The commonplace observation that international regimes contain the rules and procedures that states (or at least the most powerful states) want them to contain does not really answer the question of how a particular regime is given particular substantive features and not others. Why, for instance, were the rules in the 1947 GATT agreement applied to manufactured goods but not to food and agricultural products? Understanding why some substantive features are adopted rather than others requires understanding how states decide which among the set of feasible substantive regime features they prefer.
Recent efforts to understand how states define their preferences have primarily focused on how individual states make choices and have produced two strongly contrasting conceptions—rational choice and sociological institutionalism. Rational choice accounts posit egoistic utility maximizing actors operating within social institutions having minimal impact on their motivations, guided by answers to the question “What do I want or need?” when perceiving their situation, making choices, and pursuing courses of action. Sociological institutionalist accounts posit rule-following actors operating within denser social institutions shaping motivation by establishing standards of behavior for holders of various social roles, guided by answers to the question “What am I?” as they perceive, choose, and act. In rational choice accounts actors seek to advance their own interests; in sociological institutionalist accounts they follow logics of appropriateness derived from social norms.
Both conceptions focus so heavily on individual actors that they obscure how perceptions, choices, and actions are affected by the dynamics of interaction with other actors. The full impact of these dynamics gets lost because both accounts assume away the question of how actors develop enough of a common conception of what they are doing or discussing to interact effectively. In rational choice accounts, the common conception arises from actors' ability to identify the pattern of convergent and divergent interests among them and thereby to discern the contours of the “game” in which they will be involved with the others. In sociological institutionalist accounts, the common conception arises from actors' socialization into common norms enabling them to identify the relevant logic of appropriateness. Pressing on and asking just how rational utility maximizers discern the pattern of convergent and divergent interests or rule followers converge on an identification of the most relevant social norms reveals that the answer is less simple than adherents of either theory assume.
Some political scientists have addressed the question of how individual actors converge on a similar conception of an interaction obliquely, by arguing that the form of political interaction in domestic (e.g., Dahl 1961 and Lowi 1964) or international (e.g., Keohane and Nye 1977 and Lipson 1984) politics is guided by the substantive character of the issue or problem at hand. A similar line of argument has been developed more strongly in symbolic interactionist sociology (e.g., Blumer 1969 and Rose 1962), which posits that actors orient themselves toward and understand the contours of an interaction by identifying the character of the situation they face. In the symbolic interactionist conception, actors answer the question “What am I doing?” before turning to the “What do I want?” emphasized by rational choice theorists or the “What am I?” emphasized by sociological institutionalists.
Paying more systematic attention to how the answer to “What am I doing?” shapes actor convergence on a common conception of their interaction permits taking up the additional symbolic interactionist insight that actors have multiple interests and identities that receive different degrees of emphasis at different times. Which interests or identities come to the fore at a particular moment depends, in the symbolic interactionist view, on the character of the interaction at hand. This insight is particularly important when dealing with composite actors like states in the international system. States consist of a wide range of other actors—including political leaders, government agencies, economic or other interest groups, and social movements—with interests and identities of their own that they seek to advance by securing enough influence to guide state policy toward emphasizing state interests or identities compatible with their own.
Political actors answer the “What am I doing?” question by invoking or establishing a situation definition that simultaneously establishes three basic contours of the coming interaction. First, the situation definition identifies the substantive type of issue or problem being addressed, thereby indicating which sets of causal and normative beliefs are relevant to comprehending the matter at hand. The extant causal and moral beliefs channel both sincere and strategic political communications by providing the substantive starting points for developing sincere positions on the issue or the best platforms for arguments most likely to sway others. Here, as in other aspects of the political reasoning process, whether an actor's own intentions are sincere or strategic is less important than others' reception of the message being conveyed. Political actors are aware that many messages are strategic and deal with that reality by using their own substantive expertise to evaluate the merits of others' messages or, when they lack much expertise, relying on cues provided by other actor's characters or the institutional context of discussion to identify the messages that deserve their most serious consideration (Cobb and Kuklinski 1997; Lupia and McCubbins 2000, 55–60).
Second, the situation definition conveys a sense of the policy means most appropriate to dealing with matters within that substantive area, bounding the range of plausible policy choices. Third, by defining the sorts of authority, capacity, experience, or expertise relevant to addressing the question at hand, the situation definition indicates which persons, groups, or government agencies have strong or weak claims to inclusion in the decision-making process. Situation definitions thus include more than the beliefs about and perceptions of a particular policy question emphasized in the literatures on problem definitions (e.g., Rochefort and Cobb 1994 and Schoen and Rein 1995) or frames (Sylvan and Voss 1998; Tversky and Kahneman 1981); they classify problems into types and suggest who, using what means, is relevant to addressing them.
The impact of situation definitions on political interaction can be traced most easily when they change. Stable, widely shared situation definitions form part of actors' unexamined mental horizons, unarticulated and little noticed by the actors themselves. Although major political transitions, such as the end of the Cold War, generally involve changes of situation definition, tracing their impact is difficult because so much else is changing at the same time. Isolating the impact of situation definitions is easier when tracing how actors coped with an unfamiliar issue or problem in relatively stable times.
This study focuses on two controversies about cross-border information flows that were addressed by the UN General Assembly's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (Outer Space Committee) between 1962 and 1986 with very different results. The first, on using satellites for direct TV broadcasting to viewers in other countries, ended in 1982 when a Third World–Soviet bloc coalition persuaded a large majority of the UN membership to vote for General Assembly Resolution 37/92 endorsing a wide array of restrictions on such broadcasts. The second, on using satellites for civilian applications of remote sensing technology, ended in 1986 when the same UN membership came to consensus on General Resolution 41/65 endorsing permissive rules for undertaking remote sensing and distributing the data thus acquired.
Comparing these two negotiations provides a good opportunity for assessing the impact of situation definitions because so many other factors affecting the outcome of multilateral interactions were very similar across them. First, they shared a common political context, occurring during the Cold War and in the shadow of wider contentions over Third World demands for a New World Information and Communications Order. Second, the identical set of participants in both negotiations meant that the distribution of overall and issue-specific capability among the states involved was the same. The main feature of this distribution was the divide between a small group of “system operator” states—the United States and the USSR foremost among them by far—possessing the satellites and a much larger group of “system user” states able only to receive signals or data from others' satellites.
