Towards en empire structure? The reemergence of old conceptsin the perspective of the new Europe.- After the end of the "cold war", the acceleration of the process of political unification in Europe takes place in parallel to both an unheard-of flourishing of new state entities and a general reassessment of regional structures. These, as it seems, contradictory processes are but two aspects of the same phenomenon of spatial reorganisation at present under way, and this not only in the "old continent". In order to better highlight the dynamics in progress, the author proposes a graphical model which synthetizes the kind of connections intertwining the various categories of "actors". The process of political aggregation – interpreted mainly by means of its economic foundations – is thus reconstructed in the light of the changes both in the origin and the destination of the flows of relationships which have been selected. The resulting structure is then assimilated to the concept of "empire" with particular reference, in Europe's case, to the Middle Ages, a period characterised by the Investiture Conflict.
