Jari Koivumaa is a Lecturer at Lapland Vocational College, Finland.
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New Possibilities for the Northern Peripheral Regions
in the Post-Cold War Era
Jari Koivumaa
Since the post-Cold War transition the structure of the international systems has changed. First of all, one super power
(Soviet Union) disappeared from the International System in the year 1991. In addition the roles of non-governmental
and regional actors in the international system have grown. The power of transnational corporations has produced a
globalized international economical system aside the political system of states. In Europe the role of the regional
intergovernmental organization has increased. The European Union is unequivocally the economical and political actor
in world politics. In this article I examine the actors along the borders of the Barents Region. I analyze the
possibilities for the speech acts that deconstruct the peripheral thinking in the Barents Region. The perspective for this
deconstruction is Northern and Lappish. I examine how the peripheral position of the frontier regions of northern
Finland can be deconstructed on the basis of the transition of the international system. Within the context of the
―transition factors‖ that are changing the structure in the International System in the post-Cold War period, I
examine how doors have opened for new political rhetoric and acts for the people in the northern Finnish frontier
regions encompassing Lapland, the Sami Region, the Torne Valley and the Bothnian Arc. The analysis demonstrates
that the global transition factors are not an abstract phenomena above the daily life of the ordinary people in different
places of the world. The factors‘ existence in fact depends on the behavior of the people all over the world: the human
behavior produces the factors. In my analysis I try to explain how the behavior in the frontier regions is producing and
reproducing the existence of the structural transition factors in the European North.
The main thesis in the article is that the post-Cold war transitions – the new structure of the
International System – give possibilities for the political acts and speech (political agency) that
deconstruct peripheral thinking in the European North. The basis for this examination is formed by
the methodological assumption that the structure of the international system constitutes – gives
causes and possibilities – the political acts in the system (see Waltz, 1979: 79–101; Wendt, 1999). In