Conventional sovereignty assumes a world of autonomous, internationally recognized, and well- governed states. Although frequently violated in practice, the fundamental rules of conventional sovereigntyrecognition of juridically independent territorial entities and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other stateshave rarely been challenged in principle. But these rules no longer work, and their inadequacies have had deleterious consequences for the strong as well as the weak. The policy tools that powerful and well-governed states have available to "fix" badly governed or collapsed statesprincipally governance assistance and transitional administration (whether formally authorized by the United Nations or engaged in by a coalition of the willing led by the United States) are inadequate. In the future, better domestic governance in badly governed, failed, and occupied polities will require the transcendence of accepted rules, including the creation of shared sovereignty in specific areas. In some cases, decent governance may require some new form of trusteeship, almost certainly de facto rather than de jure.