The Space Economy (SE) is increasingly intertwined with collective security, making it a timely and theoretically rich context for the Conflict Management (CM) Division. As strategic competition extends into orbit, space is becoming a domain where actors must pursue national and commercial objectives while managing escalation risks in an environment marked by high interdependence, limited transparency, and uncertain attribution.
For CM scholars, the SE raises core questions about how parties balance assertiveness and cooperativeness to secure interests without triggering destabilizing spirals. It offers a valuable setting for extending theory on bargaining, escalation, and deterrence, especially where signaling is ambiguous and the risk of miscalculation is high.
The SE also reshapes the informational and operational foundations of conflict management. Space-enabled capabilities now support early warning, crisis monitoring, and verification functions that are essential to peacekeeping and arms-control regimes. At the same time, the rapid commercial diffusion of dual-use technologies introduces new vulnerabilities and pathways for rivalry, including geopolitical competition, cyber risks, contested norms, and regulatory ambiguity.
Equally important, the SE provides a live setting for examining how governance and institutional arrangements enable or constrain de-escalation. Existing frameworks such as the Outer Space Treaty establish baseline principles, while new standards, norms, and industry practices are emerging to manage interference, collision avoidance, and responsible behavior. This creates a strong empirical setting for studying how norms are negotiated, how compliance is maintained, and how dispute-resolution mechanisms function when actors span states, militaries, agencies, and private firms with asymmetric capabilities.
Our PDW, Space Economy: Consolidating a Research Agenda, will provide a forum for CM scholars interested in escalation management, crisis bargaining under uncertainty, negotiation and cooperation in public–private security ecosystems, and the role of transparency, monitoring, and verification in de-escalation and institutional resilience.
📍 PDW at AOM 2026: Space Economy: Consolidating a Research Agenda
🗓 August 1, 2026 | 2:00–5:30 PM
📌 Loews Hotel, Philadelphia, USA
🔗 Register (open until sold out): https://lnkd.in/e3czZT4R
📩 Questions: Mehdi.montakhabi@said.oxford.edu
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Mehdi Montakhabi
Associate Scholar
University of Oxford | Saïd Business School
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