Third, the initial constellation of governments' preferences was very similar. The primary political cleavage reflected the technological divide between states where the government operated or allowed nationals to operate satellite-based systems (“broadcasting states” or “sensing states”) and states where the government and nationals alike lacked such capacity but would be affected by others' activities (“receiving states” or “sensed states”). This primary cleavage did not completely parallel the South–North division between developing and industrial states because a few developing states were operating their own domestic broadcast satellites by 1982 and most industrial states possessed neither broadcast nor remote sensing satellites. However, it was close enough to encourage Third World participants to cast debate in South–North terms. The general consensus that both negotiations were about regulating a form of transborder information flow meant that the primary substantive question was how far the international regime to be created should permit restricting that flow, and governments could be arrayed on a similar spectrum. At one end were governments advocating highly permissive rules that would allow broadcasters or remote sensing operators to use satellites at will and choose what signals to transmit or data to collect and distribute. At the other end were governments advocating highly restrictive rules that would subject both satellite use and signal or data flows to prior receiving or sensed state consent. In the middle were governments advocating a degree of receiving or sensed state control over signal or data flows. U.S. government positions were on the permissive end of the spectrum in both negotiations, strongly affirming the principle of “free flow of information” and accepting only minimal government controls over its origination or spread. Next along the spectrum were the Canadian and Western European positions, balancing freedom of expression for broadcasters and wide sharing of remote sensing data with accepting enough receiving state government control over foreign-origin TV programming to protect local culture and morals or to maintain control over the number and type of entities permitted to engage in TV broadcasting. Most Third World governments' positions occupied parts of the more restrictive half of the spectrum; they advocated stronger forms of receiving or sensed state controls on the activity but disagreed about the precise extent and form those controls should take. Soviet bloc and other Leninist governments occupied the most severely restrictionist end of the spectrum, particularly on TV broadcasting.
Fourth, both negotiations proceeded in a very similar institutional context. The decision to deal with both issues in the UN Outer Space Committee entailed following well-established procedures of multilateral negotiation. These did not entirely exclude affecting negotiations through unilateral action; states with national space programs did exercise a degree of “go it alone power” (Gruber 2000) to push the negotiations in certain directions by their own actions. Yet participants shared strong expectations that all UN member governments would have a say in the negotiations and that agreements will be developed in a two-stage process of enunciating a nonbinding “declaration of principles” followed by writing a legally binding multilateral treaty. Using the UN Outer Space Committee for the detailed negotiations meant confiding the preliminary work to a committee of less than the whole UN membership—28 states in 1963, 47 in 1978, and 53 in 1980—operating under a strong consensus rule. However, the rest of the UN membership could get involved when the Outer Space Committee presented its work to the UN General Assembly, a plenary body deciding by consensus if possible but reverting to its majoritarian decision-making rules whenever consensus fails to develop.
The consistency of the international level context for both negotiations means that the explanation of the different results of the negotiations must be sought at the national level, in the stability or change in national policy on direct satellite broadcasting and satellite remote sensing. The trend of national policies over time was the product of stability or change in situation definitions. In the direct TV broadcasting negotiations, the type of information flow involved was defined consistently throughout and viewed through beliefs that too many foreign-origin signals would seriously erode local culture and weaken national autonomy. Though a convenient mask for the material interests of locally based broadcasters reluctant to see their monopolies and revenues eroded, the beliefs were shared by many domestic actors who did not share in the revenues. The same set of domestic actors—political leaders, diplomatic generalists, local broadcasters, and intellectual critics of foreign media (particularly U.S.-based privately owned media) as agents of “cultural imperialism”—maintained control of policy-making and continued to view limiting the extent of incoming signals as the most desirable policy outcome.
There were no preexisting revenue flows to protect in the remote sensing negotiations, but the initial emphasis on information about the location and extent of natural resources fanned fears in many countries that foreign corporations with better access to that information would enrich themselves at local expense. This triggered a similar defensive reflex that loosened only as definitions of remote sensing data expanded to include information about pollution, land use patterns, and other local conditions useful to government agencies charged with administering territory and regulating private activity. This expansion in data uses meant that concern about others' gains became only one part of a governments' overall benefit–cost calculations, and also gave additional domestic actors—local analysts and users of remote sensing data—a place in policy discussions previously dominated by political leaders and diplomatic generalists.
Though elements of a changed situation definition in satellite remote sensing began to appear in the late 1970s, the impact of its existence on the UN negotiations was not significant until later. Thus the negotiations can be divided into two phases: one running from the 1960s through about 1980, when they ran in parallel and most observers expected similar outcomes, and the other starting in 1981–82, when their paths diverged.
PARALLEL PRESSURES FOR RESTRICTIVE INTERNATIONAL REGIMES
Direct TV Broadcasting
Until 1962 TV broadcasting was a very localized activity because TV signals from terrestrial towers can be received only within an approximately 45-mile radius. Though the launch of Telstar in July 1962 only demonstrated the feasibility of using satellites to relay telephone and video signals to 10-meter-diameter antennas far too expensive for household acquisition, governments and other actors needed little imagination to envision orbiting transmitters sending TV signals directly to household receivers in the near future. Satellite broadcasting technology offered large states the possibility of developing national TV systems very rapidly (Kerdoun 1988, 710) but also raised for all states the specter of foreign broadcasters using satellites to send their signals to local populations directly rather than through locally based rebroadcasters whose activities could be controlled by the government. Thus satellites appeared to create a TV equivalent to shortwave radio broadcasting. Since the failure of League of Nations efforts to develop agreed limits on propaganda broadcasts in the 1930s, shortwave broadcasting had proceeded under a tacit “broadcast at will/prevent local listening if can” regime under which governments and private firms emitted programming while governments objecting to the programs tried to block local listening by jamming the signals or banning possession of radios able to receive them (Dalfen 1972, 193; Gorove 1985, 9; Krasner 1991, 346).
In the early 1960s TV broadcasting from terrestrial towers was a well-established activity in most countries, though the number of active local broadcasters and the hours and types of programming available varied considerably. Each government of the world had a national system of regulation and/or direct operation of TV stations in place and a set pattern of relations with the operators of those stations (see Nordenstreng and Varis 1974). In many countries, a government-owned broadcasting authority monopolized TV broadcasting. Although such authorities usually broadcast on more than one frequency to offer some degree of programs choice, they faced no domestic competitors. Nor, except in border areas, did they face any foreign competitors because TV signals did not travel very far. In other countries, including the United States and some Latin American states, competing private broadcasters operated within government licensing and regulation. In a third group of countries, including Japan, government-owned and private broadcasters competed with each other. Regional broadcasting unions existed among Arab, Asian, Eastern European, Western European, and Latin American broadcasters, but only in the latter two was interbroadcaster exchange of programs well established (Pool 1979, 132).
Broadcasters could also buy foreign-origin programming from producers or syndicators. Surveys of broadcasting practices in selected countries during 1970–71 revealed considerable variation in the extent of such purchasing (Nordenstreng and Varis 1974). In the United States only 1–2% of broadcast material was imported. Government-owned stations in Japan aired almost no imported programming; private ones imported about 10% of their programs. About 30% of the programs shown in most Western European states was imported. Latin American reliance on imported programs varied considerably, from almost none in Cuba to 84% in Guatemala, with most countries' broadcasters using imported programs 30 to 50% of the time. Though varying degrees of intraregional importing existed, the main sources of imports were the United States (by a wide margin), followed by France, the United Kingdom, and West Germany.
