‘Soft Securitization’: Unconventional Security Issues and the Arctic Council

This article assesses the Arctic Council’s role as a security actor in the context of a rapidly changing circumpolar region. It investigates how the Arctic Council uses security language, and which issues it depicts as relevant to Arctic security. The article does this by undertaking textual analysi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Politik
Main Authors: Greaves, Wilfrid, Pomerants, Daniel
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:Danish
Published: Institut for Statskundskab, Københavns Universitet 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://tidsskrift.dk/politik/article/view/97152
https://doi.org/10.7146/politik.v20i3.97152
Description
Summary:This article assesses the Arctic Council’s role as a security actor in the context of a rapidly changing circumpolar region. It investigates how the Arctic Council uses security language, and which issues it depicts as relevant to Arctic security. The article does this by undertaking textual analysis of ‘securitizing moves’ represented in the Council’s publicly available online documents, including declarations and agreements, policy papers, working group reports, public statements, and other related sources. The findings offer empirical insights into the Arctic Council and the construction of Arctic security issues, as well as theoretical reflections on the analytical usefulness of securitization theory, and the dynamics of constructing unconventional security issues in a multilateral intergovernmental forum.