Chapter Seven
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government has been involved in since the 1970s, as they appear in the
Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Actor Dataset 2.1-2010). This number is
small for states with a neutral position (1-5). Otherwise, a greater number
(>10) indicates a militaristic approach towards potential intraregional
conflict. Finally, the Arctic provinces’ trade status is revealed using a
share of foreign trade in gross domestic product by calculating the average
of the share of imports in GDP and the share of exports in GDP. Data for
2010 is taken from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators
database.^38 We assume states with a share of foreign trade in GDP higher
than 20 per cent are traders, and states with a share lower than 15 per cent
are autarkies.
The analysis is positivist and objective: with no attempt to repudiate
the presence of certain factors of subjective geopolitics in the Arctic, this
work omits them due to problematic operationalization. The only semi-
subjective factor is the national sector area. Despite the fact that the sector
doctrine does not constitute a valid basis for claims of entitlement to
territory by itself, and is rejected in Denmark, Norway and the United
States, it seems that “...since there are no outstanding disputes over land
and island territories in the Arctic, the substance of the sectors’ claims
there has been recognized either by treaty or simply by acquiescence.”^39 In
contrast to the exclusive economic zone, the sector approach says much
more about the role of the northernmost provinces in the Arctic states’
symbolic relation to the polar region. It is therefore relevant while
reconstructing the Arctic provinces’ geopolitical representations (“mental
maps”). Active territorial claims in the Arctic confirm that the sector
approach is not as outdated as it is often advertised.
Arctic Geopolitical Grouping: Dataset, Measurements,
Results
The Arctic Regional Attributes Dataset^40 is a cross-national dataset of 27
cases (provinces) covering sixteen variables, so the number of
observations equals 1296. We took information from databases once every
five years, starting in 2000 and ending in 2010. Two indicators
(Econ_Reg, Mil_Reg) are invented by the author, and the rest have been
imported from eight Arctic states’ national statistical databases, the
circumpolar statistical database ArcticStat, Encyclopedia Britannica, the
(^38) Visit http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators
(^39) Boczek, International Law: A Dictionary, 246.
(^40) The ARA Dataset is available upon request. E-mail: [email protected].