LUNAR RIVALRIES: COMPETING INSTITUTIONAL ORDERS IN THE ILRS AND ARTEMIS ACCORDS

Abstract

This paper examines how China's International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) and the U.S.-led Artemis Accords represent competing institutional entrepreneurship projects that are fundamentally reshaping space governance through norm competition and order-building strategies. Drawing on hegemonic transition theory, club goods frameworks, and constructivist norm entrepreneurship, this study reveals how both superpowers have bypassed gridlocked multilateral institutions to establish rival governance architectures embodying distinct visions of international cooperation. Through qualitative analysis of policy documents and institutional frameworks (2020-2025), the research demonstrates that lunar competition reflects broader multipolarity dynamics where great powers simultaneously construct parallel institutional orders. The analysis shows how Global South engagement strategies have become central to legitimacy competition, with China's developmental approach and America's liberal institutionalist model offering fundamentally different pathways for emerging nations. This institutional fragmentation creates path-dependent effects that may define space governance for decades, revealing how technological frontiers become arenas for testing new forms of international order-building. The paper contributes a "competitive institutional entrepreneurship" framework that integrates multiple IR theories to explain how great powers navigate order-building under multipolarity, with Global South legitimacy strategies emerging as the pivotal arena for contemporary institutional competition.