Executive master thesis | International Relations and Diplomacy (MSc)
open access
Consensus is an increasingly selected decision-making procedure in negotiations and institutions. As a more informal mode of negotiating and decision-making without voting, We propose a method of...Show moreConsensus is an increasingly selected decision-making procedure in negotiations and institutions. As a more informal mode of negotiating and decision-making without voting, We propose a method of coding and tracking consensus in The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the foremost global organisation tasked with managing and improving states relations in space, by using its annual reports. By building a dataset of all COPUOS reports from 1990 to 2022, we model the presence and extent of consensus over time in against other quantitative data coded within the reports. We find an increasing number of views expressed over time, with the attainment of consensus mostly attributable to the substantive topic discussed. We also notice that factors related to less frequent attainment of consensus are often also associated with a higher strength of consensus. Non-state actors and developing countries are in some cases associated with increased attainment and strength of consensus.Show less
