This chapter discusses the order-building strategies of the leading postwar states and variations in the character of postwar order. Across the great historical junctures, leading states have adopted different strategies for coping with the uncertainties and disparities of postwar power and, as a result, have built different types of postwar orders. Variations in the extent to which leading states attempted to build order around binding institutions are manifest in the divergent order-building efforts of Britain in 1815 and the United States in 1919 and 1945. The chapter then distinguishes three types of order: balance of power, hegemonic, and constitutional. Each represents a different way in which power is distributed and exercised among states—differences, that is, in the basic organizing relations of power and authority. They also differ in terms of the restraints that are manifest on the exercise of state power and in the sources of cohesion and cooperation among states.