Description
Does environmental stewardship have an underlying fragility in Arctic international society? This article examines whether the relatively new primary institution of environmental stewardship has entered a state of crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The exclusion of Russia from Arctic cooperation challenged the durability of environmental stewardship, revealing tensions between this institution and more entrenched ones such as sovereignty and territoriality. Drawing on the English School’s institutional evolution debate and constructivist insights on norm reproduction, the article employs process tracing to analyse how discursive and behavioural changes among Arctic states reprioritised the region’s normative order. It identifies two mechanisms, entanglement and institutional decoupling, through which a shock to one primary institution (sovereignty) produced functional fragility in another (stewardship). Despite extensive secondary institutional support, the cessation of cross-border cooperation disrupted the reproducing practices essential to environmental stewardship. The study concludes that environmental stewardship’s fragility is not intrinsic but relational, its resilience depends on its ability to reproduce cooperative practices under shifting normative conditions. It is also highlighted the potential role of world society actors in restoring stewardship’s legitimacy and sustaining Arctic environmental governance amid geopolitical fragmentation.
