A world government would be ineffective in practice  From the early 1990s, at about the time of the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, there has developed an immense literature on global governance in the post-Cold War era. It is agreed by many if not most international relations authorities that the existing institutions of global governance, comprising the United Nations and several others, are achieving as much as can reasonably be expected given the extreme diversity of the contemporary global human population, its widely differing perceptions, viewpoints, and policy preferences. If this diversity is hampering efforts to improve the global human prospect, this is unfortunate, but there is no reason to expect that a formal world government would not be similarly hampered. Furthermore, significant improvements can be made, such as the proposed Global Parliamen­tary Assembly (GPA) that would convert or replace the UN General Assembly with a directly elected assembly—without going to the premature extreme of full-fledged world government. Many other ideas short of world government were offered by the Commission on Global Governance of the early 1990s. Many of these are viable and attractive options for making progress without an excessively risky departure from the status quo. Thus there is no need to make a reckless giant step into world government, when there are more cautious baby steps that could be taken toward improving international harmony and cooperation.