This article revisits the concept of "global polity" as a useful conceptual tool for studying public policy development in adult education. First, it describes the relations between polity, policy, and praxis and how these are addressed in adult education research. Then, it reviews how policy is conceptualized in terms of material and ideational crossing as well as of social and political crossing. Next, the article advocates integrating these perspectives with an actor-network "sensitivity" to better capture the complexity of the global-local tensions between polity, policy, and the practices these shape in diverse socioeconomic and political systems. Put briefly, the article argues for the need to deconstruct the false belief in education that what is "global" is intrinsically distinct from the characteristics of geographical or social territories; instead, it points to localized norms and ideas as ultimately contained and constituting what is (often) perceived as global.