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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Arctic Regionalism in Theory & Practice
RAIPON incidence in late 2012. The Russian Ministry of Justice had in November 2012 closed
down the
Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North
because of non-compliant statutes with
Russian legislation. This aroused vigorous opposition and solidarity around the circumpolar North
and within the Arctic Council, to which RAIPON is a Permanent Participant. After thorough
inspections, the organisation continued regular work in March 2013.
The eight Arctic states hold a dominant, yet contested role in the Arctic Council. A much less
acknowledged position beyond its formal character, however, is that the Arctic Council possesses
and executes informal power as a highly specialized agent and norm-creator. The Council‘s mandate
as stated further above is overall broad and leaves to the Council room for interpretation. Following
a detailed differentiation by Bradley and Kelley (2008), there are at least three types of authority that
the AC (potentially) has independent of its members. The most pervasive influence the organisation
enforces is through research and advice offered by its six working groups (Bradley and Kelley, 2008:
15-16). These scientific assessments are all too frequent the basis for ministerial and Senior Arctic
Officials‘ (SAO) meetings. In these reports, the working groups do not only monitor and record the
state of the art of Arctic change, but often give concrete policy recommendations for Arctic states to
adopt in public policies. Taking PAME as a reference, the working group has next to the 2009
Arctic
Marine Shipping Assessment
(AMSA) report released several follow-up progress reports in 2006, 2011
and most recently 2013, which include a number of advices of how to improve marine safety and
environmental protection (see Arctic Council, 2013b). The working group has further issued
specialised policy guidelines and ‗operational steps to follow when planning for Arctic Offshore oil
and gas activities‘ (Arctic Council, 2009). With respect to this, studies on the effectiveness of the
Arctic Council as a ‗cognitive forerunner‘ (Nilsson, 2012) and in fulfilling its
raison d‘être
expose that
the organisation is (at least in the perception of individuals participating in AC working groups) an
influential actor as regards, among others, enhancing international cooperation, coordination of
Arctic public policies and elevating public awareness about the Arctic ecology (Kankaanpää and
Young, 2012: 3-4; see also Stokke, 2007).
The second authority of the Arctic Council, even based on a formal mandate, is agenda-setting
power (Bradley and Kelley, 2008: 14-15). To begin with, Arctic states‘ delegations, the Senior Arctic
Officials, serve as a ‗focal point‘ in the body and on behalf of their respective state (Arctic Council,
1998: 5). As the AC Rules of Procedure stipulate, they hold the right to interpret reports from
working groups, pre-select and frame issues to be discussed in ministerial meetings as well as
ultimately ―review and make recommendations to the Arctic Council on proposals by Arctic States
and Permanent Participants‖. Also of growing importance is the newly established AC Secretariat,
which officially started work in June 2013. It takes a central role in the Council by
‗making it less a
forum and more an international organization‘ (Sellheim, 2012: 70).
Its
Terms of Reference
provides the
Secretariat with bureaucratic leverage ―through the establishment of administrative capacity and by
providing continuity, institutional memory, operational efficiency, enhanced communication and
outreach, exchange of information with other relevant international organizations and to support
activities of the Arctic Council‖ (Arctic Council, 2012: 1). International bureaucracies can use this
authority to pursue own objectives and to determine how these goals are reached best. Through
their informational advantage and bureaucratic capacity to follow own paths, even weakly mandated