Paradiplomacy, or the involvement of sub-national units in international affairs, is a growing phenomenon, which is raising interesting questions related to issues of state sovereignty and power. These are especially relevant in the Arctic, where on the one hand, sub-national governments are actively using paradiplomacy to benefit their regions, but where the states on the other hand are dominating the main forum for international cooperation. The state-centrism in IR have largely left sub-national governments out of the scholarly literature. By applying the theoretical framework proposed by Kuznetsov (2015) I want to conduct a case study of the paradiplomacy of one or several Arctic sub-national units. From there, using neorealism and neoliberalism I will analyze the consequences of paradiplomacy on state sovereignty and power, and discuss the relationship between sub-national units’ paradiplomacy and states’ Westphalianism, and between globalization and Arctic “exceptionalism.”
