The Model Arctic Council: Simulated Negotiations as Pedagogy and Embodied Diplomacy

ABSTRACT

This article draws on the perspectives of students and organizers involved in recent iterations of the Model Arctic Council (MAC), an experiential learning simulation designed to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the Arctic and its governance. While much of the discourse related to simulations such as the MAC emphasizes its pedagogical and networking benefits, this article leverages participant-based ethnography to argue that the MAC also affects multi-track diplomatic outcomes in addition to serving as a site for diplomatic engagement. Applying an interpretive approach driven by the onset of practice-tracing in international relations, we demonstrate that the MAC both produces and constitutes diplomacy. Such a reimagination elevates the diplomacy of non-state actors and exposes false binaries between state diplomacy and non-state diplomacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Model Arctic Council
• diplomacy
• pedagogy
• international relations
• Arctic Council

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Melody Brown Burkins for her support on early drafts of this article and Dr. Nadine Fabbi for her comments at the Association for Canadian Studies in the US 2017 conference.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The initiative was driven by Melody Brown Burkins, Associate Director of the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, and was supported by Leah Sarson, a former post-doctoral fellow at the Dickey Center, and Lee McDavid, former program manager at the Institute of Arctic Studies at the Dickey Center. Mary Ehrlander, Brandon Boylan, and Troy Bouffard of the University of Alaska Fairbanks organized the Model Arctic Council and further supported the initiative.

2. The eight Member States of the Arctic Council are Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russian Federation, Sweden, and the United States.

3. The Permanent Participants of the Arctic Council are Aleut International Association, Arctic Athabaskan Council, Gwich’in Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Council, Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), and Saami Council.

4. The Arctic Council Working Groups are Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP), Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR), Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME), and Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG). The Fairbanks MAC simulated two separate projects from both PAME and SDWG, and Hanover simulated one project from SDWG.

5. The plural is used here to describe not only cognitive and propositional knowledge, but other forms of knowledge like abilities, competencies, and capacities (Schatzki 2017, 24–25). Pouliot has similarly identified “background knowledge” (2011) and highlighted the context-specific nature of knowledge gleaned from experience, characterizing it as “what agents… think from” as opposed to what they merely think “about” (Pouliot 2010, 14; orig. emphases).

6. Article 3 of the Jay Treaty states “It is agreed that at all Times be free to His Majesty’s Subjects, and to the Citizens of the United States, and also to the Indians dwelling on either side of said Boundary Line freely to pass and re-pass by Land, or Inland Navigation, into the respective Territories and Countries of the Two Parties on the Continent of America…No Duty of Entry shall ever be levied by either Party on Peltries brought by Land, or Inland Navigation into the said Territories respectively, nor shall the Indians passing or re-passing with their own proper Goods and Effects of whatever nature, pay for the same any Import or Duty whatever.”

Additional information

Funding

Leah Sarson gratefully acknowledges funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [756-2017-0515].

Notes on contributors

Leah Sarson

Leah Sarson is an assistant professor at Dalhousie University, where her work explores Indigenous global politics in the extractive resource sector. Her broader research interests focus on Canadian foreign policy, International Relations, gender, and the Arctic. Prior to joining Dalhousie, she was a Fulbright researcher and SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she remains a fellow at the Dickey Center for International Understanding and a visiting Arctic fellow at the Institute of Arctic Studies. She completed her PhD in Political Studies in December 2016 at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where she is also a fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy. Dr. Sarson is also director of operations at Women in International Security-Canada.

Val Muzik

Brandon Ray has Master’s degrees from University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, specializing in how unofficial actors are influencing the transition to renewable energy in the Arctic. He previously earned a master’s degree in Atmospheric Science, studying Arctic sea ice predictability at seasonal to interannual timescales, with the goal of allowing stakeholders to better understand the limitations of seasonal forecasts. A naval officer of 12 years, Ray is also interested in how climate change has been incorporated into national security strategies, focusing specifically on the Arctic.

Brandon Ray

Robert Comeau is a student at the College of Law of the University of Saskatchewan at the Nunavut Arctic College campus. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in History at Carleton University. Comeau’s work concentrates on Inuit social and cultural history. He is interested in amplifying Inuit perspectives as interest in the Arctic intensifies.

Glenn Gambrell

Val Muzik is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia and holds a MA in International Relations from McMaster. Building on previous work on security discourses on climate change in the Canadian Arctic, Muzik’s dissertation research focuses on the political and security implications of how digital technology and virtuality impact the ways in which the Arctic is understood by international actors.

Leehi Yona

Leehi Yona is a PhD student in environment and resources at Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in biology and environmental studies, and a Senior Fellowship. She received her master’s degree in environmental science and climate change science and policy from Yale University. The author of more than 100 opinion pieces on climate change, her work has been featured in outlets such as USA Today, Time, The Nation, Montreal Gazette, and The Guardian. She was named Canada’s Top Environmentalist Under 25, was a national winner of The Nation Student Writing Contest in the US, won the Donella Meadows Prize for Promoting Sustainability, and received Yale’s Merit Research Scholarship.

Robert Comeau

Glenn Gambrell is a dual Master’s student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, currently enrolled in both the Arctic and Northern Studies program studying Arctic Policy and the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Program studying Security and Disaster Management. His research is on Disaster Management Infrastructure Differences between the North American Arctic sea routes and the Northern Sea Route. Prior to his graduate studies, he served for 30 years in the United States Army, in both enlisted and commissioned service, and achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.