The scale and character of a multitude of changes observed in today’s world are nothing short of a fundamental transformation of the Earth’s systems and many of these changes are witnessed first-hand in the Arctic. In her dissertation, on the basis of the case study of the Arctic Council (AC), political scientist Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek puts forward a concept of informal international regimes that are concluded by states through the means of non-legally binding instruments. She argues that informal international regimes have a number of features that make them increasingly important in our toolbox of mechanisms to address demands and challenges of international collaboration and governance in the era of rapid change.

Today, the accelerating globalization and human-induced climate
change illustrate the challenges that go beyond the boundaries and capacities of any
state and any single actor and are the most prominent examples of the influence of
humans on the Earth’s systems. As noted by international relations and legal
scholars, the complexity of this new global environment has outpaced traditional
methods of international law-making and raised doubts about their continued utility.

In many ways, the Arctic region serves as a vivid
demonstration of the challenges and developments reflective of the rest of the
globe. For that reason, Smieszek decided to focus her work on the Arctic Council, a
non-legally binding institution that has taken a primary position among cooperative
arrangements relevant to the Arctic and over time has drawn increasing attention
from both Arctic and non-Arctic actors alike.

“Institutions—understood as sets of rights, rules, principles, and decision-making
procedures—play a prominent role in human-environmental relations, both as causes
and solutions to major changes we see in biophysical systems around us, and to the
effects these changes have on us and our welfare,” says Smieszek. In political
science and international relations, regimes are a subset of institutions that are
specialized in addressing particular issues, like the climate change, and/or
spatially defined areas, such as the Arctic.

As her review
of literature revealed, virtually all international regimes that have been analyzed
thus far have their bases in legally-binding treaties or conventions. And while this
alone is unsurprising, seeing that multilateral environmental agreements are the
cornerstone of global environmental governance, it also pointed to an important gap
in existing scholarship: the uncharted territory of cases of international regimes
based on non-legally binding instruments, like the Arctic Council.

“At the same time, I was aware from observing the AC and discussions
about its reform and deficiencies, that one of a more frequently raised argument
against the Council has been its lack of regulatory powers and its soft-law
foundation,” comments Smieszek. To her, these arguments were reflective of a much
more general tendency to consider legally-binding norms superior to non-binding
ones, to regard soft-law collaboration as “underdeveloped”, and to view
international regimes primarily in terms of their regulatory functions.

In order to steer away from these discussions and to draw attention to
features of regimes based on non-legally binding agreements that vary them from
international regimes built upon treaties, Smieszek proposed to distinguish a
category of informal international regimes. Among other properties, informal
international regimes allow for establishing new forms of securing accountability
and legitimacy through the enhanced participation of indigenous peoples and other
non-state actors. They can be also adjusted relatively easily compared to more
formal international arrangements, exhibiting a much-desired characteristics of
institutions suitable to meet the demands of governance in the context of rapid,
non-linear and compound changes we experience and observe. Given the complexities of
today’s global policy-making, Smieszek argues that informal international regimes –
their formation, implementation, performance, and dynamics – merit more attention
and dedicated research focus. While they are certainly not panacea to solve all
policy challenges arising on the international agenda, they might represent, as the
case of the AC shows, a novel, important, and so far largely unexamined governance
tool at our hands.

“Given that the Arctic Council is
central to the institutional landscape of the region that serves as the world’s
climate “messenger”, I believe its case presents the potential to inform our
thinking about innovative institutional ways of addressing the paramount challenges
of the climate-altered world we live in,” concludes Smieszek.

Public examination of the dissertation

The dissertation Informal International Regimes. The Case Study
of the Arctic Council by Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek will be publicly examined at
the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Lapland on Wednesday, 11
December 2019 at 12 noon in Lecture Hall 2. The opponent is Professor Leslie A. King
from the Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia in Canada and the
custos is Professor Petri Koikkalainen from the University of Lapland. Coffee and
cake will be served in restaurant Felli after the event. Welcome!

Follow the event live at: https://blogi.eoppimispalvelut.fi/ulapland/

Information on the doctoral
candidate

Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek is a
political scientist and a researcher at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland in
Finland. Her research interests comprise questions of environmental and Arctic
governance, in particular the Arctic Council, science-policy interface, and gender
equality and sustainable development nexus. She has worked on a number of national
and international projects, including most recently “Finland’s Arctic Council
Chairmanship in times of increasing uncertainty” for Finland’s Prime Minister Office
(2016-2018). Gosia has been the Chair of International Arctic Science Committee
(IASC) Action Group on Communicating Arctic Science to Policy-Makers (CASP) and a
representative of IASC to the meetings of the Arctic Council. She is a co-founder of
a non-profit association “Women of the Arctic” (www.genderisnotplanb.com).

Further information

Malgorzata (Gosia) Smieszek
msmiesze@ulapland.fi
+48 661 441 322

Information on the
publication

Malgorzata Smieszek: Informal
International Regimes. A Case Study of the Arctic Council. Acta Electronica
Universitatis Lapponiensis 270, ISBN 978-952-337-186-6, ISSN 1796-6310, Lapin
yliopisto, Rovaniemi 2019.

Permanent address
of the electronic dissertation
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-337-186-6