The politics of TV broadcasting remained local and the strength of parallel interest in maintaining national autonomy meant that there was little basis for creating cross-border policy coalitions favoring transborder activity. Governmental and commercial broadcasters alike regarded potential foreign direct satellite broadcasters as rivals rather than partners, as they would not need local partners to reach viewers. U.S.-based broadcasters—with their already strong market share in programming, amplefunds, and access to space capability—inspired the greatest worry, but even government-owned broadcasters in neighboring countries could cause concern where strong political rivalries or ideological differences prevailed. Whereas the extent of foreign TV watching in some border areas suggested that viewers might welcome foreign-origin broadcasts, their preferences had no impact on national broadcasting policy. Authoritarian governments of all ideological persuasions sought to control viewer choice. In most Third World countries intellectuals strongly supported government policies excluding Western, particularly U.S.-origin, programming (Gauhur 1989). Similar sentiments, aimed at U.S.-origin material, prevailed among Canadian and Western European governments and intellectuals. Even governments like those of India, Brazil, and Mexico engaged in developing domestic satellite TV systems distinguished very sharply between controllable domestic broadcasters and uncontrollable foreign ones.
Strong relations between governments and local broadcasters were manifest in Western Europe and the United States as well. Western European governments, eager to protect their national broadcasting authorities, inhibited development of a privately owned regional satellite consortium even after the government of Luxembourg broke ranks and licensed one in 1983 (Hirsch 1986). The U.S. government denied licenses to all satellite TV broadcasting other than domestic educational ventures until 1982. This appears paradoxical because it kept U.S. broadcasters from developing the extensive activity anticipated so fearfully in other countries but conformed to the preferences of key domestic actors (Queeney 1978, 9; Williams 1984). The government gave higher priority to protecting its own and the major communications companies' investments in the Intelsat consortium throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Owners of established over-the-air and cable TV networks also opposed licensing because they were not interested in facing any more competition. New firms had little incentive to establish satellite TV operations until affordable home satellite dishes and receivers were developed in the mid 1980s because the established terrestrial networks already covered virtually all of the United States. Only in the mid 1980s—and mainly through newcomers like CNN and United Satellite Communications—did U.S. firms emerge as satellite broadcasters.
The domestic coalitions in most countries found it easy to converge on restricting international direct satellite broadcasting for two reasons. First, all media experts agreed that TV has much stronger effects on audiences—many even believed that TV broadcasts could be used to implant subliminal messages by flashing signals too fleeting for conscious perception but capable of swaying the unconscious mind (Quester 1990, 5–76, summarizes these arguments). Thus for governments and intellectual critics of Western, particularly commercial, TV programming, there was enough difference between TV and radio signals to justify rejecting the shortwave “broadcast at will, jam if can” solution. Second, governments, intellectuals, and local broadcasters alike assumed that the U.S. lead in satellite technology meant that direct satellite broadcasting would only reinforce the already strong place of U.S. media companies in world programming and thereby strengthen U.S. “cultural imperialism.” Thus Leninist governments seeking to create a new socialist culture, Third World governments seeking to maintain or reassert indigenous cultures, and Western Europeans or Canadians wishing to insulate their societies against the negative impact of U.S. popular culture and/or commercial advertising (Kerdoun 1988, 701–2; Queeney 1978, 202–11; Sauvant 1979, 15–16) could all agree that cross-border satellite TV broadcasting was a threat to national culture and autonomy that needed to be limited in some way.
Governments advocating severe restrictions on cross-border satellite broadcasting quickly took the initiative in international forums. The Brazilian government proposed establishing UN supervision over satellite TV broadcasting in late 1962, whereas the French and a number of Third World governments favored a moratorium on satellite broadcasting until international rules were developed. The Soviets and Americans persuaded delegates at the ITU's Extraordinary Administrative Radio Conference in 1963 to allow operation of domestic “experimental systems” but accepted that systems capable of reaching audiences in other states should be established only after agreement with the governments of those states. The Egyptians proposed a set of restrictive regulations in 1966 and Third World inerest succeeded in getting the issue greater priority on the Outer Space Committee agenda (Smith 1976, 189–91; Queeney 1978, 30–31).
The tenor of much governmental and public opinion in the Third World was revealed in January–February 1970 when a projected cooperative educational TV arrangement linking U.S. universities with counterparts in the Andean countries fell apart in the uproar caused by the Colombian government's condemnation of the project. The Colombian government accused the U.S. participants of threatening to begin broadcasts even without the Latin American participants' agreement to a programming schedule and alleged that the project was merely a front for U.S. corporations seeking to destroy Latin American cultural integrity (Pool 1979, 132–33).
When the UN Outer Space Committee began extended discussion of rules for satellite broadcasting in 1970, advocates of receiving state controls over program material were the vast majority. However, they failed to develop a common negotiating position because different groups of governments advocated different mixes of controls over satellite use and signal content. A few governments focused mainly on the first, and would have been satisfied with rules requiring receiving state consent to the existence of a cross-border broadcast service. Most governments also desired a degree of signal control and proposed that receiving state consent be required for both the existence and the basic programming schedule of a cross-border broadcasting service. The most adamant advocates of signal control went further by proposing to require receiving state consent before broadcasting each program.
As all negotiators realized, prebroadcast review of individual programs meant granting receiving state governments the right to censor broadcasters located in other states. This was the very point on which the shortwave negotiations had foundered, and the continuing discussions of information issues in other UN forums revealed that this disagreement had not gone away. Canadian and Swedish negotiators quickly perceived the strong potential for stalemate and sought to avert it by proposing that cross-border broadcasting be undertaken only by regional consortia of broadcasters who would jointly select the programming and operate the system (Canada and Sweden 1970). Though based on experience with the Eurovision program exchange (described in Queeney 1978, 62), this idea failed to satisfy other negotiators. The Americans and Japanese opposed requiring any single organizational structure for international broadcasting, whereas the Soviet bloc and other advocates of prebroadcast program review insisted that regional consortia whose broadcasts could be seen on the territory of nonmember states should be subject to the same program review requirements as national broadcasters (Fisher 1989, 102–5).
The U.S. and other governments advocating less comprehensive receiving state controls over signal content sought to reduce the level of ideological conflict by supporting adoption of technical regulations limiting the extent of cross-border broadcasting at the ITU's 1971 World Administrative Radio Conference on Space Telecommunications (WARC-ST). The conference agreed to limit satellite broadcasts by (1) allocating frequencies to satellite broadcasting that could not be received by existing home TVs, (2) reserving geostationary orbital slots and associated channel assignments to national governments so that an “international” service could be started only if governments agreed to share them, and (3) requiring that governments or firms operating domestic broadcasting services limit “overspill” of signals onto the territories of neighboring states as much as possible (ITU 1971). Together these rules made it impossible for any one government to operate or authorize nationals to operate a global direct satellite broadcasting system. Western governments hoped that these regulations would result, as had similar rules in other areas of telecommunications, in devolution of detailed rule-making to regional groupings, but governments seeking strong signal control still sought adoption of global rules.
After the ITU technical regulations were reaffirmed in 1977, some Western European delegates again expressed hopes that governments would accept a decentralized approach to program content rules (e.g., Belgian delegate 1979, Dutch delegate 1977, and United Kingdom 1977). However, Third World advocates of receiving state control over signal content still insisted on the need for a set of common global rules (e.g., Indian delegate 1977). Soviet bloc governments even claimed that the 1977 reaffirmation bound governments to accept extensive receiving state control over program content (Bulgarian delegate 1977; Soviet delegate 1979). As the 1979 negotiating session (Legal Subcommittee 1979) made clear, the constellation of preferences had not shifted significantly at the end of the decade.
