The space regionalisation and global space governance

The development of space governance is framed by its competition-cooperation-compromise hybrid nature which is different from other type of issue-area governance dealing with merely competition-driven issues (i.e. security), cooperation-oriented issues (i.e. environmental protection), or compromise-seeking issues (i.e. natural resource management) which actors’ competition and cooperation ought to be compromised. Outer space is commonly noted as global public goods to benefit all mankind because space technologies and their boundary-free applications have become ubiquitously valuable to handle various issue areas of safety, economic and social development, and ecological sustainability. Hence, the model of governing space related affairs throughout international cooperation and international regimes became commonplace. Nevertheless, since space remains crucial for many states to assure their national security and to gain economic interests, the internationalisation of space altruism needs habitually compelled to satisfy general interests and respective state’s self-interest concerns. In this context, actors from either intra- or extra-regional dimension of a predefined regional space community take initiative to lead or to support respective space regionalism in pursuit of the goals of aligning regional astropolitics, harmonising different intra-regional space systems, or developing or consolidating the foundation of regional space governance architecture. With these motivations and institutionalisation practices, the formal or informal regional space regimes stood out with their conductor role in the middle to connect global and national space communities, accommodate and transmit the dynamics interflows between global and national astropolitics within the currently imperfect global space governance architecture. To observe the role of regional space regimes alongside of their respective regionalisation processes, and moreover to analyse the impacts these regionalisation made on the architecture of global space governance, it seems essential to identify why and how the space regionalisation starts and their further expansion and fragmentation. As there is neither a single space hegemon power nor a unique global space regime which governs the space affairs alone, the start-up of space regionalisation with a group of neighboring countries in a predefined geographical area does not depend on a single actor, but on various factors from global, regional and national dimensions. These factors jointly trigger and boost the space regionalisation processes in different regions and subsequently make impacts on the consolidation of global space governance architecture. We note that the regionalization processes are sparked and fed by a mixture of numerous inputs from the intra- and extra-regional dimensions. In the intra-regional dimension, (1) the dynamics of regional astropolitics, (2) the quest for regional space capacity, and (3) the necessity for regional space governance; are the major inputs, which jointly simulate the processes of space regionalisation. In the extra-regional dimension, the inputs are generated from (1) extra-regional space powers’ stimulus, (2) inspiration from other regionalisation development (mirror effect), and (3) global regimes’ endorsements. Not an input alone but a mix of them results in the activation and the continued existence of the space regionalisation processes in different regions.

ISBN:9783709118986

Publication year:2016