The current "globalized" political economy could well produce state apparatuses much more narrowly focused on the provision of transnational business services and domestic repressive capacity. Leaving ordinary citizens, even in advanced industrial countries, without the collective goods that they came to expect as normal during the generation following World War II. This article tries to analyze the possibilities of such a transformation as well as the likely (though more desirable) alternative that traditional capacities for the delivery of public goods might be preserved.