Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States

Overview

The two principal policy tools for addressing the problems of failing and collapsed states—governance assistance and transitional administration—are woefully inadequate, argues Stephen Krasner of Stanford University. Part of the problem, Krasner contends, involves the limitations of conventional sovereignty. “Recognition of juridically independent territorial entities and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states,” he writes, “no longer work” in the case of collapsed and poorly governed countries. Indeed, the basic rules of conventional sovereignty may contribute to their problems. Krasner calls for the creation of two new institutions—de facto trusteeships and shared sovereignty arrangements with regional and international organizations or, in some cases, more powerful and better governed states—to help improve governance in these countries.