The subject of the article is the influence of the Arctic Council observer states on international cooperation in the Arctic in the absence of voting rights and participation in decision-making. The object of the article is international cooperation in the Arctic within multilateral governance mechanisms. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the institutional constraints of observer status, the procedure of «controlled integration» of external resources and practical channels of participation in subsidiary bodies. Particular attention is paid to the contradiction between the formally limited powers of observers and their actual contribution to the sustainability of expert, project-based, and partnership tracks of cooperation. The empirical part is based on a comparison of the cases of China, India, France and the Republic of Korea which demonstrate different participation strategies — from the use of research infrastructure and monitoring to technological logistics and the maintenance of scientific and environmental formats. The article also takes into account changes following the 2022 cooperation crisis which increased the importance of procedural predictability and functionally «depoliticized» areas of interaction. The methodological basis includes an institutional analysis of founding and regulatory documents, a comparative analysis of observer engagement models and case studies (China, India, France and the Republic of Korea). The novelty of the article consists in operationalizing observer influence as a set of stable, procedurally compatible mechanisms that make it possible to convert a constrained status into reproducible forms of participation without access to consensus decisions. A particular contribution of the author is the proposed four-channel model of influence: expert-scientific, project-technological, procedural-institutional and diplomatic-partnership mechanisms, aligned with the formally established participation framework and strategic planning priorities. The main conclusions of the article are as follows: observers develop distinct «profiles» of influence (China — research infrastructure and expeditionary logistics; India — monitoring and science diplomacy; France — multilateral scientific and environmental practices; the Republic of Korea — technological infrastructure and research logistics); the sustainability of their contribution is determined by functional usefulness, the robustness of evidence and compliance with participation procedures. Under the post-2022 constraints, the most promising areas remain science, ecology, and sustainable development while the intensification of geopolitical competition increases the risk of politicization even of «soft» tracks which requires demonstrating the institutional neutrality of initiatives.
Nadezhda Vitalievna Slivko (Thu,) studied this question.