Strategic autonomy in orbit: how small and middle powers navigate technology, markets, and norms in Space 4.0

This conceptual analysis appeared in Frontiers in Political Science, vol. 8, article no. 1962640. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2026.1962640

ABSTRACT

Space 4.0—marked by commercialisation, modular technologies, actor diversification, and intensifying geopolitical competition—has lowered barriers to participation while relocating hierarchy into supply chains, platforms, standards, and commercial infrastructure. This conceptual analysis asks how, and under what geopolitical conditions, small and middle powers (SMPs) convert technological specialisation, market embeddedness, and normative positioning into selective strategic autonomy. Using analytic eclecticism, the article, by integrating Science and Technology Studies (STS), International Political Economy (IPE), and constructivism, distinguishes strategic agency—the capacity to act purposively under constraint—from strategic autonomy—the contingent outcome of preserving meaningful options and limiting determinative dependence. The framework identifies three corresponding practices: niche specialization, which converts selective technological capability into capability leverage; agile hedging, which uses procurement, supply-chain positioning, and institutional diversification to create bargaining leverage; and norm entrepreneurship, which converts legitimacy and rule-making participation into influence. The evidentiary base is a structured synthesis of scholarship and purposively selected illustrations from South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, with India and the European Union used as boundary comparators. The analysis argues that autonomy emerges when capability, bargaining, and legitimacy leverage are strategically coupled, but that the same coupling can deepen upstream dependence, security exposure, or implementation gaps. It further proposes competitive pluralism as a boundary condition: SMP room for manoeuvre is greatest when great-power rivalry creates credible alternatives without hardening into closed blocs. The article therefore recasts secondary-state agency in high-technology geopolitics as the capacity to organise and recalibrate interdependence rather than escape it.

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