There is a world administration of sorts, in the form of the UN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and so on, but it is all in the hands of governments - and some governments are much more equal than others, so none of the global institutions ever acts against the will of the powerful. (Occasionally, they refuse to approve some deed of the powerful, as the UN did briefly over the US invasion of Iraq, but that is all.) And nowhere in all the layers of bureaucrats and diplomats is there any direct representation of ordinary people.

And so, only 62 years after the foundation of the UN, the Campaign for the Establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly was launched recently in five continents. It has the signatures of 377 members of national parliaments from 70 countries, six former foreign ministers and secretaries, and other international luminaries such as Vaclav Havel, Guenther Grass and former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But it also has a few minor problems.

One is a distinct lack of Americans: only nine of the signatories are from the US. The well-known American allergy to international institutions that might infringe on the absolute sovereignty of the US extends, in this case, to a body that could have no such impact because it would have no legislative or executive power. And that is the problem: what is the point of this hypothetical world parliament, given that it would have no power over the UN Security Council, the IMF, the World Bank, or any of the other real decision-making centres?

The campaign, whose headquarters is in Germany, explains that the UN parliament 'is envisaged as a first practical step towards the long-term goal of a world parliament', but it would not even be elected in the first phase of its existence. Members from national parliaments would be chosen, by whatever means each country saw fit, to sit together at the UN for a few weeks a year. It is the feeblest of symbolic gestures and you wonder why they even bother.

European enthusiasts point out that when the European Parliament was set up in 1958 national parliaments of member-states chose members, and it had little control over European Union decisions. As at the UN, power remained in the hands of national governments and the international institutions that they controlled. But, in 1979, they started electing European Parliament members directly, which gave it real democratic legitimacy and, little by little, it has gained some degree of control over what happens in Brussels.

It would take a very long time for the same sort of evolution to take place at the UN level, where even the number of members each country gets would be the subject of fierce disputes. Would China really have as many members as the hundred smallest countries combined, which is what its population entitles it to? Would America settle for one-third as many members as India (assuming it agreed to be represented at all)? Obviously not, but what would be the right numbers?

At best, UN parliament supporters would have to work their way through all those problems, and accept that for the next 20 or 50 years what they have created would be a debating chamber and nothing more. Is it worth the effort for that damp squib of a result?

Yes, certainly. It would be open to countries to start electing their UN parliament members, so it had more democratic legitimacy. And although real power might take generations to arrive, from the very start a parliament of this sort would provide a very different perspective on the world - and a more realistic one - than the pious debates of the General Assembly and the hard-ball great-power politics of the Security Council. It would be interesting, at least, and quite instructive.

So tell Tennyson to come back in another 100 years, and maybe we will have something to show him.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries