The Land of Maybe and International Actorness: Evaluating Faroese Paradiplomacy

Thesis Abstract

This thesis presents a single-country study of the Faroe Islands as a sub-state entity in international relations, asking specifically 'why and how do the Faroes conduct paradiplomacy?' Identifying the both the absence of an extensive, systematic evaluation of Faroese external relations, and the rarity of tools to study this agency, the thesis nonetheless identifies and applies a preciosely such comprehensive explanatory framework. Indeed, the thesis adopts, contextualises and completments Kuznetsov's 2015 framework, and applies it to three empirical key case studies, examining Faroese participation in UN, Nordic and Arctic for,

as well as trade promotion and marine resource management.

Thus, the original academic contribution of the thesis rests on the dual contribution of the empirically substantiated findings, triangulated across the three case studies. A wholly new, in-depth analysis of Faroese paraiplomacy, the first contribution is empirical, adding to the comparative literature within the cannons on Paradiplomacy and Island Studies. The second contribution is theoretical, testing Kuznetsov's explanatory framework and demonstrating how it can be amended for in-depth analysis.

Overall, the thesis shows that successive Faroese governments have expanded external, paradiplomatic activity significantly since the mid-1990s in particular, and have built a foreign service in a process of pragmatic and principled state building. Drawing on the specificities of the three case studies, the thesis identifies and examines causes driving Faroese paradiplomacy; jurisdiction, the motivations, institutionalisations, attitudes of the Danish government, and considers the consequences of Faroese paradiplomacy for the Realm.