Arctic governance

Abstract

This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Out of House Publishing AcknowledgementsThis book would have been impossible to carry out without the contributions of others.I am grateful to all of the interviewees from many years from Moscow; Murmansk; Ottawa; Washington, DC; Iqaluit; Copenhagen; Oslo; Anchorage; and elsewhere. All of these interviewees are busy practitioners, whose responsibilities and schedules are not necessarily designed to accommodate discussing questions with a researcher. Yet they found the time and energy to meet with me, and their insights have been invaluable.The enthusiasm of these practitioners is matched by a thriving world of Arctic social-science scholars, who continuously produce so much new, interesting research that I had to keep updating the references of this book until the very last minute. Discussions with this community of scholars, established and junior, at project workshops, at the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences, Arctic Circle and Arctic Frontiers have been inspiring and formative. My 'long ago' friends and teachers from student days at the Scott Polar Research Institute continue to shape my thinking. My 'part-time' colleagues, Frode Mellemvik, Anatoli Bourmistrov and Elena Dybtsyna, as well as students at the High North Centre for Business at Nord University in Bodø, have increased my understanding of Arctic politics.I also appreciate the efforts of the anonymous reviewers who took time to comment, and of Jessica Shadian, who looked closely at the manuscript for me at an important juncture. From the days of the Greek cartographers dreaming about Ultima Thule at the edges of the known world, the cold reaches of the northern hemisphere have inspired grandiose caricatures of risk and opportunity. The region is often imagined from a distance as sublime, exceptional and prone to extremes. Out of space and out of time, as Poe put it, the circumpolar North is frequently envisioned as fundamentally apart from the complexities, indeterminacies and intricacies of life and politics in other parts of the globe. We see some of this exceptionalism in the application of dichotomies to the Arctic: the Arctic will either be preserved as humanity's last wilderness, or plundered by coastal states jealously guarding their natural resource treasure chests. All Arctic states are completely equal in Arctic governance, or the USA and Russia dominate militarily and diplomatically against a ve...

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