Efforts to escape the deadlock took the common diplomatic form of trying to work out verbal formulations that would bridge most of the divides and win such widespread support that isolated holdouts could be pressured into accepting the resulting compromises. The Canadian and Swedish governments had begun this work in 1973 (Canada and Sweden 1973; Swedish delegate 1973) and renewed their efforts in 1979 with a draft assembling all the formulations they regarded as having the widest support (Canada and Sweden 1979; Canadian delegates' rationales in Chapman and Warren 1979 and Dickson 1977). However this new effort soon foundered over divergent interpretations of the key phrase “agreement to an international direct broadcast service.” The U.S. government defined it as agreement on the existence of such a service, other Western states understood it to include agreeing on the broad outline of types of programs, whereas many Third World and all Soviet bloc governments interpreted it to mean “prior consent” to the service, the types of programs, and the content of each individual program (positions summarized in Gorove 1985, 6).
Remote Sensing
When the U.S. government announced its intention to develop a civilian satellite remote sensing system in September 1969, other governments could draw on either of two existing activities for appreciating its implications: military reconnaissance and weather observation. Both forms of activity were carried out unilaterally by the superpowers, though weather satellite data were distributed globally through the WMO's World Weather Watch data reporting system (described in WMO 1966). Satellite reconnaissance had strongly negative connotations because it was simply a form of snooping by which others could learn things that governments preferred to keep secret. These negative connotations were strong enough that the Soviets had invoked them in its early efforts to have satellite reconnaissance declared illegal under international law (e.g., Kislov and Krylov 1956 and Zhukov 1960), an effort they abandoned after developing their own satellite reconnaissance capability in 1962 (e.g., Piradov 1976, 136; also see Gaddis 1988.). Neither superpower publicized its satellite reconnaissance, but other governments were aware of it. They did not like it but realized that they could not stop it and believed that the superpowers would not give it up voluntarily (Dalfen 1972, 193 n. 36). Though worried about data sharing with other governments, they could take some comfort from the lack of data sharing with private entities. In contrast, using satellites for weather observation had strongly positive connotations. Interest in using satellites as weather observation platforms arose in the mid 1950s as meteorologists realized that they would not be able to develop computer-based “numerical weather prediction” without acquiring more extensive observation data (WMO 1955). Observation data covering upper atmosphere winds and conditions over the 70% of Earth covered by oceans were particularly scanty, and satellite technology appeared to provide a way of filling much of the gap very rapidly. Results produced by the United States' TIROS-1, the first dedicated weather observation satellite, after its April 1960 launch were greeted enthusiastically by the WMO (1960, 83) and the UN General Assembly (General Assembly 1961).
Governments could hold such apparently inconsistent attitudes toward satellite observation because of differences in the information produced. The sensors used for military reconnaissance in the 1960s yielded images capable of identifying bases, missile launch sites, ships, and other large military installations, whereas the improved sensors in use by 1980 could identify troop concentrations and smaller military objects (see Burrows 1986). The low-resolution sensors used for weather observation were designed to identify cloud masses; later weather sensors were designed to detect wind movements and temperatures at various heights (see Widger 1966).
The domestic politics of remote sensing varied considerably by country. The closest analogous activity, taking photographs from aircraft, was an established practice in some countries, where national policy ranged from government monopoly to allowing competition among private firms. In most countries, however, neither the government nor private citizens had much experience with aerial photography and no clear policy coalitions had formed. This created a relative policy void in which political leaders and diplomatic generalists could shape national policy on their own.
The U.S. government took this policy void into account when designing its effort to spark positive interest in, and reduce fears about, civilian remote sensing. It sought to modify government attitudes and encourage use of remote sensing data abroad through hardware choices and familiarization. On the hardware side, NASA consciously chose a relatively low, 80-meter (260-feet) resolution for Landsat-1's sensors to create an obvious distinction between civilian remote sensing programs and military reconnaissance (Allen and Latham 1980, 147), a gap left in place even with the shift to 30-meter (95 feet) resolution on some Landsat-2 sensors in 1975.
U.S. familiarization efforts proceeded along three tracks: providing instruction in use of remote sensing data for foreign as well as U.S. nationals, encouraging use of data by providing it inexpensively, and creating an active role in remote sensing operations for other governments. The user training programs had begun even before September 1969 and continued afterward; in 1975–76 the U.S. Interior Department's EROS Center alone enrolled at least 130 foreigners in its programs (see Mack 1990, 141–45). The U.S. government encouraged demand for data in two ways. First, it offered to provide images and data tapes free of cost to scientists anywhere in the world desiring to use them in research (U.S. delegate 1969) and invited foreign scientists to the scientific symposia where Landsat designers described the forms of data that would be produced and the sorts of projects for which it would be useful (Mack 1990, 144, 147). By mid-1974, Landsat data had been provided to two international organizations and scientists in 37 countries (U.S. delegate 1974). Second, it sold data to other users at cost of reproduction rather than trying to recapture any of the costs of developing and operating the satellites. At $15 per photographic image and $200 per data tape, the Tanzanian government was able to buy data providing an initial survey of approximately 68,000 square kilometers of land in the Rukwa region for $1,000 rather than paying about $23,000 for an aerial survey of about half that area (Paul and Mescarenhas 1981, 214). In 1973 foreign entities, mainly government agencies and private mining and oil companies, ordered 13,000 images or data tapes from Landsat centers (Brown et al. 1977, 134).
The need for active foreign collaboration arose because Landsat's tape system could only store about 12 minutes' worth of data (Allen and Latham 1980, 145). Whether triggered by a Canadian suggestion (as claimed in Mack 1990, 191) or its own appreciation of the situation, NASA invited foreign government agencies to become directly involved in the Landsat program by building and operating ground data receiving stations. The United States already had ground stations in various parts of the world for tracking and commanding reconnaissance satellites but wanted a separate Landsat network for technical and security reasons (Burrows 1986, 174–98). Building and operating a Landsat ground station required significant financial and operational commitments. The U.S. government did encourage station construction by allowing a station operator to keep a copy of all data its station received for a $200,000 annual access fee, providing low-cost training for station operators and data analysts, and directing third party orders for images or tapes of data received to the ground station operator initially receiving it. However, ground station owners were expected to bear all the construction costs—which could run to several million dollars—and operating expenses—then some $750,000 to $1,600,000 a year (Yachinski 1980, 160). Receiving station operation was thus most attractive to smaller Western bloc and neutral industrial states lacking their own space programs and to more advanced developing countries with enough territory to need large amounts of Landsat data. The Canadians, Brazilians, and Italians were the first to join in; by December 1980 the Argentine, Australian, Indian, Japanese, South African, and Swedish governments had also constructed Landsat ground stations (list in Outer Space Committee 1985).
Yet even with these U.S. efforts in place and the distinction between weather data and military reconnaissance available, most governments' initial reaction to civilian remote sensing was negative. This produced a constellation of preferences in the UN remote sensing discussions very similar to the constellation already established in the direct TV broadcasting discussions. The U.S. government took a position very similar to its stance on satellite TV broadcasting in proposing to allow states freedom to undertake satellite remote sensing operations and wide latitude to distribute the resulting data to other governments and to private entities. Again, the Soviet bloc and many Third World governments sought a regime allowing broad sensed state controls, whereas Western European governments wanted less comprehensive controls but were sympathetic to Third World concerns.
