Sebastian Knecht is a Research Associate & PhD Candidate at Dresden University of Technology, Germany.
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Arctic Regionalism in Theory & Practice:
From Cooperation to Integration?
Sebastian Knecht
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.
Introduction
It is no hot news that the modern world is a world of regions. Their resurgence since the mid-1980s
has substantially shaped global governance and inspired intensive debates about the contours of a
new world order that came under stress with the end of the static bloc politics of the Cold War era.
In almost every corner of the globe, regional projects such as the European Union (EU),
MERCOSUR in Latin America, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the