Background: Consensus in international drug policy has fractured. It would be useful to explain how and why this occurred.

Aim: This exploratory study develops and tests theory and methods for describing and explaining constellations of policy actors and positions in international drug policy.

Methods: 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.

Results: 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.

Conclusion: 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.