As in the satellite TV broadcasting negotiations, the proponents of strong sensed state controls failed to converge on a common negotiating position. Several Third World governments wanted control over both satellite use and data distribution (e.g., Brazil 1974, articles 3, 7, 8). They agreed with the Argentine assertion that “it is self-evident that the remote sensing of the territory of a foreign state without its prior consent is an illicit international act which the international community should avoid and, if it nevertheless occurs, should punish” (Argentine delegate 1973). This time, however, the Soviets did not insist on satellite control. They were already engaged in some remote sensing from manned spacecraft, as well as running reconnaissance satellites, and wanted to maintain discretion to engage in remote sensing. Their position on the issue was quite close to that of the French, whose proposed regime included controls on data distribution but not on satellite use (France 1973; USSR 1973).
Some delegates sought to avert stalemate by proposing that remote sensing become a joint activity. Early in the discussions, the Argentines proposed that satellite operators turn their data over to a UN-run data bank and, once the technology had been fully proven, also turn over operation of the satellites (Argentina 1970). The Swedes returned to the idea of joint international operation in 1974 (Swedish delegate 1974). Taking cues from superpower attitudes, most governments prepared for negotiations by assuming that national operation of remote sensing satellites would remain the rule.
With the question of who would operate remote sensing satellites settled in favor of individual governments, negotiators turned to the task of defining the types of data gathering that would be covered by the new term “civilian remote sensing.” Most quickly acknowledged that it would not cover gathering of military intelligence or of weather data, which were covered by other rules. By 1974, most governments agreed that the term “civilian remote sensing” referred primarily to acquisition of data relating to economic activity or useful in the formulation of economic policy (e.g., France and USSR 1974). This focus on economically significant activity deemphasized military intelligence, though it did not keep proponents of strong sensed state controls from invoking notions of “economic espionage” (e.g., Iraqi delegate 1971). It also deemphasized the mutually beneficial scientific and meteorological uses of the technology, giving policy generalists concerned with promoting the New International Economic Order and the New World Information Order the predominant voice in Third World national policy debates.
Thus it was not surprising that advocates of broad sensed state control invoked the principle of “permanent sovereignty over natural resources and wealth” to justify their position (Argentina 1970, article 7; Brazil 1974, article 2). Soviet bloc governments even argued that the that principle covers information about resources as well as the resources themselves (Mongolia 1976; USSR 1973, par. 2), despite the fact that the main General Assembly Resolutions endorsing the principle did not mention information about resources (General Assembly 1962, 1973, and 1974). Western governments strongly opposed this extension for practical and normative reasons. On the practical plane, they were familiar enough with computer manipulation of digitized data to know that it would be difficult to separate remote sensing data into clear categories of resource-related and other. On the normative plane, they feared that the lack of clear distinction could encourage treating all remote sensing data as “information about resources” and thereby severely weaken the principle of free flow of information.
As negotiations continued in the 1970s, more governments acquired first-hand experience with remote sensing data and local users began to emerge as distinct participants in domestic policy debates. In the late 1970s governments without remote sensing satellites could acquire data in several ways. The small but growing number of data receiving station operators received raw data transmissions covering areas within range of their station, which they then formatted and processed before proceeding to analysis. Others could wait a few weeks and purchase computer tapes of processed data from the U.S. government or a ground station operator for $200 a tape, or they could wait a few months and acquire computer-enhanced images from a third-party data analysis firm for $1,000–$2,000 each (Lazarus 1983, 105). Developing country governments were often provided with data tapes or analyzed images through U.S. or multilateral aid programs (Bishop 1986, 327; Joyner and Miller 1985, 79). Most national meteorological services received weather data free through the World Weather Watch network. In 1972, 165 ground stations in 76 countries were receiving 100-meter resolution Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) data (WMO 1972, map after p. 16 checked against a map of world political boundaries), and the number had grown by the end of the decade. As scientific researchers and data analysis firms found ways to enhance weather data, it came to be used for resource management and environmental monitoring as well as weather prediction (Allen and Latham 1980, 148–49).
This growing local familiarity began to have perceptible effects on the Outer Space Committee discussions. These first appeared in discussions of sensed state control over satellite use. Current and future satellite operating governments all opposed controls on satellite use. Though announcing intended activities publicly, recruiting foreign scientific and other users of remote sensing data, and enlisting other governments as partners in tracking and data downloading, the U.S. government never asked other governments for permission to gather remote sensing data (Burrows 1986, 141–42). The Soviets and French indicated their similar attitudes in their 1973 and 1974 proposals. However, many Third World governments yielded to this unanimity of spacepower preference only after some additional discussion. Both Western and other technical experts advised not only that it would be difficult to implement a rule requiring prior sensed state consent to data gathering, but that denying permission to sense would reduce the scientific value of remote sensing. They also argued that “raw data” received from satellites were not as important as the “analyzed information” produced after visual or computer processing of images. Most Third World governments accepted these arguments in the late 1970s (see Andhyarujina 1977, 522, and Special Political Committee 1978). Though a few held out (Chilean delegate 1978; Syrian delegate 1982), the Indian government expressed a widely shared attitude when it acknowledged in 1981 that “sensing of one country by another would appear to have been tacitly accepted de facto” (India 1981, par. 89).
Signal control—rules about distribution of data—thus became the primary focus of negotiations. Governments' material stakes in controlling data dissemination had been expressed by the Canadian minister of mines, energy, and resources in a 1971 speech emphasizing the need to protect Canadian companies from foreign competitors using satellite remote sensing data to identify areas worth exploring for resource deposits (quoted in Dalfen 1972, 192–93 n. 34). Third World governments also worried that remote sensing would give already-powerful foreign firms the additional advantage of possessing more information about the resource potential of their country than they possessed themselves. In the early 1970s these concerns were strong enough to polarize debate on South–North lines parallel to those dominating the satellite TV broadcasting debates.
However, the growing prominence of environmental concerns opened up a cross-cutting dimension of debate. Environmental issues had gained a definite place on UN agendas with the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, and Third World governments were beginning to accept that they were real problems, not simply sham excuses for discouraging their economic development. The 1974 Franco–Soviet draft principles introduced this new element into the negotiations by exempting “information on natural disasters and phenomena which can be detrimental to the environment in general” from the controls on data distribution (France and USSR 1974, art. 5c).
Growing appreciation of remote sensing as an environmental policy tool inspired a lengthy effort to formulate some rule that would permit wide dissemination of environmental data while limiting dissemination of economic data. The Soviets initiated this discussion in 1977 by proposing quantitative distinctions among “global,” “regional,” and “local” data, with only the last subject to sensed state control of distribution (USSR 1977; revised version in USSR 1979). They applied the term “global data” to images having viewing areas extending several hundred kilometers acquired by sensors having low resolutions of several hundred meters, “regional data” to images having viewing areas extending 200 to 800 kilometers acquired by sensors having resolutions no finer than 50 meters, and “local data” to images having viewing areas less than 180 kilometers long or wide or acquired by sensors with resolutions finer than 50 meters. The Indians (Indian delegate 1979) and French (France 1977) took up the idea, though the French modified it considerably by proposing that controls cover only data acquired with sensors having resolution finer than 10 meters—a definition that would exempt all data from their planned SPOT system from the prior consent requirement. However, enough delegates doubted that quantitative resolution distinctions would reliably distinguish among types of data to prevent resolving the data distribution issue in this fashion.
