"People just don't realise that all these things go through undersea cables - that this is the main way these economies are all linked," said Alan Mauldin, the research director of TeleGeography. "Even when you're using wireless internet, it's only really wireless back to your base station: the rest is done over real, physical connections."

While the world's markets and economies are becoming increasingly integrated, the process is far from complete — and differences between countries are much greater than generally recognized. As a result, the world is not globalized — rather, it is semiglobalized, argues Pankaj Ghemawat in this Globalist Bookshelf selection from "Redefining Global Strategy."

Published as "French Democracy without Borders?" in French Politics and Society, Spring 2002.