The organizational ecology of the global space industry

Abstract

The global space industry is booming. While governmental agencies used to dominate outer space activities, private space organizations (PSOs) now launch rockets, operate strategic satellites, and even take tourists on space expeditions. How can we explain this emergence of PSOs? Building on organizational ecology theory and drawing on a novel dataset of 1751 space organizations and 52 semi-structured interviews, this paper finds that mutualistic relations between governmental space agencies and PSOs have been instrumental in the rise of PSOs. This emphasis on mutualism challenges the prevailing belief that a few visionary private entrepreneurs create the space industry from the ground up. It also refutes the notion that PSOs simply out-compete a stagnant public sector. PSOs have not superseded governmental space agencies; they are nurtured by and developed with them. This paper is one of the first to explain how private actors can emerge in a field historically dominated by governmental actors. In so doing, it contributes to studies on public-private interactions by showing how mutualism can structure a nascent industry. It also opens up new avenues for research on the political economy of outer space by making available a rich dataset of space actors.

Keywords:

• Political economy of outer space
• space industry
• regime complexity
• organizational ecology
• mutualism
• symbiosis

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all research assistants involved in the ‘Polycentric governance of the Earth’s orbital space’ project who helped us build the dataset used for this research, as well as Cynthia Couette for her help conducting the interviews. We thank researchers from the Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy, participants in the ‘Linking IO Authority and Overlap Workshop’ at Hebrew University (2022), and the audience at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association for invaluable comments on previous drafts of this article. We are finally thankful to RIPE’s editors and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The dataset is available in the Online Appendices on the journal website. Users of the dataset are requested to cite this article.

2 It is important to differentiate between a fundamental niche and a realized niche: the former refers to the entire set of resources that organizations can potentially consume, while the latter is limited to resources that are actually consumed.

3 The terms symbiosis and commensalism are sometimes used to refer to different gain distributions between two populations, but we do not use these definitions here.

4 This imprint of an established population on the development of an emerging population is known as the ‘priority effect’ in organizational ecology.

5 A restricted definition is necessary to ensure dataset accuracy. It is reasonable to assume that the number of peripheric organizations not included in our definition is proportional to the number of organizations within our definition.

6 The dataset also includes information on the number of employees and the overall size (reflecting both an organization’s budget and number of employees) of space organizations.

7 An anonymized list of our interviewees is available in the Online Appendices.

8 In this paper, we follow an analytical approach through which we consider the extent to which our mutualistic arguments help us make sense of the historical process behind the emergence of PSOs (on analyticism as a research approach see: Jackson, 2016, ch. 5).

9 For a discussion on hybrid space organizations, see Beaumier et al. (2024).

10 Our analysis is limited by the fact that we can only measure the extensive growth (i.e. the creation or termination of organizations), not intensive growth (i.e. the increase or decrease in space activities). The difficulty to find metrics for intensive growth over a long period of time is a common difficulty in organization ecology studies.

11 The results using a three-year average are broadly similar.

12 It should be noted that some GSOs limit the expansion of foreign PSOs, for example, by restricting exports and foreign investments.

13 Small satellites are significantly smaller, lighter, and cheaper to build than previous models. Since the turn of the millennium, one particular type of small satellite, called ‘CubeSats’, has gained prominence.

14 Reusable launchers refer to rockets that can be used multiple times to send satellites and other payloads into space.

15 Kijima and Lipscy (2023) similarly argue cooperation among international organizations is more likely when high entry costs are present.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jean-Frédéric Morin

Jean-Frédéric Morin is Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy and Full Professor at Université Laval. His work looks at how international institutions interact in various empirical fields, including trade, investment, the environment, intellectual property, and outer space.

Guillaume Beaumier

Guillaume Beaumier is an assistant professor in political science and international studies at l’École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP). He completed a joint PhD in politics and international studies at the University of Warwick and Université Laval. His work revolves around the growing complexity of global governance, new technologies, private regulation, and the trade and security nexus.