DIVERGENT PATHS TO DIFFERENT INTERNATIONAL REGIMES
The results of the wide-ranging discussion of space activity at the Second UN Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE'82) in August 1982 suggested to knowledgeable observers that Third World desire to control transborder information flows would result in establishment of international regimes imposing considerable government controls over both direct satellite broadcasting and satellite remote sensing (e.g., OTA 1983, 7–8, 52). Yet signs of divergence in the paths of the two negotiations were also apparent to those who looked more closely. Whereas UNISPACE'82 discussions of direct TV broadcasting from satellites remained framed in terms of information flows to be controlled, discussions of satellite remote sensing were already including demands that the United States guarantee continuity of Landsat data (UN 1982; also noted in OTA 1983, 8).
Direct TV Broadcasting
It was easy to miss the early signs of divergence between the two negotiations because international controversies about transborder information flows were then running at fever pitch. Third Word demands for creation of a New World Information and Communications Order and a reintensification of the Cold War contributed considerably to a hardening of negotiating positions all around. U.S. government unhappiness with majority positions in the UNESCO debates on the NWICO hardened into outright rejection by the Reagan administration in 1981. Heightened confidence among Leninist governments, which interpreted U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia, the advent of Leninist regimes in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, and South Yemen, and the upsurge of leftist revolutionary movements in Central America, as confirmation that the “correlation of forces” had tipped decisively in their favor. The waves of democratization that would transform politics in many Third World countries had not yet occurred.
Technological developments added a material reason for the governments most strongly supporting limits on satellite TV broadcasting to seek an early resolution of the issue. The more powerful satellite transmitters that began coming into use late in 1980 would allow viewers to receive signals with dish antennas two to three meters in diameter rather than the 10-meter diameter “dishes” that had been standard since 1962. Though not inexpensive enough to become a mass-market item, they could be acquired by wealthier households or neighborhood groups (including local cable rebroadcasters). At the UN many governments became anxious to finalize the declaration of principles so they could move on to their main goal, developing a binding treaty regime, before local possession of the new-generation antennas became widespread.
Perceiving this anxiety, the governments hoping to find a consensus solution redoubled their efforts. In April 1981 the Canadians joined with six Latin American, three Asian, and two African delegations to offer a new proposal (Twelve Powers, 1981) packaging together provisions they believed had the widest support and urged the Outer Space Committee to accept it as the main negotiating draft. However, stalemate persisted, as both the United States, on one side, and the Soviet bloc–Third World hardliners, on the other, rejected the proffered compromise. That fall Brazilian, Egyptian, Chilean, and Kenyan delegates warned that if stalemate persisted, they would bypass the Outer Space Committee and take a draft to the General Assembly for adoption by majority vote (Special Political Committee 1981).
When consensus still failed to emerge in the spring and summer of 1982, a Third World–Soviet bloc coalition confident of broad support tabled an alternate proposal (Majority Coalition 1982) more strongly oriented toward limiting direct satellite TV broadcasting than the Twelve Powers draft. Its tenor was evident in Principle I, which stated that “activities in the field of international direct television broadcasting by satellite shall be carried on in a manner compatible with the sovereign rights of States, including the principle of non-intervention, as well as with the right of everyone to seek, receive and impart information and ideas as enshrined in the relevant United Nations instruments.” Receiving state rights also received strong protection later in the draft. Principle 13 specified that “a State which intends to establish or authorize the establishment of an international direct television broadcasting satellite service shall without delay notify the proposed receiving State or States of such intention and shall promptly enter into consultation with any of those States which so requests.” Principle 14 required that “an international direct television broadcasting satellite service shall only be established after the conditions set forth in paragraph 13 above have been met and on the basis of agreements and/or arrangements in conformity with the relevant instruments of the International Telecommunications Union and in accordance with these principles.”
Though the Third World–Soviet bloc proposal did not specifically endorse receiving state control over individual program content, it was widely interpreted that way for two reasons. First, Soviet bloc and a significant number of Third World delegates continued to define the term “agreements and/or arrangements” as including acceptance of program content controls. Second, the 1982 text dropped a “saving clause” in the preamble of the 1981 Twelve Powers text specifying that governments recognize “the unique characteristics of such satellite broadcasting not encountered in other forms of broadcasting which necessitate besides relevant technical regulations also principles solely applicable in this field.” The saving clause was an effort to persuade the U.S. government and other strong advocates of free flow of information that any statement of rules for the satellite TV broadcasting would not be used as a precedent in the New World Information Order debates then raging in UNESCO and the General Assembly. Its omission suggested that the Soviet bloc and Third World supporters of censorship would use the principles as precedent in those debates and even in international negotiations about regulating other types of broadcasting, such as the upcoming ITU conference on shortwave services.
The 1982 draft, which became General Assembly Resolution 37/92, elicited more than the fully anticipated U.S. opposition and was reported out of the Special Political Committee (1982) on a vote of 88 in favor, 15 against, and 11 abstaining. The vote in the plenary was more impressive in terms of numbers—107 in favor, 13 opposed, and 13 abstaining (General Assembly 1982)—however, the opposed and abstainers included all the Western industrial states without whose cooperation a viable regime could not exist.
Remote Sensing
Innovations in satellite remote sensing during the early and mid 1980s did not trigger a similar sense of urgency about the need to finish negotiations even though concern about military uses of outer space had risen again as superpower tensions intensified. The military reconnaissance potential of satellite remote sensing received greater attention in the 1980s as the French 10-meter SPOT system came closer to operation, Third World governments paid considerable attention to allegations that superpowers were sharing data selectively with allies or client states, and discussions of a proposed “mediasat” consortium among private news organizations became public knowledge. This concern did not translate directly into demands to complete negotiations quickly for several reasons. Some governments appreciated the arms control monitoring potential of satellite imagery (Jacku and Trecroce 1980). At least a few realized that commercially available satellite imagery could provide even relatively poor countries with some reconnaissance—a possibility borne out in Iranian use of SPOT imagery to locate some Iraqi targets in 1988 (Perry 1992).
More significant for the course of negotiations was the influence of the growing number of domestic actors in Third World countries interested in securing and using remote sensing data. Some of the users were research scientists, but most were members of government agencies who realized that remote sensing data would make their work more effective. In 1977, the most active Brazilian users of data coming from the Landsat ground station were the state planning agency, the agency administering the Amazon region, and the state oil company Petrobras. Whereas some locally based private firms used remote sensing imagery, the vast majority of Brazilian and other Latin American users were government agencies (Hammond 1977). A similar array of users then developed in Africa and South Asia (Paul and Mescarenhas 1981).
