In reflecting upon the prospects for world order, in the concluding chapter of The Twenty Years' Crisis, E. H. Carr advised that ‘few things are permanent in history; and it would be rash to assume that the territorial unit of power is one of them’. Based upon his observation that world order was being reshaped by the contradictory imperatives of progressive economic integration and a ‘recrudescence of disintegrating tendencies’, Carr concluded with a confident prediction that ‘the concept of sovereignty is likely to become in the future even more blurred and indistinct than it is at present’.