Faculty of Sociology

Conceptualising the Arctic as a political region has been done time and again in polar research, without any clear indication of how to grasp the kind and degree of circumpolar regionalism analytically. Inspired by the New Regionalism paradigm, this article provides a systematised framework for the study of political integration in the Arctic and analyses the region’s identity in the respective historical context. Special emphasis is put on the marine area as a source of international governance and the way this impinges on the direction, functionality and virtue of Arctic regionalism. As intergovernmental cooperation in the North has made considerable progress over the past 25 years, the political evolution of circumpolar regionalism will be traced along three critical junctures: 1987 – 1996 – 2007. It was not before the late 1980s that regional cooperation gained momentum in Arctic affairs, because the region’s strategic location as a buffer zone between the former Cold War rivals effectively prohibited any comprehensive regional initiative. This changed considerably throughout the 1990s with the establishment of the Arctic Council as a deliberative forum for scientific and political exchange. Further, it is argued that the Arctic Council today is about to become a relevant actor with independent agency in regional governance if it can successfully turn its delegated tasks and information advantage into practice.

This article investigates the rise of cross-level cooperation between the Arctic Council, particularly the Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to fight global hazardous substances as major sources of concern for health security governance in the Arctic. The process towards the signing of the global legally binding Minamata Convention on Mercury in January 2013 is used as a prime example of how the Arctic Council has opened up to more and more observers and uses them as multipliers for own policy initiatives. Evidence is provided by UNEP and Arctic Council documents in combination with newly available meeting protocols of their respective subsidiary bodies.

"Seit die globale Erwärmung die Arktis zurück auf die politische Agenda befördert
hat, ist das Bild der Region geprägt von Sicherheitsinteressen indigener
Bevölkerungsgruppen, Anrainerstaaten sowie dritten Akteuren. Die Möglichkeit eines „kalten Konfliktes“ zwischen arktischen Nachbarn infolge des ökonomischen Potenzials des Hohen Nordens schwingt seit jeher wie ein Damoklesschwert über der Zukunft regionaler Governance. Ausgehend von einer kritischen Lesart geopolitischen Denkens und dem Sicherheitsbegriff der Kopenhagener Schule wird in diesem Artikel argumentiert, dass mit Fall des Eisernen Vorhangs 1989 ein Regionalisierungsprozess in Gange gesetzt wurde, in dem militärische Angelegenheiten zunächst entsicherheitlicht und nicht-militärische Belange zunehmend versicherheitlicht wurden – mit dem Ergebnis sich verdichtender Interaktion kooperationsbereiter Akteure."

The Arctic region has gained momentum in international relations following a record low of sea ice in 2007 and associated economic prospects. Since then, political, public and academic discourses alike have perceived the Arctic as a potential arena for peace and conflict studies. Despite the low cogency of many Arctic geopolitical analyses predicting regional conflict, three recent developments have reinforced the image of a contested Arctic: increased interest from Asian actors; strained diplomatic relations between Russia and its Western partners over the 2014 Ukraine crisis; and, related to this, the re-militarization of the Russian North. As will be argued here, this ’new Arctic geopolitics’ is about to repeat the same fallacies and analytical traps than previous scenarios.

This note studies the Addendum to the Arctic Council’s 2013 Observer Manual adopted at the Senior Arctic Officials’ (SAO) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, in October 2015. The amendment means another essential step to further systematise and improve the Council’s working relations with currently 32 entities that hold observer status in the forum. Compared to the initial Manual that sketched out the role observers shall play in the Council’s subsidiary bodies, the latest revisions delineate a framework for enhancing observer participation and commitment in Working Group, Task Force and Expert Group meetings. After reviewing the content and practical implications of the Addendum in the context of larger reform efforts to adapt the Council to the age of a global(ising) Arctic, the article further discusses a number of signals the Anchorage decision sends to observers. These comprise the Council’s willingness and ability to quick, unified and purposive action towards institutional adaptation and procedural reform as considered necessary to address organisational deficiencies, strengthened top-down steering of the reform processes by SAOs as related to the work conducted in subsidiary bodies and the overall functioning of the Council, and higher expectations on observers to contribute to the Arctic Council system and deliver on the new provisions.

