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,

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.