Greenland has had political autonomy in some form for more than 40 years. Formally, it has been divided by the first 30 year of Home Rule and the present period of Self-Government. The paper asks what the drivers of the development Greenlandic autonomy have been. It also asks whether there is continuity or change between these two autonomy regimes and, if so, what the reason for this state of affairs is. The idea in the paper is that historical institutionalism (HI) is fruitful for answering these questions with its focus on concepts such as critical junctures, path dependency and interests of political actors. HI has not been drawn on in analyses of Greenlandic autonomy in the existing literature so in a broader sense the paper also examines whether HI is helpful in analyzing a phenomenon in this geographical area with an indigenous population. The paper inquires into whether the development of Greenland’s autonomy over the years can be understood as a case of path dependency, or whether it has rather been marked by critical junctures whereby Greenlandic autonomy can be seen as a series of changing equilibriums. This is not least interesting with regard to the change to Self-Government in 2009, but also subsequent initiatives such as the setting up of a Greenlandic constitutional committee in 2017 and an increasing focus on a stronger Greenlandic profile in foreign and security policy. Can these developments be understood as path dependency interrupted by critical junctures - along the lines of classical HI. Or should they rather be understood as negative feedback to, or endogenous contestation of, the path dependency of the self-government structures - the newer focus in HI? Answers to these questions will be helpful to provide concepts for talking about the drivers of change and continuity in Greenlandic Self-Government and for comparisons with political autonomies within other Arctic states.
The paper first presents the main elements of historical institutionalism drawing on Pierson, Steinmo and Thélen, Pollack and Cappocia and Kelemen and Mahoney. It then goes on to present the basic dimensions of Greenlandic Self-Government drawing on Trinn and Schulte’s dimensions for assessing regional autonomy. It concludes that Greenland’s Self-Government can be seen as extensive. In the main part of the paper which follows, the development of Greenland autonomy since the 1970s is analyzed drawing on key concepts from HI. It is concluded that HI is a fruitful theoretical framework for analyzing the development of political autonomy in Greenland, but also that the concepts of classical HI has difficulties in explaining some elements in the development of Greenland Self-Government after 2009. This is the case for political initiatives such as the preparation of a constitution.