Assessment of the Governance of Arctic Cities in the Resilience Context

Abstract

The aim (research question) of the paper is to theoretically comprehend and empirically generalize the phenomenon of governance of Russia's Arctic cities in the context of their resilience (resistance to shocks and crises). The main tasks to be solved are: 1) searching for specific indicators to characterize the administrative and managerial system of a sample of Arctic cities; 2) distinguishing the types (groups) of Arctic cities according to the selected indicators of administrative and management system; 3) characterizing the local government structure of the three Arctic cities in the context of the previously conducted typology of Arctic cities according to the parameters of administrative and management system. The main results of the work: 1) determination of the range of indicators (six) for assessing the quality of management of the 29 largest Arctic cities in terms of strengthening their resilience: these are indicators of openness to the outside world (“basicness” of the city); governance efficiency, degree of independence of decisions of city authorities; 2) identification of five clusters of cities with similar properties of the administrative and managerial subsystem: compact high-quality management, “low-cost” municipal management, “strong average” cities, significant reserves for improving management efficiency, case-anomaly; 3) institutional and geographic factors, acting together, determine the appearance of the administrative and managerial subsystem of the Arctic city. Among geographical factors, it is not latitude but longitude that is the location of the city in the European or Asian Arctic that is of primary importance; 4) For Arctic cities, where frequent natural and social force majeure demands a super-operational response to external threats, the model of power with a strong mayor is in most cases preferable to the “consensus” model of collective leadership with a weak mayor; 5) the ideal administrative and management system of the city, which implements the imperatives of basicness/openness, efficiency and autonomy to the maximum extent, and guarantees the city resilience, should have nature-like properties of self-organization, plasticity, flexibility, mobility and diversity. Their strengthening is provided by rejection of unification, including the ultimate consideration of specific features of a particular type and exploitation phase of the main natural asset nearest to the city.