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Both socio-economic and actor-oriented approaches to the development of democracy imply that poorly governed polities are unlikely to make progress. Socio-economic conditions are deteriorating in many poorly governed states. Because borders are fixed, violent state death is rare, foreign assistance is available, and raw materials can be exported, political leaders in many poorly governed states do not have an incentive to craft self-enforcing pareto improving agreements with their own populations. Shared sovereignty arrangements, institutions in which authority would be shared by external and internal actors, would offer the possibilities for pareto improving agreements that would not otherwise be available.