The Russian and Norwegian Arctic are gaining notoriety as an alternative maritime route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and as sources of natural resources. The renewed interest in the Northeast Passage or the Northern Sea Route is fueled by a recession of Arctic sea ice coupled with the discovery of new natural resources at a time when emerging and global markets are in growing demand for them. Driven by the expectation of potential future economic importance of the region, political interest and governance has been rapidly developing, mostly within the Arctic Council. However, this paper argues that optimism regarding the potential of Arctic routes as an alternative to the Suez Canal is overstated. The route involves many challenges: jurisdictional disputes create political uncertainties; shallow waters limit ship size; lack of modern deepwater ports and search and rescue (SAR) capabilities requires ships to have higher standards of autonomy and safety; harsh weather conditions and free-floating ice make navigation more difficult and schedules more variable; and more expensive ship construction and operation costs lessen the economic viability of the route. Technological advances and infrastructure investments may ameliorate navigational challenges, enabling increased shipping of natural resources from the Arctic to global markets.

This review article makes six observations about the current body of research on the societal impacts of a changing Arctic. First, climate change and globalisation are the dominant drivers of societal impacts in the Arctic. Second, many contributions focus on the impacts in concrete sectors of society, often from an opportunities-and-risks perspective, which tends to blur the boundary to more policy-oriented work. Third, the mantra of the sustainable development of the Arctic or Arctic sustainability pervades considerations of Arctic societal impacts. Fourth, societal and environment change in the Arctic is increasingly analysed using the image of the Global Arctic, highlighting the inextricable linkages between Arctic and global processes and systems and thus the entangled fate of the North and the entire globe. Fifth, an increasing number of actors is seen as being involved in societal and environmental transformations in the Arctic, often conveyed through the (often ill-defined) stakeholder concept. Sixth, Arctic indigenous peoples are depicted as the group most vulnerable to the societal impacts of a changing Arctic, but are increasingly the subject of research in the form of rights-holders and active participants in governance, law, politics, and research. Challenges for future research include achieving greater clarity and reflexivity around key concepts, and de-essentialising the Arctic via the use of comparative methods on cases both within and beyond the Arctic.

As the pace of modern life quickens considerably and changes come fast and furious in public affairs, the qualifications based on which public servants are recruited, the skills they are required to master in order to deal with the new situation, the challenges they are faced with, and the administrative behavior they demonstrate are all no longer the same. Bureaucrats in anti-corruption agencies are no exception.

How do emerging powers gain inclusion into club institutions, i.e. institutions with selective memberships that deliberately seek to avoid universality? We present a framework that highlights three factors: an emerging power's 'fit' to the club's logic of exclusivity, the club's possession of goods of value to the emerging power, and the ability of the emerging power to incentivize the club to open up via different strategies. We hypothesize that, due to the selection effect of choosing to seek inclusion in a club, emerging powers will seek integration using integrative strategies such as co-optation and persuasion. We apply the framework to analyse the case of China's inclusionalong with several other countriesas a State Observer in the Arctic Council in 2013. While China did use largely integrative strategies, the political background to the decision to open up to new observers reveals latent features of power bargaining. Moreover, it is unclear whether observer status has been sufficient to satisfy China. The case highlights the significance of observers in international organizations as well as the importance of clubs' logics of exclusivity to their ability to adapt to international power shifts. Policy Implications • Club institutions such as the Arctic Council face a trade-off between maintaining their exclusivity for existing members and adapting to changing realities by integrating new members. Policy makers should be aware that keeping clubs closed and snubbing outsiders comes with costs for clubs' efficaciousness and legitimacy, but opening clubs up to newcomers may erode the relative privileges of existing members. • Club institutions' logics of exclusivity play an important role in shaping how open they will be to emerging outside powers and how they respond to changing distributions of power and interests. But logics of exclusivity can also be reconfigured or even re-imagined if policy makers act with creativity. For example, regional clubs can become clubs of affinity, or clubs of affinity can become clubs of status. • In contrast to the period at the time of the Arctic Council's creation, the Arctic region is transforming as a result of global warming and economic globalization, generating spillovers that also affect non-regional states. Arctic Council members should recognize the legitimate interests of non-Arctic states in the region. Non-Arctic states should respect the role of Arctic inhabitants and regional states. • Ultimately, the hard distinction between Arctic and non-Arctic states is imagined and increasingly anachronistic. The Arctic Council should consider revising its membership structure to reflect new realities, for example by expanding the role of observers, creating new member categories beyond observership, or expanding the number of full members. The latter option could be accompanied by the creation of a new internal body for the eight current 'Arctic states'.

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