How and why consensus fractured at the 2024 session of the UN Commission on narcotic drugs: an exploratory study of international drug policy constellations using social network analysis and qualitative comparative analysis

Consensus in international drug policy has fractured. It would be useful to explain how and why this occurred. This exploratory study develops and tests theory and methods for describing and explaining constellations of policy actors and positions in international drug policy. This article applies the policy constellations approach. It uses social network analysis (SNA) of the statements made by countries at the 2024 Commission on Narcotic Drugs, combined with a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of the data on countries’ value orientations and national levels of human development. A network analysis of the statements made at the Commission revealed two constellations of countries in the data: the ‘liberal’ and ‘traditionalist’ constellations. In QCA, after excluding Latin American countries, we find that a population’s level of emancipative values may have a causal effect on membership of these policy constellations; countries with high emancipative values are usually in the liberal constellation, and countries with low emancipative values are usually in the traditionalist constellation. It is possible to use SNA and QCA to identify policy constellations in international drug policy discussions and to provide a provisional explanation of why countries (outside Latin America) adopt the policy positions they do.