Structuring International Governance through the Space of Concerns

Abstract

When institutions decide by consensus, the official record shows agreement but hides who shaped what was decided. We introduce a way to recover that hidden structure from the one trace consensus cannot suppress: the documentary record of what actors choose to work on. Adapting tools from economic complexity, we map a ``space of concerns'' in which issues lie close when the same actors repeatedly specialize in both -- turning a flat agenda into a measurable topology of attention. Across six decades of the Antarctic Treaty (6,591 documents, 66 actors), engagement is structured, local, and persistent, and the most specialized actors produce binding law at roughly five times the baseline rate. The approach generalizes to any document-rich consensus forum, showing that unanimity does not erase political structure -- it relocates it upstream, into the organization of attention.