A ‘peopled’ account of political agency in the Arctic: Professional practice and people‐to‐people participation

Abstract

In spite of the region's diverse peoples and unique environments, Arctic political analyses frequently remain focused on the traditional level of the state and inter‐state relations. While states undoubtedly play a significant role in Arctic governance arrangements, this paper seeks to direct attention to the agency of the many people and actors performing politics in the region. A more ‘peopled’ analysis includes renewed attention to professionals – e.g., state personnel, politicians, and diplomats – as well as non‐state actors involved in Arctic politics through different avenues and with different levels of agency. This paper focuses on the so‐called Barents Cooperation, a peace‐building initiative set up in the wake of the Cold War between Nordic states and Russia in the Barents Euro‐Arctic border region. It draws on interviews with professionals involved in the daily running of the Barents Cooperation, including its funding of ‘grassroots’ and people‐to‐people activities, to ask what can lessons can be learnt about Arctic political participation beyond the state. Based on their reflections, key challenges, successes, and future opportunities are highlighted, and the paper argues for strengthening both the analytical attention to and the practical agency of a wider range of political actors.

Words beyond ‘data’: Managing small talk and positionality in North Norway

“…I was in Kirkenes, North Norway, in mid‐February 2020 to conduct the first round of fieldwork for my project ‘Bridge‐Building in a Divided High North: Perceived socio‐political outcomes of the intraregional and “people‐to‐people” initiative, the Barents Cooperation’ (Medby, 2021a). This would turn out to be not just the first but only round of fieldwork, as the COVID‐19 pandemic, which at the time I had only heard mentioned in the news, spread across the globe and changed far more than just my research plans.…”

“…In total I spoke to 14 people with experience of the Barents Cooperation, either in person or over the phone. The project's findings are elaborated elsewhere (see Medby, 2022a), but in short, they highlighted the positive impacts of 'people-to-people' contact among those living in the North, on specific topics, and in certain sectors, but also some of the challenges of moving positive grassroots relations 'up' the political levels of multilateral cooperation (Medby, 2021a(Medby, , 2021b. As such, the project's conclusions also exemplify some of what I reflect on in this paper, namely that interpersonal and local connections matter -and that our positionalities can allow us to relate to important questions through registers that exceed the formal and official.…”