Governance Beyond the Global: Who Controls the Extraterrestrial?

Abstract

How is outer space governed? This article argues that private authority is gaining salience in space politics, even with respect to the traditionally state-centric security and military aspects of space. Further, while commercial actors have always played a role in space programs, three significant changes can be detected: transnational conglomerates and consortia as opposed to individual corporations are emerging as key partners in space politics; private partners are gaining stronger and wider responsibilities for the development and management of space programs (including manned spaceflights); and public accountability is increasingly at stake due to a widening of security in space policy. The latter development includes a blurring of key distinctions between military and civilian usage (also referred to as dual-use or dual-role application), as well as between the public and private realms.

Cyber Security Politics

“…That public-private partnerships are indeed becoming major nexuses of space infrastructure is undeniable, particularly in Europe and North America (cf. Mörth 2007; Newlove- Eriksson and Eriksson 2013).…”

Theorizing technology and international relations: prevailing perspectives and new horizons

“…There is growing interest within strategic studies concerning the more recent development of AWS and drones (Bode and Huelss, 2018;Bousquet, 2017;Fleischmann, 2015;Schwartz, 2016;Williams, 2015). Space policy has become a small but multidisciplinary field of its own (see branch journals Space Policy and Astropolitics), but only a few contributions have been explicitly anchored within IR, either through publishing in IR journals or book series, or through application of IR theory (Eriksson and Privalov, 2020;Newlove-Eriksson and Eriksson, 2013;Peoples, 2018;Sheehan, 2007). The general impression is that many of the new technological developments are studied in subfields, with little communication with the wider literatures and theories of IR.…”