The influence spread as the user community increased in size. By 1981 more experienced Third World users were themselves offering training courses for nationals of neighboring countries (e.g., Kenya 1981). As more non-U.S. participants became involved, NASA's Landsat Station Operators Group became a forum for active dialogue between ground station owners and Landsat system designers and administrators (Bishop 1986, 329). The spread of specialist journals provided the clearest evidence of the size and transnational extent of the user community. By the early 1980s The International Journal of Remote Sensing (London), Remote Sensing of the Environment (New York), Issledovaniye Zamit iz Kosmosa (Moscow), The Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing (Ottawa), and Remote Sensing (Falls Church, Virginia) were all helping link local users around the world into what a French commentator called an “observing community” (Dutheil de la Rochere 1983, 364).
The strength of the local nodes of this transnational user community did vary considerably from country to country. Lazarus (1983, 108) noted that the Kenyan government relied heavily on remote sensing data in land use planning but not in hydrocarbon prospecting, and that one West African government had built new port facilities on a silt zone that even a cursory glance at a Landsat image of the area would warn against using. Other commentators noted similar variations and criticized most training programs for focusing on relatively simple applications rather than providing a broad overview (e.g., Abiodun et al. 1988 and Malingrau 1985). Newer sensor and computer technology increased the cost of data analysis hardware sufficiently to take it beyond the budgets of many Third World governments, reinforcing the potential for concentration of data analysis skills in the emerging private data analysis firms (Lazarus 1983, 110–12). Yet enough Third World government agencies were using remote sensing data for suggestions from such staunch friends as the Swedes and Yugoslavs (Special Political Committee 1980) that limiting data distribution would leave sensed states even more dependent on others for information by more firmly concentrating data interpretation and analysis activities in satellite-operating states to receive careful consideration.
The political impact of these local users was reinforced as technological developments opened up more land use planning and environmental monitoring uses of remote sensing data. From the beginning Third World governments' attitudes toward remote sensing had wobbled because they welcomed its meteorological applications even as they about its economic and military ones. Growing realization among administrative agencies that new forms of information were needed to formulate and implement effective land management and environmental policies made access to remote sensing data attractive to government agencies previously unconcerned with it (Golden 1989; Litfin 1999).
Local users also helped reduce Third World political leaders' and policy generalists' fears of remote sensing by helping them develop a more sophisticated understanding of the extent and limits of the advantages foreign mining and oil companies could derive from remote sensing data. Initially, many Third World governments saw all the advantages as flowing to the foreign firms. The government of Pakistan even made a formal protest when journalists revealed that Landsat operators believed that they had identified additional copper deposits in that country (U.S. Probe Uncovers Copper 1975). Local experience with handling remote sensing data contributed to greater confidence that in most situations the information foreign firms got from remote sensing data needed on-ground confirmation before it could be used to advantage (Greenberg 1983, 387). Foreign companies' requests for access to a country's territory to perform this confirmation would provide notice of interest and give the relevant government agencies time to acquire remote sensing data themselves. Local users were critical to domestic policy debates in Third World countries in another way. No matter how sincere Western advocates of remote sensing were in their claims about the benefits of wide data distribution, they were not regarded as trustworthy sources of information by Third World governments, and their arguments were easily ignored as examples of “marketing” or “strategic communication” aimed at putting something over. Third world users, whose interests were more congruent with those of Third World policymakers and thus seen as less likely to be pushing a harmful policy, could provide persuasive endorsements of the arguments in favor of a permissive remote sensing regime (Druckman and Lupia 2000, 17).
Local users' increased policy significance first became apparent in Latin America, where they persuaded their governments to include ensuring continued access to data among the explicit national negotiating goals in the late 1970s (“Latin America” 1978). The impact soon went further, and was registered in broader shifts of national negotiating positions by several Third World governments. The change in Brazilian positions was among the most dramatic. In 1974 the Brazilians had joined the Argentines in advocating sensed state control over both satellite use and data distribution, and in 1975 the US government needed to threaten cutting off all Landsat transmissions to their ground station to induce Brazilian compliance with stipulations that Landsat station owners sell images and data tapes to all third parties on a nondiscriminatory basis (Latin America Alters View on Landsat 1978, 17). By 1980 the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research had a large data processing and analysis staff providing information to a range of other government agencies, and in 1982 Brazilian delegates tabled proposals shifting the remote sensing negotiations toward acceptance of a broadly permissive regime. The extent of turnaround can also be seen in some Third World reactions to the prospect, much discussed in the mid 1980s (e.g., Joyner and Miller 1985) of data cost increases and other new policies raised by the U.S. decision to turn Landsat operations over to a commercial entity. Active Third World users joined their Western counterparts in pressing for compatibility of data from new and existing sensors (see Doetsch 1985, 117), and policy generalists did not use the occasion to renew calls for a highly restrictive regime.
Greater Third World sophistication about remote sensing was also manifest in the second round of the Outer Space Committees' efforts to resolve the data distribution issue by distinguishing between data that may be distributed at will and data that may be distributed only with prior sensed state consent. Most of the negotiators were aware that data analysts using newer-generation computers could extract a broad array of environmental and economic information from “low resolution” data (see Ambrosetti 1984, 17–18). They thus discarded the idea of using any resolution as the dividing line in favor of developing the French notion (French delegate 1978) of differentiating between ordinary and “sensitive” (or “critical”) data (compare draft principle XV in Working Group 1980, 1983). Even this effort collapsed, however, because negotiators could not develop a stable and easily implemented distinction between the two types of data.
Meanwhile Third World governments ready to accept permissive data distribution rules began exploring alternate ways of protecting themselves against abusive uses of data. Some proposed requiring that sensed state governments get prior or at least simultaneous access to data about their territories (Group of 77 1982; Working Group 1981, draft principle XII). Others proposed holding a sensing state legally responsible for any harm to sensed states caused by independent analysts or third parties using data it had released (Brazil 1982, principle XI; Eight Powers 1983, principle XI; Mexico 1981, principle XI). Western governments acknowledged others' concerns but were not willing to concede much on these points. They were not prepared to accept any requirement that sensed states acquire data before other users. Although ready to accept legal responsibility for their own agencies' actions, they refused to accept direct responsibility for the activities of independent data analysts or other data users (Peyrefitte 1991, 206; U.S. delegate 1983).
The strength of momentum toward agreement underlying this continued arguing over details was revealed very clearly in others' reactions to the Brazilians' February 1982 proposal (Brazil 1982). Like sponsors of the 1981 “Twelve Powers draft” on satellite TV broadcasting, the Brazilians were trying to move negotiations forward by assembling a draft out of ideas they believed had wide support among other delegates. Rather than being overtaken by a more restrictionist proposal, the Brazilian offering attracted important Third World support the following year (Chinese delegate 1983; Eight Powers 1983) and encouraged others to take up more intense efforts to find a generally acceptable balance between sensing and sensed state concerns.
The Austrians, whose interest in a successful outcome was strong because an Austrian traditionally chaired the Outer Space Committee, and the French then took the lead in efforts to develop generally acceptable texts (Jasentuliyana 1988, 281). By the end of the Outer Space Committee's 1985 session, an Austrian draft (Austria 1985) was accepted as the single negotiating text (Egyptian delegate 1985, speaking for the Group of 77; remarks of most Third World delegates in Special Political Committee 1985).
