03/01/2023

Research Series Speaker Eytan Tepper

“Polycentric Multilateralism: Reimagining the Roles of International Institutions in Space Governance and Beyond”

Using the case study of space governance, this paper envisions a polycentric approach to the governance of critical transnational challenges. Reimagining the roles of long-standing multilateral international institutions that suffer from decades-long gridlock, this study explores the capacity of polycentricity to provide efficient responses to the governance of the global commons and global affairs more generally. Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom (Economic Sciences, 2009) found strong empirical proof favoring polycentric governance of local commons and suggested the conclusions might apply to global commons. In her work with leading international relations scholar Robert Keohane, they imagined the application of her findings to global affairs but have not gone all the way. This leaves, as Keohane observed, “unexploited opportunities” for investigators seeking to understand issues in global affairs. This paper aims to exploit this opportunity. It uses the Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD) and continues with the testing the hypothesis that Ostrom’s findings, and more generally the knowledge accumulated at the Ostrom Workshop, can be applied to global commons and global affairs more generally. Based on the research finding, this paper seeks to reimagine the role of existing international institutions as less of monocentric decision-making centers and more as connecting hubs that support and coordinate emerging polycentric networks. We call it ‘polycentric multilateralism’. This approach would reinvigorate the existing institutional system to better respond to contemporary and future challenges (e.g., space debris, space security, space resource exploitation). A polycentric structure would be better adapted to the reality of global politics, including of power shifts and power diffusion.