonial regimes were overthrown and then
precipitously after the Soviet barriers to the capitalist world market
finally collapsed, we have witnessed an irresistible and irreversible
globalization ofeconomic and cultural exchanges. Along with the
global market and global circuits ofproduction has emerged a global
order, a new logic and structure ofrule —in short, a new form of
sovereignty. Empire is the political subject that effectively regulates
these global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world.