Research project
Great Powers and Arctic Politics
Events
The GPARC team analyzes the 1) role of domestic networks in shaping policy preferences and 2) the impact of multilateral assessments and decisions on these national preferences and networks. In other words, we analyze two policy traffic directions - from domestic networks in Washington, Moscow and Beijing and outwards to international forums on Arctic maritime politics and from the Arctic Council (or other producers of international policy positions) into these domestic networks.
The project is managed by Helge Blakkisrud and Elana Wilson Rowe.
Related events:
Watch all the panels from the project's final conference: NUPI’s Russia Conference 2020 - Great Powers and Arctic Politics
Arctic governance: cooperation and power tactics. (The policy roundtable at Arctic Frontiers 2019 was attended by 40 participants)
Russia in 2019: What Lies Ahead? ( Policy Workshop in Washington DC, 2019.)
Chinese Activities in the Arctic: The Regional Perceptions (Policy note on China and the Arctic and event at the Stimson Center, June 19, 2018)
Project Manager
Participants
Articles
The Russia Conference: Cold Peace in the Arctic?
On September 14, NUPI’s Russia Conference took place in Oslo. Couldn’t be there? Watch the entire event, including Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide's key note speech, on YouTube.
Doubling Down on Arctic Diplomacy
What impact will the new Biden administration have on Arctic politics? While the Arctic as a region is not likely to figure as feature in the 100-day plan of a new Biden presidency, there are reasons to expect some key changes for the region.
New publications
The Geopolitics of Fish in the Arctic
Climate change and declining sea-ice in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) has brought concerns that fish stocks may expand into the high Arctic. While the sub-Arctic seas of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic have abundant fish resources subject to major commercial fisheries for generations, the CAO has little or none. Concerns that fish stocks could expand into the CAO provided the impetus for negotiating the 2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean. This policy brief discusses efforts to address challenges associated with climate change and fish in the Arctic, and makes recommendations for policy action.
Analyzing Frenemies: An Arctic repertoire of cooperation and rivalry
Intensive transnational cooperation and manifestations of the NATO-Russia security rivalry have endured for over 30 years in the post-Cold War Arctic. Drawing upon the concept of repertoires from the social movement literature, this article seeks to make a conceptual contribution as to how we might better analyse and articulate the simultaneity of these practices and narratives of cooperation and rivalry in the circumpolar region. Repertoires are typically defined as bundles of semi-structured/semi-improvisational practices making up a context-contingent performance (for example, by civil society towards the ‘state’). These repertoires are argued to be created and performed in ‘contentious episodes’, rather than structured by long-term trends or evidenced in single events. Translated to global politics, a repertoires-inspired approach holds promise for privileging an analysis of the tools and performance (and audience) of statecraft in ‘contentious episodes’ above considerations of how different forms of global order or geopolitical narratives structure options for state actors. The emphasis on the performance of statecraft in key episodes, in turn, allows us to consider whether the interplay between the practices of cooperation and rivalry is usefully understood as a collective repertoire of statecraft, as opposed to a messy output of disparate long-term trends ultimately directing actors in the region towards a more cooperative or more competitive form of Arctic regional order. The article opens with two key moments in Arctic politics – the breakup of the Soviet Union and the 2007 Arctic sea ice low. The strong scholarly baseline that these complex moments have garnered illustrates how scholars of Arctic regional politics are already employing an episodic perspective that can be usefully expanded upon and anchored with insights and methods loaned from social movement literature on repertoires. The 18-month period following Russia's annexation of Crimea is then examined in detail as a ‘contentious episode’ with an attending effort to operationalize a repertoires-inspired approach to global politics. The article concludes that a repertoire-inspired approach facilitates systematic consideration of the mixed practices of amity and enmity in circumpolar statecraft over time and comparison to other regions, as well as offers one promising answer to the growing interest in translating the insights of constructivist scholarship into foreign policy strategy.
