Greenlandic Paradiplomacy: Greenland’s Arctic Advantage and the Unity of the Realm

Abstract: In recent years, an era of renewed Arctic attention has begun as the Arctic region with Greenland at its center has increasingly caught the attention of global powers. Greenland has successfully embraced the increased international attention and the Arctic advantage afforded to it as an opportunity to acquire greater political autonomy and expand its room for maneuver to conduct its own international relations as a subnational government. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how Greenland as a subnational actor uses its Arctic advantage to enhance its political autonomy through displays of multilateral leadership and playing sovereignty games and how this affects the Unity of the Realm. It utilizes paradiplomacy as a theoretical lens, equipping it with an analytical framework through the application of the concepts of multilateral leadership and sovereignty games, to do so. This thesis firstly concludes that Greenlandic representatives display leadership and play sovereignty games on the basis of its Arctic advantage to enhance its political autonomy and project an image of Greenland as sovereign state-in-the-making in charge of conducting its own international relations. Secondly, it concludes that as Greenlandic representatives work to carve out a space for the island as a subnational actor in international Arctic politics, enhanced Greenlandic political autonomy sparks demands for greater autonomy from the Realm, necessitating a reconfiguration of the Unity of the Realm into an ever looser union.