Colloquium on ‘Identity and Territorial Autonomy in Plural Societies’, IPSA Research Committee on Politics and Ethnicity. University of Santiago (July 17-19, 1998), Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Printed in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 5 (3-4): 61-75, 1999.At the turn of the millenium, new telecommunications are shaping social life worldwide in a far-reaching manner. Impacts associated with these technological developments affect both economic globalization and territorial identities. These latter trends, apparently contradictory, bring with them elements of rapid social change and uncertainty. This paper reflects on the conjunction of both dimensions of the local and the global, and carries out a prescription of the progressive consolidation of a new cosmopolitan localism within the meso-level of community life. A theoretical review of concepts such as multiple identities or territorial accommodation serves as an introduction to the subsequent discussion on the effects of globalization, the extension of market values, and the loss of power by the nation states. A critical digression on the diffusionist, functionalist, and neoinstitutionalist approaches seeks to illustrate some conceptual misunderstandings regarding identity and territory. Mesogovernments no longer depend upon the rationalizing actions taken by central bureaucracies and élites within national arenas. At present, some minority nations, small nation-states, regions and conurbations appear to be better equipped to maximize the impacts associated with downward and upward developments. These relate to global action and local identities, respectively. References made to the European context seek to illustrate how the interaction of multiple identities makes possible a more effective access of civil society to the process of decision-making. This process finds its expression at various political and institutional levels within the wider framework of transnational Europeanization.