How to Rule the World: The Promises and Problems of Global Governance

After the Cold War, leading intellectuals optimistically proclaimed we had reached the “end of history”—a moment when ideological battles would give way to technocratic governance. As part of that vision, global governance institutions would lead humanity into a stable, post-ideological future.

Three decades later, that confidence feels VERY out of step with today’s fractured world. In fact, many intellectuals now sound the death knell of those institutions.

But it’s still important to ask: what made that kind of optimism possible in the first place? What does it really mean to imagine the world as governable? And who gets to decide how that happens—and to what end?

As global institutions face mounting pressure and renewed skepticism, this Discourse examines the foundations of global governance. Rather than focusing solely on what’s broken, we’ll explore what inspired the belief that the world could be governed—and what those ideas mean for a fractured present and possible…