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.
NUPI@MSC: How do we meet the challenges in a changing Arctic?
Read joint NUPI-Wilson Center report on Arctic security discussed at MSC 2020.
A Governance and Risk Inventory for a Changing Arctic
Many government officials, military leaders, and political observers have proclaimed the rise of a new, post-Cold War global great power competition between the United States, Russia, and China with myriad implications. Using this new reality as the backdrop for the Arctic Security Roundtable at the Munich Security Conference 2020, roundtable participants are asked to explore, discuss, and debate this issue in the context of, and implications for the new globalized Arctic. This paper – a primer of Arctic trends, risks, and institutions – provides a useful starting point for the discussion. Discussing Arctic security in high-level forums is important. One might ask why we should take the time to discuss the Arctic if we are not fighting a war there. The answer is this: there is a new ocean opening up due to global climate change. There is a promising track record of governance cooperation in the region that serves as a basis for pursuing sustainable management of and peace in this new ocean. The point of dialogue – with an emphasis on cooperation, joint governance and outlining risks and potential tipping points – is to make sure that we do not add the Arctic to the already far-too-long list of global hot spots. The Arctic Security Roundtable at the Munich Security Conference 2020 provides one such confidential forum for proactive and constructive debate on Arctic security issues.
Japan and Arctic Security
This chapter focuses on what Arctic security means to Japan and how Japan handles the security dimension in its three-spoke approach to the Arctic, involving economic, political, and scientific factors. The chapter begins by addressing the changing understandings of what Arctic security entails. What are the historic and contemporary understandings of Arctic security? It then embarks on a discussion of Japan’s approach to the Arctic demonstrating how security fits in at traditional and nontraditional and national and international levels. How does Japan convey its position as a non-Arctic state concerned about security developments in the Arctic? Analysis is based on recent statements and activities stemming from Japan’s official Arctic Policy (2015), as well as developments in the political, research, and business sectors since 2008. The chapter concludes that, while traditional security issues in the Arctic are not the explicit framing of Japan’s Arctic policy and engagement, they do play an implicit role both on paper and in practice.
Governing complexity in the Arctic region
This book argues that confining our understandings of Arctic governance to Arctic states and a focus on the Arctic Council as the primary site of circumpolar governance provides an incomplete picture. Instead, the authors embrace the complexity of governance in the Arctic by systematically analyzing and comparing the position, interventions, and influence of different actor groups seeking to shape Arctic political and economic outcomes in multiple sites of Arctic politics, both formal and informal. This book assesses the potential that sub-national governments, corporations, civil society organizations, Indigenous peoples, and non-Arctic states possess to develop norms and standards to ensure a stable, rule-based Arctic region.
The GeGaLo index: Geopolitical gains and losses after energy transition
This article presents the GeGaLo index of geopolitical gains and losses that 156 countries may experience after a full-scale transition to renewable energy. The following indicators are considered for inclusion in the index: fossil fuel production, fossil fuel reserves, renewable energy resources, governance, and conflict. Some of these represent potential gains; some represent losses; and some the capacity of countries to handle changes in geopolitical strength. Five alternative versions of the index are developed to work out the optimal design. First, the energy resource indicators are combined with equal weights to create two simple versions of the index. Next, governance and conflict indicators are included to create three more complex versions of the index. The index provides useful pointers for strategic energy and foreign policy choices: geopolitical power will be more evenly distributed after an energy transition; Iceland will gain most; Russia may be one of the main holders of stranded geopolitical assets; China and the USA will lose more geopolitically than foreseen by other analyses. The index also indicates a lack of emphasis in parts of the literature on space for renewable energy infrastructure and on domestically sourced coal for the current strength of countries such as China and the United States.
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.
Business as usual? The private sector’s changing role in Arctic environmental governance
How has the private sector engaged in crossborder Arctic diplomacy? Despite a focus on business actors as targets of policy recommendations from the Arctic Council and an increased attention on the importance of engaging with the private sector, we find that business actors have not yet been heavily involved in shaping Arctic governance outcomes. The brief concludes with recommendations as to how the capacity of the private sector can be engaged to secure better Arctic environmental governance.
Flanks: Security Challenges in Northern and Southern Europe (FLANKS)
The aim of this project is to develop enhanced knowledge of Russia's behaviour in the Kola Peninsula and the Arctic region, as well as in the Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea region – and to c...