Arctic Geopolitical Configuration
109assumed to be completely open to the respective nation state (i.e., it shares
in all the opportunities and responsibilities granted by a Constitution), all
three parameters are differentiated at the national, not sub-national, level.
As for regime type, we refer to neoliberal thought on democratic
peace–the idea that democracies almost never fight with other democracies.
Skeptics of the democratic peace argument provide evidence that there is
no direct correlation between democracy and peace,^34 as the latter is not a
consequence of the former but, instead, is a result of other factors that
happen to coincidence with democracy–economic interdependence (Oneal
and Russett 2001), military alliances (Gowa 1999), the absence of
territorial disputes (Gibler 2007), and even American dominance in
international relations (Rosato 2003). We base our assumption that Arctic
provinces with democratics regime are less prone to potential intraregional
conflict on this theory. In line with this logic, we register the happy
coincidence of democratic regimes and peace in international relations,
rather than proclaiming a causal relationship between these phenomena.
This position allows us to assume that potential zones of intra-regional
conflict appear at locations where democracy faces non-democracy and/or
a neutral approach to conflict faces a militaristic approach and/or autarky
faces trade openness. We differentiate Arctic states’ regimes according to
“polity scores” for 2010 in Polity IV Project: Political Regime
Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2012. The conceptual scheme
“...examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority
in governing institutions, rather than discreet and mutually exclusive
forms of governance. This perspective envisions a spectrum of governing
authority that spans from fully institutionalized autocracies through mixed,
or incoherent, authority regimes (...) to fully institutionalized democracies.”^35
The “polity score”^36 captures this regime authority spectrum via a three-
part regime categorization: “autocracies”, “anocracies”, and “democracies.”
We can locate the positions of all the Arctic provinces, except Iceland,^37
within this framework.
In order to evaluate the Arctic provinces’ attitudes towards
intraregional conflict, we contrast the Arctic states according to the
number of armed conflicts, one-sided violence, and non-state conflicts its
(^34) See Tomz and Weeks (2012) for a comprehensive introduction into the debate
on democratic peace logic.
(^35) Visit http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
(^36) The Polity data include information only on the institutions of the central
government and on political groups acting, or reacting, within the scope of that
authority.
(^37) No data on Iceland is available.