Rethinking Arctic Governance
New perspectives on power in Arctic governance - interview and book talk about 'Arctic Governance: Power in cross-border cooperation' (Manchester University Press, 2018). Podcast and transcript.
Governing the Arctic: The Russian State Commission for Arctic Development and the Forging of a New Domestic Arctic Policy Agenda
After a period of relative neglect in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Arctic is back on the agenda of the Russian authorities. To ensure efficient coordination and implementation of its Arctic strategy, the government in 2015 established a State Commission for Arctic Development. It was to serve as a platform for coordinating the implementation of the government’s ambitious plans for the Arctic, for exchange of information among Arctic actors, and for ironing out interagency and interregional conflicts. Based on a case study of the State Commission for Arctic Development, this article has a twofold goal. First, it explores the current Russian domestic Arctic agenda, mapping key actors and priorities and examining the results achieved so far. Second, it discusses what this case study may tell us the about policy formulation and implementation in Russia today. We find that while the government’s renewed focus on the Arctic Zone has yielded some impressive results, the State Commission has been at best a mixed success. The case study demonstrates how, in the context of authoritarian modernization, the Russian government struggles to come up with effective and efficient institutions for Arctic governance. Moreover, the widespread image of a Russian governance model based on a strictly hierarchic "power vertical" must be modified. Russia’s Arctic policy agenda is characterized by infighting and bureaucratic obstructionism: even when Putin intervenes personally, achieving the desired goals can prove difficult.
Same word, same idea? Sustainable development talk and the Russian Arctic
Sustainable development has become an ‘obligatory’ concept that can encompass many kinds of policies and practices, including in the Russian Arctic. Russia inherited a set of ‘home-grown’ science-policy vocabularies and practices relating to environmental risk and a strong focus on protected areas/national parks from the Soviet Union. Likewise, a preoccupation with questions of equality – particularly in response to obvious economic inequalities generated by natural resource extraction projects – is another trademark of the post-Soviet era in local debates. Therefore, while it is an easy assumption to make that ‘sustainability talk’ functions primarily to appeal to international financial institutions, mirror the Arctic policies of other Arctic states and/or mitigate the reputational risks of Russian and international extractive companies, these historical factors alone suggest that it is worth taking a look at the rhetorical work the concept does in a Russian policymaking context. This chapter examines kind of high-level political work the concept of sustainability is doing in Arctic policymaking in Moscow through an analysis of Russian policy documents and political statements and the statements of RAIPON, the organization for the indigenous peoples of the Russian North.
Codeword China
(From op-ed): When it comes to Arctic regional political governance and economic outlooks, the policy and academic communities have become good at asking ‘what about China’ and facilitating a conversation on several policy issues. All the main Arctic conferences have panels on China in the Arctic in some form or another and there is a small but strong and productive community of scholars analyzing how China approaches the Arctic.
Trump, Putin and rejected greatness
Why do Putin and Trump undermine the international consensus knowledge that their national academic and governmental milieus have been so central to building?
The Arctic Council and US domestic policymaking
One widely recognized achievement of the Arctic Council and its various working groups has been the production of collectively generated assessments on Arctic problems. Assessment reports such as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) provide an important baseline of shared knowledge for making collective circumpolar policy recommendations. But how does the knowledge produced through Arctic Council working groups figure into the policymaking of the Arctic states? This is an important question for understanding Arctic politics and the relationship between national decisionmaking and international relations more generally. Much of what the Arctic Council produces is in the form of recommendations, declarations of intent, and commitments to "best practices" in areas of shared interest and activity. While in recent years the Council has produced three binding agreements covering specific functional areas—search and rescue (2011), oil pollution preparedness and response (2013),and science cooperation (2017)—much ongoing Arctic collaborative work falls outside of these areas. This policy brief explores how science/policy outputs of and discussions at the Arctic Council fit into the Arctic political discourse of the USA, with an emphasis on key actors within the executive branch: the White House, the Department of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.