Call for Abstracts
for ECPR General Conference in Oslo, 6-9 September 2017
for Panel on “Arctic ‘exceptionalism’? Northern Contributions to International Relations (IR) Research”

Panel conveners:
Mathias Albert, Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, Germany,
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Kathrin Keil, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam, Germany, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Sebastian Knecht, Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies (BTS), Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Panel abstract:
The Arctic region was for a long time considered to be of marginal importance for international relations (IR) research due to what is framed as “Arctic exceptionalism”. Because of the region’s special ecology and placid political relationships, the High North was generally seen as detached from global political dynamics and hence uncompelling or unsuitable for IR theory and analysis. With few analytical tools at hand, many studies in Arctic political science have remained overly descriptive and atheoretical. It is only since the “new age of the Arctic” has received wider academic and political attention that the region has become more and more attractive as a testing site for the application of traditional concepts and theories from across the field of IR research.

This session approaches the Arctic’s distinctiveness as a promising point of departure rather than an inhibiting factor for bringing innovative thinking to world politics at the intersection of environmental, resource and security governance issues, and from both Western and non-Western IR perspectives. Accordingly, the session asks how Arctic studies can contribute to central debates, concepts and theories of international relations and global governance in a wider sense, and thereby strongly favours papers with a focus on concept formation and theory building. Issues to be addressed may include, but are not limited to, questions of sovereignty, security, borders and boundaries, conflict and cooperation, power and authority, geopolitics, and state-society relationships.

Please submit your paper abstract by 13 February 2017 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  including:

• The title of your Paper
• The abstract of your Paper (no more than 250 words)
• Your (and if applicable co-author’s) email address