Power, State and Space: Conceptualizing, Measuring and Comparing Space Actors (Studies in Space Policy, 35)

✍ Scribed by Marco Aliberti, Ottorino Cappelli, Rodrigo Praino

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 235
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book explains on what basis a nation can claim the status of space power, what are the criteria differentiating a space power from “lesser” space actors, and how their spacepower can be empirically measured and assessed. To this end, it sets forth a comprehensive multidisciplinary framework to enable a dynamic comparison of space actors and of the pathways that lead them in and out of the space powers’ club. Drawing upon a critical review of the existing literature, it conceptualises spacepower as a form of state power based on the complex interplay between the two defining dimensions of stateness, namely the well-studied dimension of capacity and the often neglected yet exceedingly important dimension of autonomy.

The book demonstrates that only actors possessing high levels of both autonomy and capacity qualify as space powers. Different levels of either capacity or autonomy produce other types of space actors, including skilled spacefarers, self-reliant spacefarers, primed spacefarers, and emerging space actors. This innovative conceptual framework is complemented by an in-depth comparative assessment that collects and processes a large amount of hard-to-find data on the most active global space actors and aggregates multiple indicators into a compound, non-hierarchical index of space power visualised in the form of a matrix.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Spacepower: Capacity and Autonomy
1.2 Book Outline
References
2 Conceptualizing Space Actors: State and Power in Space
2.1 Space Power as a Form of State Power
2.2 State Power: Capacity and Autonomy
2.2.1 State Capacity: The Tyranny of a Concept
2.2.2 State Autonomy (and Its Enemies): The Forgotten Core
2.3 Spacepower and Space Power[s]
2.3.1 The Literature on Spacepower
2.3.2 Recovering and Redefining Spacepower
2.3.3 Spacepower as a Matrix: Space Powers and Other Actors
References
3 Measuring Space Actors: A Methodological Framework
3.1 Overview of the Methodological Framework and Scoring System
3.2 Measuring Capacity
3.2.1 Hard Capacity
3.2.2 Soft Capacity
3.3 Measuring Autonomy
3.3.1 Hard (Technical) Autonomy
3.3.2 Soft (Political) Autonomy
3.4 Indexing Capacity and Autonomy
References
4 Comparing Space Actors: An Empirical Assessment
4.1 Overview
4.1.1 Case Selection and Data
4.1.2 Positioning of Space Actors in the Spacepower Matrix: Outline
4.2 Measuring and Comparing Capacity
4.2.1 Measuring Hard Capacity
4.2.2 Measuring Soft Capacity
4.2.3 Building the Capacity Index and Matrix
4.3 Measuring and Comparing Autonomy
4.3.1 Measuring Hard (Technical) Autonomy
4.3.2 Measuring Soft (Political) Autonomy
4.3.3 Building the Autonomy Index and Matrix
4.4 Measuring Spacepower and Identifying Space Powers
4.4.1 Country Results
4.4.2 Comparative Results
References
5 Conclusions
Appendices
Appendix A: Major Literature on Spacepower (1988–2020)
Appendix B: Major Definitions of Spacepower
Appendix C: The “Measuring Spacepower” Survey
Country of Expertise
Soft Capacity Questions
Space and Security
Space and Defence
Space and Foreign Policy
Environment and Resources
Infrastructure
Development and Growth
Civil Society
Political Autonomy Questions
Acting
Complying
National Policies
Programmes
Partners
Dominance