relative formation rate of open clusters in the Galactic disk, to argue for the existence of a [*universal efficiency, or probability, for the formation of a bound stellar cluster from a dense cloud of gas*]{}. Section 5 discusses the implications of this for a few specific issues in galaxy and GCS formation and evolution, and §6 concludes with a summary.

The Efficiency of Cluster Formation from Globular Cluster Systems
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Cluster Formation Efficiencies
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The possibility that globular cluster systems can be connected not only to galaxy formation, but to ongoing star formation as well, is suggested by the fact that this latter process operates largely in a [*clustered mode*]{}: by mass, most new stars in the Milky Way appear in groups within the largest clumps in molecular clouds, and only rarely in true isolation. This is, by now, an established empirical fact (e.g., Lada et al. 1991; Zinnecker et al. 1993), and it is easily seen (Patel & Pudritz 1994) to be a direct consequence of the different power-law slopes in the mass function of molecular clumps ($d{\cal
N}/dm\propto m^{-1.6}$, so that the largest clumps, which weigh in at $10^2$–$10^3\,M_\odot$, contain most of the star-forming gas mass in any 