Space Governance

A groundbreaking partnership on space governance

Program contacts

Eytan Tepper
Visiting Assistant Professor
Inaugural Director, Space Governance Lab
Ostrom Workshop
eytepper@iu.edu

Scott J. Shackelford
Executive Director, Ostrom Workshop
sjshacke@indiana.edu

The Space Governance Lab builds on cooperation between the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington, Laval University (Québec), and CIGI think tank. It hosts research projects, a speaker series, and a Working Group that meets monthly.

The Lab also coordinates joint grant applications for numerous funding opportunities. The Lab further offers courses on space law and space governance, supports space law student societies, offers supervision for students’ thesis, and opportunities for Visiting Scholars from around the world.

Join the mailing list

Join the mailing list and be notified of upcoming events, research, and more via email.

Become an Affiliate

See how to become an Ostrom Affiliate and work in this program.

Browse current Affiliates

See a list of researchers around lU and the world working alongside us today.

About the Space Governance Working Group and projects

IU Space Governance, Business, and Security Speaker Series

The Space Governance lab brings senior space professionals from the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs, NASA, the McGill Institute of Air and Space Law, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the Secure World Foundation, Harvard Business School, and more to the Ostrom Workshop or offer Zoom sessions throughout the academic year. Watch the Ostrom Workshop News and Events for more information.

More about the Space Governance Program

The Ostroms’ work has been adapted to a wide range of sectors and disciplines, from fisheries and forests to climate change and, more recently, to the final frontier. There is a growing literature on applying polycentric principles to space governance, and more broadly addressing collective action problems including orbital debris and space weaponization. Nevertheless, the Working Group hosts discussions employing other theories to space governance.

The Working Group holds monthly meetings of space law & governance with scholars and professionals from around the world sharing their research and ideas. The Group welcomes members and discussions employing the Ostroms’ work and other theories, of various disciplines, to space governance.

To join, register to the mailing list

The Space Governance Lab is made possible thanks to a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. More on space governance funding
The in-house grant specialist at the Ostrom Workshop has a list of funding opportunities and assists with the preparation and submission of grant applications. If you seek a grant for your research project, you are invited to contact us to examine possible cooperation.

Corporate Sovereigns: The Governance of Space Exploration Corporations (London, Ontario, Canada, May 26-27, 2023)

New ways for students to get involved

Courses

Space Governance

This multidisciplinary course explores the principles and rules applicable to human space activities and how they are established. The institutions and treaties at the core of space governance are Cold War remnants, challenged by the new era of space exploration, where commercial corporations are gradually taking the lead in a race to harvest the riches of space, and are on track to become ‘corporate-sovereigns’. There is a consensus on the need to update the multilateral regimes but not on how to achieve it. The US is promoting its own governance vision with a series of acts that may set the foundations of the space economy - and hence also society - for generations to come. Military uses of space, key to modern warfare, face fragmented regimes, and the emerging space-cyber nexus is lacking any regime, though it is becoming the main mode of space warfare, as the war in Ukraine demonstrates.

Is outer space the new ‘Wild West’? Who makes the laws applicable in space? Can space regulation develop in a battered multilateral system? How are the legal foundations of the space economy different from those of the Earth economy? What are the regimes applicable to space warfare and space-cyber security? Can the emerging bottom-up institutions addressing various challenges complement multilateral and national regulation? These and other questions will be discussed in this course on the final frontier of international affairs.

Course offered at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies in Spring 2023 semester

Space Law

The course explores the international and domestic US regulation of space activities, including treaties, national laws, and the plethora of soft law instruments. From licensing of the launch and placing of satellites in Earth orbit, to space tourism, mining, and habitation, and to dealing with the challenges of militarization, debris, and space property rights.

The course is not yet scheduled.

Student societies

Space Law Student Society at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law
If you are interested in starting a student society, please contact us for support.

Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
École supérieure d’études internationals, Université Laval, Québec, Canada
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Canada
Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Center for Air and Space Law, University of Mississippi School of Law, USA
Maurer School of Law, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University Bloomington, USA