An energy promise of democratic peace for the arctic: Russia’s case

Abstract

It has been widely discussed whether the existing theoretical approaches within the international relations could efficiently explain the newly established phenomena within the international system. As a vast space of emerging importance, the Arctic presents a unique area which is an immanent strategic object of the world’s major powers such as Russia, China, Canada, and the EU. This article uses the democratic peace theory to determine whether the major intervening variables – energy policy and transit potential in the Arctic – could inhibit the theoretically predicted behaviour of such states. Theoretical implication stemming from the literature review points to an inherently more peaceful nature of Russia in this space, unlike the rest of the world. This was an incentive to fill in an epistemological gap of the democratic peace puzzle. Following the logic of the democratic peace theory, this research has demonstrated that the two intervening variables have been omitted and thus they should be incorporated in further empirical research.