Arctic ‘Exceptionalism’? Northern Contributions to International Relations (IR) Research

Abstract

The concept of geopolitics in IR scholarship remains unclear in terms of reference to either a subdiscipline or an area of reflections. This panel brings together discussions on international systems, on relations of the global and the local, on foreign policy and on paradiplomacy. This session approaches the Arctic’s distinctiveness as a promising point of departure rather than an inhibiting factor for bringing innovative thinking to world politics at the intersection of environmental, resource and security governance issues, and from both Western and non-Western IR perspectives. Accordingly, the session asks how Arctic studies can contribute to central debates, concepts and theories of international relations and global governance in a wider sense, and thereby strongly favours papers with a focus on concept-formation and theory-development. Issues to be addressed may include, but are not limited to, questions of sovereignty, security, borders and boundaries, conflict and cooperation, power and authority, geopolitics, and state-society