The Global Commons – the High Seas, Antarctica, the Atmosphere, and Outer Space – are resource domains outside the authority of states. Historically, the Global Commons have been practically inaccessible and thus rarely subject to sovereignty claims and international regulations. With technological advances and environmental developments, the Global Commons have become a key site for international relations (hereinafter IR). In spite of often competing claims from state and non-state actors to these areas, the Global Commons have remained mainly cooperative. This is not what one would expect from most IR perspectives in a close to anarchical environment and a volatile geopolitical international environment. This Special Issue sets out to address this puzzle by asking: To what extent and why is there little conflict in the Global Commons? For this purpose, this introduction develops a common framework that distinguishes between three models and corresponding hypotheses of the factors affecting the level of cooperation and conflict in these domains. While two are based on realist and liberal IR perspectives, we draw on constructivism, political theory, and law to develop a third model, called the Human Heritage model. To conclude, this introduction also sums up the findings and discusses their implications for the Global Commons and IR studies.

全球公域——公海、南极洲、大气层和外层空间——是国家权力之外的资源领域。从历史上看，全球公地几乎无法进入，因此很少受到主权主张和国际法规的约束。随着技术进步和环境发展，全球公地已成为国际关系（以下简称 IR）的重要场所。尽管国家和非国家行为者对这些地区的主张经常相互竞争，但全球公地主要保持合作。在接近无政府主义的环境和动荡的地缘政治国际环境中，大多数 IR 的观点都不是人们所期望的。本期特刊旨在通过询问以下问题来解决这个难题：全球公域中的冲突在多大程度上以及为什么很少发生？为此，本介绍开发了一个通用框架，以区分影响这些领域合作和冲突水平的因素的三种模型和相应假设。虽然其中两个基于现实主义和自由主义 IR 观点，但我们利用建构主义、政治理论和法律来开发第三个模型，称为人类遗产模型。总而言之，本介绍还总结了调查结果并讨论了它们对全球公地和 IR 研究的影响。