摘要
The Arctic Council celebrated its 20th birthday in 2016. During the last two decades, the Council has played a crucial role in Arctic governance. However, with the change of world situation and the increasing of global attention, defects inherent in the Council appeared one by one. Against this backdrop, more voices raise call for the reform of the Council. In response, the Council has recently implemented measures such as creating the Council Secretariat, attempting to transform itself from a “forum” into an “organization”. However, there are still immense hurdles to a comprehensive reform of the Council, due to its indefinite goal, lack of momentum and structural deficiencies. In recent years, a tendency of domainal governance emerged in the scene of Arctic governance, which gives the international community a new perspective to the devising of a strategy for building regional order. When it comes to the effectiveness of Arctic governance, a network formed by domainal governance is not necessarily worse than a comprehensive governance mechanism. In this connection, the Council may be treated as a part of the domainal governance network in the Arctic, so that the Council may join with other domainal governance mechanisms in the efforts to push Arctic governance to move in a better direction.
