Regional Governance without Self-Government:
Dynamism and Change in the North American Arctic
Adrienne M. Davidson
How do we understand the evolution of sub-national governance in the North American Arctic? In what ways are Indigenous
policy actors empowered and organized? Discussions of circumpolar regionalization often focus on the increasing role of state,
provincial, or territorial governments in policy development, in international relations, and in managing the future of the north.
However, these institutions do not constitute the only form of regionalization that the Arctic has experienced. Over the past 40
years, the North American Arctic has also seen rapid political change at the sub-national level. The land claims movement, which
emerged in the 1960s in Alaska and in the 1970s in Canada, shifted policy authority into new regional institutions and empowered
local indigenous populations. This has meant that the northern territories and the state of Alaska have moved toward becoming
their own quasi-federal systems, and has heightened the complexity of northern governance. This paper presents a comparative study
of regional models of governance in the North American Arctic. The paper pays specific attention to regional models that emerged
in a policy vacuum, prior to the pre-1990s period that saw both US and Canadian federal governments reaffirm notions of
Indigenous sovereignty. However, due to policy legacies and path dependency, some populations do not (and may never have)
Indigenous self-government. The paper explores the layered development of governance, focusing on the Northwest Arctic and North
Slope regions in Alaska, and the Inuvialuit and Gwich’in regions in the Canadian Northwest Territories. This paper explores
how differences in institutional structure influence shape regional policymaking, and how these institutions are poised to affect the
future political, economic, and social development of Arctic Northern America.
Introduction: Conceptualizing the Arctic region
Since the end of the Second World War, the Arctic has experienced considerable political and
institutional change. The political reorganization of the Arctic has evolved along three parallel streams
of governance: (1) transnational cooperation; (2) decentralization; and (3) regionalization. The first
path of institutional development came through the ideational creation of an ‘Arctic Region’ in
international relations. The ‘Arctic Region’ became a focal point during the Cold War, sparking
Adrienne M. Davidson is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto.