Will Covid-19 encourage us to make that order even stronger? Past great catastrophes made us think differently.

Whether they are fighting crime, managing international flows of capital or helping refugees, such networks are sustaining a global order, even spreading shared values and norms. Rather, it exists in the thickening networks of special agencies and interest groups from police forces to charitable NGOs that operate across and in spite of borders. However, as the American academic Anne-Marie Slaughter argues, world governance involves far more than formal institutions. And, yes, there is much to criticise but, as with the UN, we would be worse off without them. The Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and, eventually, the World Trade Organization, have helped manage the worldвЂ™s economy and foster development. The other key lesson the worldвЂ™s leaders took from the 1930s was that reacting to the Great Depression by erecting trade and other barriers prolonged the misery and poisoned international relations. It is fashionable now to write off the UN, but its existence helps us to think globally. At the very least, the general assembly is a forum for 193 nations, from North Korea to Sweden. In time it developed its own blocs that, on issues such as the dissolution of the European empires, were able to mobilise world opinion and exert pressure on the powerful. Roosevelt also insisted on a general assembly where all nations from the biggest to the smallest would sit as equals. It also oversaw a host of agencies, such as the World Health Organization or the International Labour Organization, that created international standards and policies in areas such as health and labour, and became centres of global expertise. By 1948, the UN had created its own peacekeeping forces, something the League was never able to do. RooseveltвЂ™s Four Policemen for the globe вЂ“ Britain, China, the US and the Soviet Union вЂ“ were permanent members of the security council (France was added as a courtesy) with, as the UN charter says, вЂњprimary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and securityвЂќ. The UNвЂ™s founding conference in San Francisco created a body that incorporated authoritarianism and democracy. As head of the worldвЂ™s strongest power, President Roosevelt was able to insist that the new United Nations have more power and more authority than the League. The shattered world of 1945 faced enormous challenges, both to rebuild and to prevent a third, even more catastrophic war. The League did not prevent the second world war, but lessons were drawn from its failure, perhaps most crucially that international unity from the start could prevent the spread of aggression. If Hobbes and his followers are right, a state of anarchy among nations is all we can hope for

Its embodiment was the League of Nations, which, with its council, assembly and bureaucracy, mirrored democratic governments but lacked their monopoly of force or ultimate authority. In the aftermath of the first world war, the US president Woodrow Wilson spoke for millions with his vision of a more liberal and democratic world order where nations worked together against common threats to humanity, from disease to war. Immanuel Kant dreamed of another possibility, where nations sharing liberal values cooperated willingly and peacefully. Lenin, Stalin and Mao had a still different vision, where a single communist state dissolved national borders.

Supporters of an earlier version of the Anglosphere dreamed of a condominium of the British empire (especially its white parts) and the United States to govern the world. The European empires justified themselves by claiming to bring civilisation to their subjects. After the Napoleonic wars, the great powers formed the Concert of Europe to settle disputes peacefully and maintain a largely conservative order.ДЄs our knowledge of each other expanded over recent centuries, so too did our capacity to imagine a truly global order. Chinese emperors claimed the вЂњmandate of heavenвЂќ, which, they assumed, gave them authority to maintain order on Earth.

The Roman empire controlled its known world for centuries. If we accept, however, that government can be the exercise of power over the peoples of a particular area with or without their consent then, yes, it is possible to imagine some hegemonic power or a collection of powers governing the world, perhaps even benevolently. Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazineвЂ™s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights.

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