The author views "globalization" as a qualitative transformation in the way economic production, exchange, and financial investment is done, along with the decline of the state as a major actor in achieving and spurring the creation of wealth. Multinational organizations, banks, and institutional investors have become the major agents that propel economic and technological change. These organizations are not bounded by specific territories or national loyalties. State authority is being overlapped, in its own territory and beyond it, by multileveled authoritative institutions that remain well differentiated while being intertwined with the state. The case of Mexico highlights what is happening in a country caught up in these worldwide trends. Mexico is moving from an inward-looking, state-centered, authoritarian machinery of governance to a postsovereign, principle-based, multilayered governance structure. This transition is primarily revealed in the governing mechanisms of corporate and human rights. This does not mean that policy tools of the "ancient regime" have completely disappeared. State-centered structures for governing will remain important during this stage of economic and political change. The encoding of corporate rights as well as their supervision and enforcement throughout a multilayered governing mechanism is a major sign that Mexico is moving to a postsovereign organizational regime. The emergence of a postsovereign pattern of governance, however, does not mean the end of statehood or the triumph of corporate rights. Rather, it reflects the reshaping of politics at the substate and transborder levels and sets the stage for emerging conflicts that involve collective and individual rights as well as the interests of corporate institutions and marginalized groups. 2 notes