State Learning and Role Playing : International environmental cooperation in the Arctic Council

Abstract: This study investigates state interaction as a social learning process, where the ultimate aim is to enhance an understanding on how states learn of environmental norms. An entry into the domain on such learning processes is offered through a Constructivist approach and more specifically through the employment of a role theoretical perspective; a role here is signified as a state's repertory of behavior and its social position within a group. Attention has been devoted to states' ego- and alter expectations, which provide access to how states reflect and deliberate regarding their preferred behavior, when also taking into account those behavioral/normative prescriptions found in the social context, and in others' expectations. To enhance an understanding on how states learn of environmental norms, investigations and discussions are carried out on the links between: learning and expectations, environmental protection and fossil energy interests, and learning and role changes. Furthermore, such discussions are linked to the Arctic context, and more precisely to state interaction within the Arctic Council. This intergovernmental forum - dedicated to sustainable development and environmental protection - has eight Arctic states as founding members: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the U.S. In this study, each state's role is mapped through a text analysis, of foremost Senior Arctic Official's meeting minutes during the period 1999-2016. Two specific negotiation processes (2013-2015) are then investigated from a micro perspective, focusing on the question of how states learn. These negotiations are on oil spill prevention and the reduction of short-lived climate pollutants, respectively. Three theoretical conclusions are drawn: firstly; roles in international relations are stable but flexible, thus adaptive; secondly, the flexible dimension of roles is activated in relation to understanding - to which degree states understand their social context to contain behavioral prescriptions, and thirdly; states cannot learn in a speedier and more thorough manner than the role allows for flexing. For the progression of environmental protection, learning about such norms are thus suggested to be successive learning, connected to states' expectations of their (role) purpose within a social context. Moreover, it is suggested that conceptions of being a good cooperator is superior, why learning of environmental norms also is connected to understandings of what would constitute such an actor.