Contemporary Arctic transformations and their global causes and consequences have put international cooperation in the Arctic Council, the region’s most important forum for addressing Arctic affairs, at the forefront of research in Northern governance. With interest in Arctic regional affairs in world politics being at a historical high, the actual participation and contribution by interested actors to regional governance arrangements, such as the Arctic Council, has remained very much a blind spot. This article introduces and analyses a novel dataset on stakeholder participation in the Arctic Council (STAPAC) for all member states, Permanent Participants and observers in Ministerial, Senior Arctic Officials’ and subsidiary body meetings between 1998 and 2015. The article finds that participation in the Arctic Council varies significantly across meeting levels and type of actors, and that new admissions to the Council, a source of major contestation in recent debates, do not necessarily result in more actors attending. The article further discusses these findings in light of three prevalent debates in Arctic governance research, and shows the empirical relevance of the STAPAC dataset for the study of Arctic cooperation and conflict, observer involvement in the Arctic Council system and political representation of indigenous Permanent Participants.

This volume explores the governance of the transforming Arctic from an international perspective. Leading and emerging scholars in Arctic research investigate the international causes and consequences of contemporary Arctic developments, and assess how both state and non-state actors respond to crucial problems for the global community. Long treated as a remote and isolated region, climate change and economic prospects have put the Arctic at the forefront of political agendas from the local to the global level, and this book tackles the variety of involved actors, institutional politics, relevant policy issues, as well as political imaginaries related to a globalizing Arctic. It covers new institutional forms of various stakeholder engagement on multiple levels, governance strategies to combat climate change that affect the Arctic region sooner and more strongly than other regions, the pros and cons of Arctic resource development for the region and beyond, and local and trans-boundary pollution concerns. Given the growing relevance of the Arctic to international environmental, energy and security politics, the volume helps to explain how the region is governed in times of global nexuses, multi-level politics and multi-stakeholderism.

Die zunehmende Verfügbarkeit von Daten und Informationen von und über Internationale Organisationen (IOs) auf deren Webseiten hat zu einem grundlegenden Wandel der IO-Forschung in Bezug auf Empirie, Methodik und Forschungspraxis geführt. Seit das Studienobjekt IO nur noch einen Klick entfernt ist, ist die Analyse auch kleinerer, regionalen und vormals »black-boxed« IOs sowie der Trend weg von Einzelfallstudien und hin zu Sample-basierten, quantitativen Forschungsdesigns weit vorangeschritten. Allerdings bieten nicht alle IO-Webseiten die für eine cross-case-Analyse notwendigen Informationen in hinreichender Breite, historischer Rückschau sowie Qualität an. In diesem Forumsbeitrag diskutieren wir die Hinwendung zu einer »digitalen Empirie« in der IO-Forschung kritisch. Insbesondere reproduziert die gegenwärtige quantitative IO-Forschung einen Selektionsbias der vorherigen Generation qualitativer Forschung hin zu stark institutionalisierten, globalen und prominenten Organisationen – und unterminiert damit die Chancen und Potenziale einer »digitalen Empirie«. Wir plädieren daher für einen sorgfältigeren, kritischeren und reflektierteren Umgang mit online gewonnenen Informationen und Daten.

Erstmalig in einem deutschsprachigen Lehrbuch werden Geschichte, Akteure, Institutionen und Prozesse der internationalen Arktispolitik vor dem Hintergrund verschiedener Politikfelder sowie Theorien der internationalen Beziehungen anschaulich und verständlich analysiert. Fragen wie „Was macht die Arktis als Region in den internationalen Beziehungen aus?“, „Welche Akteure und Institutionen spielen eine Rolle in der Arktispolitik?“, „Welche Bedeutung kommt den Ressourcen und Schifffahrtswegen in einer zugänglich werdenden Arktis zu?“ und „Welche umwelt- und sicherheitspolitischen Bedenken gehen mit einer wärmeren Arktis einher?“ stehen im Zentrum aktueller wissenschaftlicher wie politischer Debatten, welchen sich dieses Buch annimmt. Es bietet damit für Einsteiger ebenso wie für fortgeschrittene Arktiskundige eine Orientierung zwischen den Extremen der historischen Romantisierung der Nordpolarregion als Niemandsland und ihrer aktuellen Charakterisierung als drohendem Konfliktraum.
Das Buch beleuchtet verschiedene Konzepte und Theorieansätze aus den internationalen Beziehungen, dem internationalen Recht und der politischen Geografie und unterzieht sie einem Eignungstest für die Erklärung arktispolitischer Vorgänge in den Bereichen Ressourcen-, Umwelt- und Sicherheitspolitik. Damit liefert es akademische wie praxisrelevante Orientierung für jeden, der politische Prozesse in der Arktis anhand konkreter theoretischer Annahmen zu verstehen sucht, und gibt Anregungen und Impulse für zukünftige Forschungsarbeit.