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This article draws on research by the authors, especially in Latin America and Asia, to give concrete sociological meaning to the processes of globalization of governing expertise. The article relates professional competition, competing discourses of universals, and imperial competition to the reproduction of state elites and the construction of fields of state and transnational power. The three parts of the discussion in the article involve first, the complexity of the North–South dimension in the import and export of governing expertise; second, the perennial role of imperial processes involving cosmopolitan elites acting as double agents; and third, the role of particular state elites as gatekeepers facilitating and moderating the imperial processes.