Contemporary governance systems are often criticized for being fragmented and departmentalized. That is seen as a challenge because the pursuit of sustainable development calls for policy integration and coherence. Scholars and analysts encourage policy-makers to apply a holistic approach to governance and to cut across sectors. There is also a pressure for polities to present themselves as active and coherent actors as regards a given theme or geographical space, including large transnational regions. For these reasons, Arctic and non-Arctic states as well as the European Union have developed Arctic strategies and policies. In most cases, these policies originated from the need to produce an Arctic foreign policy stance. Nonetheless, they include variety of internal and external elements. These policies ultimately serve as coherence-enhancing practices, aiming at making state activities within (or directed towards) the Arctic to be more integrated, synergetic or consistent. The paper examines whether the process of making of Arctic policies can effectively “bring together” various strands of actors’ presence in the region and make a tangible difference in states/EU behavior. In particular, the policy documents and activities of Canada, the EU, and Finland are considered. The conclusions are discouraging. The notion of sustainable development in Arctic policies is used rather to obscure the contradictions than to support a clearer course of action. Too many aspects and sectors are included in Arctic policies for them to be focused and operationalizable. They are usually more about labeling various issues as “Arctic” than introducing tangible coordination or integration. Arctic policies are generally marginal within policy-systems, which makes them collections of existing actions with very limited influence on sectoral policy-making. Therefore, they constitute component-based policies (May et al. 2005).
