The impact on educational analysis of mainstream international relations (IR) theories is yet to realize its full potential. The problem of education in relation to the construction of world order is considered in relation to core developments in IR theory since the Second World War. In particular, the global architecture of education is seen as a complex web of ideas, networks of influence, policy frameworks and practices, financial arrangements and organizational structures--a system of global power relations that exerts a heavy, even determining, influence on how education is constructed around the world. The past decade has seen the rise of fresh understandings of global governance, an emerging theme in international relations that bears considerable potential for new forms of analysis in education, especially for clarifying the significance of the global architecture of education. Fresh understandings of education as a contributor to world order, viewed in the light of shifting global power relations and patterns of global governance, see education remaining relatively undeveloped as a builder of world order, despite decades of normatively-inspired assertions to the contrary.