The growing convergence of views allowed the Austrians to develop a draft accommodating both sensing state and Third World concerns at several levels. It endorsed freedom to sense but addressed Third World concerns by stating that remote sensing should be carried out for the benefit of all states, respect the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources and wealth, and respect the rights and interests of sensed states. Western concerns were accommodated by excluding “information about natural resources” from the rendition of the permanent sovereignty principle. Sensing states were obligated to inform the UN Secretary-General of impending remote sensing programs and provide information about them to any government requesting it. They were also encouraged to provide other states with opportunities to participate in remote sensing operations and technical assistance. Sensed state rights regarding data did not include control over distribution and were defined in Principle XII as “access to [primary and processed data] on a nondiscriminatory basis and reasonable cost terms” and “access to the available analyzed information … in the possession of any State participating in remote sensing activities on the same basis and terms.”
Balancing also pervaded the liability provision in Principle XIV. The first half specified that “states operating remote sensing satellites shall bear international responsibility for their activities and assure that such activities are conducted in accordance with international law, irrespective of whether such activities are carried out by governmental or nongovernmental entities or through international organizations to which such States are parties.” Western concerns about broad interpretations were addressed in the second half, which specified that “this principle is without prejudice to the applicability of the norms of international law on state responsibility for remote sensing activities.” The definitions in Principle I reinforced the limitation by defining “remote sensing activities” to include “activities in processing, interpreting, and disseminating the processed data” and using the distinct term “analyzed information” for the sorts of further computer enhancement or merging of remote sensing data with other information typically performed by independent data analysts.
Some delegates continued to grumble about certain parts of the text. The Soviet bloc tried to interpret the text as extending sensing state liability for data abuse to the activities of independent analysts (Soviet and Vietnamese delegates 1985; Vereshchetin and Postyshev 1985, 247–50) whereas a few others complained about inadequate safeguarding of sensed or developing states' interests (Special Political Committee 1986). However, the Outer Space Committee presented an agreed text based on the Austrian draft when the General Assembly convened in September. The Assembly's Special Political Committee reported out the draft by consensus (Special Political Committee 1986), and the General Assembly adopted it by consensus as Resolution 41/65 (General Assembly 1986).
CONCLUSION
The similarities of international context mean that accounting for the different results of the direct TV broadcasting and remote sensing negotiations requires focusing on differences in the domestic political debates that produced national negotiating positions. By itself, however, looking at the domestic debates does not demonstrate the insufficiency of either rational choice or sociological institutionalist accounts of how states form preferences. Each can be restated to explain changes in state negotiating positions as the product of changed preferences among domestic actors influential enough to create shifts in government policy. In rational choice versions, domestic actors revise their policy preferences in response to shifts in internal or external conditions that alter their incentives sufficiently to change the results of their utility maximizing calculations (e.g., Freiden 1991 and Hiscox 1999). In the constructivist amendment to sociological institutionalist accounts focusing on argument, the process of argumentation inspires domestic actors to alter their beliefs and revise their policy preferences to be consistent with the new beliefs (e.g., Crawford 2002 and Risse 2000).
Yet each restatement fails to explain important elements of the divergence between the direct TV broadcasting and remote sensing negotiations. The rational choice version explains why existing domestic actors shift preferences but not how new actors acquire influence in national policy debates. Rational choice accounts nicely explain the stability of domestic coalitions in the direct TV broadcasting negotiations: The actors in the policy process lacked any incentive to change policy preferences. Rational choice accounts also suggest why local groups of remote sensing data users could become an effective policy force—their numbers were small enough that they faced low barriers to collective action and could easily coalesce into a coherent participant in the policy process. However, they do not explain particularly well why actors already established in the policy process and holding very different policy preferences let the local data users into discussions, listened to them, and adopted at least some of their views.
The constructivist accounts emphasizing the impact of processes of argument are more attuned to the ebbs and flows of participation in policy arguments because they treat argumentation as a distinct mode of social interaction with its own form and momentum. Though acknowledging that powerful actors and coalitions will use their power to steer the process by allocating opportunities to participate or selecting among substantive starting points, these accounts treat entering into an argument as agreeing to participate with other actors in a joint search for better policy where participants will treat one another as equals in the conversation and accept assertions based on superior substantive reasoning rather than the power or social position of the asserter (e.g., Risse 2000, 7–11). However, they have not identified any particular mechanism sorting out which actors are likely to be regarded as meriting inclusion or the particular substantive propositions forming the framework for their conversation.
Paying attention to the impact of situation definitions fills these explanatory gaps. Situation definitions link the substance and process of policy debates by suggesting not only the type of problem at hand and the means appropriate to addressing it, but also the actors with the best claims to inclusion in the effort to address it. The stability of situation definition in the direct TV broadcasting negotiations not only kept the debate running in the same substantive channels, but also reaffirmed the centrality of the same set of domestic actors. The change in situation definition occurring in the remote sensing negotiations as environmental concerns became more important and changes in remote sensing technology opened up a wider array of pollution-detecting, land use management, and resource policy enforcement uses of data not only allowed additional considerations to be brought into the discussion, but gave additional actors—the local data analysts and users – an influential place in national policy debates.
Comparing the direct TV broadcasting and remote sensing negotiations shows very clearly that, even for the same state at the same time, the questions “What do I want?” and “What am I?” do not have single answers across all issues and problems. Rather, the responses to those questions vary with responses to “What am I doing”? Classifying both direct TV broadcasting and remote sensing as problems in “control over transborder information flows” to be addressed through creation of an agreed global regime set up the negotiations as both an East–West and a South–North contention, laid out the basic contours of the problem, suggested the menu of reasonable policy choices, and structured the opportunities for domestic actors who were not national political leaders, leaders' immediate advisors, or the country's delegates in the UN forums to get involved in the national policy debates. Stability in the definition of the sorts of signals at stake in the direct TV broadcasting debates helped reinforce the stability of the array of domestic actors participating in the national policy debates. Third World governments' definitions of the national interest in controlling the organization of the broadcasting sector and protecting local culture remained stable, as did their conceptions of their responsibility as defenders of that autonomy and culture. The increasing array of information available from remote sensing altered both conceptions of the issue and the array of participants in Third World policy debates. The new forms of information were very useful to government administrators, who could recast satellite remote sensing as something conducive to the national interest and helpful in meeting government responsibilities as maintainers of order, managers of the national economy, and protectors of ecological endowments. This change gave members of the transnational “observing community” consciously fostered by NASA Landsat managers entrée into their countries' policy debates. As indigenous experts perceived as sharing their political leaders' concerns with national autonomy, the local data users were able to inspire a reevaluation of position in which the risks of others getting data did not disappear but were outweighed by the newly perceived advantages of having it available. Thus the same Third World governments that insisted on a restrictive regime for direct TV broadcasting in 1982 were brought around to a different perspective on remote sensing, adopted new negotiating positions, and were willing to accept a broadly permissive international regime for remote sensing in 1986.
Daniel Deudney, Ernst Haas, Peter Haas, and Beth Simmons provided helpful comments on early versions of this study, which were formulated during a very productive sabbatical leave year at the University of California, Berkeley. The final version was improved under demanding but friendly prodding by the editor and three anonymous reviewers. Initial research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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