The Space Regionalisation and Global Space Governance

Abstract

The proliferation of regional space regimes—which stress the collective strength of a given regional space community, the importance of the interoperability and technical standards among various space systems, and the space capacity harmonisation among countries within a geographical region or cultural community—grows rapidly in the existing fragmented architecture of global space governance—regime complex. These regional space regimes are created to satisfy respective state’s mixed objectives in pursuit of (1) aligning regional astropolitics, (2) harmonising the regional space capacity building efforts, and (3) establishing and consolidating the regional space governance architecture. The birth and the evolution of these space regional space regimes, in another word the space regionalisation, depend on the inputs generated from the intra- and extra-regional dimensions. Subsequently, they made conceivable impacts on the global space regime complex. In this paper, we probe to firstly establish the relevance between the rising space regionalisation and the current global space regime complex. Secondly, we make evident that the regionalisation processes are sparked and nourished by a mixture of numerous inputs, such as the dynamics of regional astropolitics, the quest for regional space capacity, and the necessity for regional space governance from the intra-regional dimension; the extra-regional space powers’ stimulus, the inspiration from other regionalisation development (mirror effect), and the global regimes’ endorsements from extra-regional dimension. Finally, we note that at least three conceivable impacts which the space regionalisation has made to the extant imperfect global space regime complex. Among them, the regional space regimes become a new middle ground or new conductor for global and regional space powers to calibrate global or regional astropolitics. The space regionalisation consolidates the foundation of global space governance though scatters the architecture of the global space regime complex. Lastly, the new hip of inter-regional space regime creations which leads the extant global space regime complex requires our further observation.