History Main / UngovernableGalaxy

* The Pan-Galactic Peace Alliance from ''Anime/TransformersVictory'' is a seemingly successful attempt to avert this. Formed in order to better defend against the Decepticons, the Galactic Defense Force led by Star Saber help ensure that there's peace on ''most'' worlds. However, the anime shows that there are ferocious battles fought in Sector 2 of the Alliance's space, where God Ginrai's Autobots and Overlord's Decepticons [[GreatOffscreenWar engage in battle throughout the series]], but overall most worlds and locations (like Iron Town from the first episode) seem like pretty nice places to live barring the occasional Decepticon attack.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': mostly subverted. Citadel Space with its thousands of worlds and trillions of sapients is remarkably stable, having been continuous with negligible internal conflict for over 2,700 years. Though the galaxy as a whole is, [[AllThereInTheManual according to the Codex]], barely 1% explored. There are however areas outside of Citadel Space that, such as the Terminus Systems, and others where there is no law at all. These areas are filled with tons of independent worlds and [[NGOSuperpower NGO Superpowers]] that, while extremely small and weak by the standards of the trillions-strong empires in Citadel Space, can at least maintain their independence out there.

** Further Patches developed this to a greater degree, especially the Overlord expansion: given time, it becomes more efficient for large Empires to delegate authority and autonomy to loyal and semi-loyal vassal states with a range of levels of autonomy, albeit at the risk of your vassals pledging fealty to other states and turning rogue and starting wars.

* The Third Imperium of ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' can best be described as a "feudal confederation", individual planets are typically left to their own devices so long as they don't attempt to secede, withhold taxes, interfere with interstellar trade, or make war with other planets. Wars between factions on the same planet are allowed if they don't use nukes[[note]] They're [[SeriousBusiness dead serious]] about the nukes. Use nukes without Imperial authorization, and the consequenses can be [[NukeEm dire]].[[/note]] or violate any of the other rules. The Imperial Nobility primarily administrate the Imperial Ministries operating within their domains, and have hereditary posts because the Imperium is too large to advance upwards within one lifetime. And the Imperium doesn't govern anywhere near the entire galaxy, or even all of Humaniti, they're bordered by five other empires that are similarly decentralized (save for the K'kree, whose system of government was so inflexible they had to stop at 2,000 worlds).

** This is a major aspect of the 3rd-party setting "Clement Sector''. Outside of the Hub Federation, every planet is politically independent of each other.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife'': The Combine are a universe-conquering (and probably full on MultiversalConquerer) superpower that was capable of subjugating the Earth in just seven hours when they arrived. However, since Earth was a low-priority, low-value world that was little more than a ball of resources to be harvested in their eyes, they only left behind a relatively small, if ''very'' well-armed, governing force [[VichyEarth made up mostly of human collaborators]] with a very small number of their own "advisors" keeping an eye on things. It's implied that this is the standard, since their slow method of travel around the universe doesn't allow them to hold more than a small number of "important" worlds with the kind of overwhelming force that they in theory can bring to bear. Part of the reason Earth later becomes a higher priority for them is when they realize that human scientists have developed a form of teleportation that's ''much'' faster than what the Combine are using; if they get this technology for themselves they'd be able to avert this trope and become truly unstoppable.

* In the ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'' galaxy, not even SufficientlyAdvanced {{Artificial Intelligence}}s prove able to rule an entire galaxy. [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49c84127c0399 This synopsis]] explains some of the difficulties any space empire would likely encounter. In fact they don't rule anywhere near the entire galaxy. On [[http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48028a7f74e6d this map]] all the Sephirotic Empires are within that fuzzy green dot (it's been only 10,500 years, and the setting does not have FTL).

* In the ''{{Literature/Foundation}}'' series, it is stated that Trantor's[[note]]a CityPlanet at the center of the galaxy[[/note]] entire population was dedicated to bureaucracy, and that it collapsed due to the impossibility of efficient governing. Seldon's Plan is intended to create a Second Empire, but it's stated that, in addition to being psionically governed, it will be more of TheFederation. There are also a couple of alternatives offered, although the option of an actual Empire tends to be viewed rather skeptically. In the greater context of the setting, and even within Foundation if one pays attention to the dating, it is strongly downplayed: one of the major factors that brought down the Galactic Empire was lack of efficient governing... but the Galactic Empire lasted for thousands of years as a genuine, functional Galactic Empire (Year 1 of the Galactic Era was the coronation of the first Galactic Emperor, and ''Foundation'' starts in the 13th millennium of the Galactic Era) before that, and that's not counting the period where the Trantorian Empire had taken control of much of the Galaxy and was obviously heading towards, slowly, taking control of the rest.

*** The TV film ''[[Recap/BabylonFiveFilm04ACallToArms A Call to Arms]]'' suggests that some Earth nation-states have their own warships, as indicated when the captain of an ''Omega''-class destroyer specifically identifies himself as from the Russian Consortium, despite clearly wearing an [=EarthForce=] uniform. It's possible it's a backlash in the aftermath of the totalitarian control of the Clark regime.