Private Affiliations in International Public Policy: The Case of UN Space Governance

Diplomats that represent governments in international negotiations have normative commitments to serving the public interests both of their home countries and of international society at large. But diplomats also frequently have parallel commitments arising from their private affiliations to organizations other than their respective governments. Examples of such private affiliations include memberships in think tanks, consulting roles for civil society organizations, or collaborations with industry organizations. While private affiliations are not problematic as such, they can raise challenges regarding transparency, accountability, and conflicts of interest in international negotiations. In this paper, we use social network analysis to gauge patterns of private affiliations in the rapidly evolving field of outer space governance. We focus on the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the primary international forum dealing with diverse political and legal aspects of outer space at a historical moment which sees an unprecedented increase in the number of private space organizations. We collect publicly available information from social media about private affiliations held by current diplomatic representatives in COPUOS, using 2-mode networks to associate individuals with organizations. Preliminary results suggest that the diplomatic representatives of spacefaring nations tend to hold strong corporate ties that exist in parallel to their public interest commitments, raising questions regarding regulatory capture that have similarly been noted in other international forums such as the International Maritime Organization or the International Civil Aviation Organization. Moreover, we identify several key scientific- and commercial organizations that possess a wide range of links to diplomats inside COPUOS, implying broad differences in the channels of potential influence that are open to stakeholder organizations. Finally, we also find that diplomats representing governments of the Global North have considerably greater connectivity than diplomats representing the Global South, highlighting disparities in social capital. We conclude by discussing the need for improved transparency, accessibility, and inclusion for ensuring democratic and participatory governance of outer space.