Summary This article depicts the rules and institutions which have attempted to regulate world commerce and investments since World War II. So far the national state has been the political arena for playing out the tension (identified by Polanyi) between the self regulating market, and movements for self‐protection against its consequences. In the context of transnational economic restructuring, regulation of capital faces a dilemma. National states cannot regulate their national economies because of capital flight. Yet international institutions inherited from the postwar settlement depend on dominant US economic power, and its responsible use. The dominant response to instability has been to strengthen those powers of international institutions relevant to the short‐term interests of private capital. This intensifies disorder. An alternative is implicit in the many movements which are arising for self‐protection of human communities and their natural habitats. In an irreversibly integrated world economy, local and national institutions will have to find ways to federate into higher and more encompassing levels of political coordination.