Home in the North: The Northern Forum, Alaska, and Circumpolar Subnational Governance

University of Toronto Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize Winner (Honourable mention, Category Year 3/4). The University of Toronto Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize awards undergraduate students in any first-entry faculty across the University of Toronto’s three campuses based on their effective and innovative use of information sources. This prize provides students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research to an audience beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at University of Toronto. Please visit the Undergraduate Research Prize website https://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/undergrad-research-prize/criteria for more information about the award, including submission guidelines.Despite being in existence for 25 years and being the only organization facilitating subnational foreign relations globally across the circumpolar world, membership in The Northern Forum, a site for the exchange of experience and intention among subnational Arctic and also northern governments, has declined in the last twelve years which has questioned the future of subnational involvement in Arctic governance. As a founding member that has remained with the Forum for most of its history, Alaska’s involvement presents a particularly interesting case study on the state of subnational foreign relations in the Arctic. This study examines the history of the Forum, which is one of engagement, diminishing interest, exit, and re-entry, largely from an Alaskan perspective. The principal question raised by this history is: what does Alaska’s withdrawal from the NF say about the state of subnational co-operation in the Arctic? This study critiques the Alaskan performance and recommends measures for the membership at large to achieve the Forum’s full potential