Why, despite the Sino-Russian alliance, has the war in Ukraine not degenerated into a global conflict? Because enough countries have reached an institutional maturity capable of imposing peace.

Violence is the major problem facing any society. The recent theory of social orders makes it a decoder of the rules that frame politics and the economy. It contrasts natural states, where access to resources or privileges is conditional on allegiance to power, with open-access orders, where the market economy and representative democracy are coordinated under the guise of the rule of law. The open access orders appeared in the 19th century and were destined to gradually replace the natural states.

The twentieth century plunged these two types of political space into an arena where they clashed with unprecedented violence. But the open access orders are progressing and can now contain the natural states. They are even numerous and influential enough to contain planetary violence. After fifty years of American domination and thirty years of interregnum, it is up to them to contain pandemics, the expansionism of natural states, global warming: in short, to ensure world order.

Olivier Bomsel is Professor of Economics and Director of the Media Economics Chair at Mines Paris PSL. He is a member of i3-Cerna. He is notably the author of La Nouvelle Économie politique, une idéologie du XXIe siècle published by Gallimard/Folio in 2017, wich this book extends, but also of L’Économie immatérielle Gallimard, « NRF Essais », 2010, and of Gratuit ! Du déploiement de l’économie numérique, Gallimard/Folio, 2007.