Arctic Specifics: Content Analysis of the Strategies of Regions and Municipalities of the Russian Arctic

One of the directions for improving planning in the Russian Arctic is to increase the degree to which Arctic specifics are taken into account in socioeconomic development strategies. This determined the aim of the study: to assess the degree of manifestation of Arctic specifics in the texts of strategies for the socioeconomic development of regions and municipalities of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF) using content analysis. The author’s methodology of content analysis of texts was used based on a generated list of 34 marker words, selected based on compliance with the seven primary elements of Arctic specifics and combinations thereof. A content analysis of the texts of 61 existing socioeconomic development strategies was done, the occurrence of marker words was determined, and the most and least used marker words from the list were identified. Among the most common are remoteness/distance, originality/uniqueness and the Far North; the least common are frontier, ice melt, Arctic technologies. Twelve of the 34 studied marker words out were found in more than half the strategies. The relationship between the occurrence of the concepts of the Russian Arctic and Far North in regional and municipal strategies is considered, and the prevalence of the Russian Arctic in the strategies of municipalities on the border of the Arctic Zone is revealed. In a case study of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the differences between urban and regional strategies for the use of climate-related marker words are analyzed. The hypothesis about a direct relationship between the volume of strategies (number of words) and reflection of Arctic specifics in them was not confirmed. Four groups of municipal strategies have been identified depending on the degree of manifestation of Arctic specifics and scope of strategies. Differences in the level of manifestation of Arctic specifics in municipal socioeconomic development strategies depending on geographical location have been identified.