IV. Arctic governance theories and distance education analysis

Due to interdisciplinary, the distance education is described and studied within the limits of a wide range of disciplines and branches of knowledge. Interest group politics, international relations, sustainable development and changing adaptive capacity are studying the issue.

IV.A Interest group politics

In the Russian Federation, the interest group politics is becoming popular. Currently, one of the main tasks of the Russian political science is the expansion of its subject field. So, obligatory disciplines State Policy and Management and Political Conflictology were introduced into a new edition of the state educational standard in political science. Their aim is to clarify institutional and applied aspects of political science (Kovalenko V. 2005; Kovalenko V. 2001).

Up to date, the Russian interest group politics develops into an interdisciplinary interaction between political and economic sciences. At the Fourth Russian Philosophical Congress held on May 24-28, 2005 in Moscow, the relevance of this interaction was formulated as follows. The experience of modernization in different countries testifies that the most important problem of the state policy is "…the definition of a spring, a nerve of economic development". Now the Russian economy development cannot be considered without its competitiveness. The emphasis on the primary development of raw branches ceases to justify itself. The above goal cannot be solved from the positions of a highly specialized vision; it is the main one for the state policy integrating the conceptual development of theorists and practitioners. Political science, therefore, "being the natural base of a state policy, has to rethink significantly the subject field, should be more active in the "butt" directions of scientific knowledge and policy” (Gorbunov 2005, 468).

Among Russian political analysts investigating interest groups, it is important to highlight the following works: L.A. Bakuna (Bakun 1999), N.I. Lapin (Lapin 1997), I.N. Semenenko (Semenenko 2002), A.A. Ionov and O.B. Ionov (Ionov A., Ionov O. 2002).

A good example of Russian interest groups politics is a government and business collaboration in desinging educational, social and industrial policies. Realities of Russian economy show that it is very important to work out proposals for the improvement of an interest group coordination mechanism. Owing to specifics of Russian geographical position, a transport complex plays an extremely important role in its development. First of all, railways does which along with other infrastructure branches provides a unity of an economic space and a free movement of goods and services guaranteed by the Article 8 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. It is an instrument to achieve social, economic, political and educational goals. So, the government and business collaboration in the Russian Railways is a good basis for a Russian interest group analysis, in particular, when a lot of attention draws to regional aspects of social and educational issues (Lipatov 2013).

In the United States, the interest group politics and political economy are major subfields of political science. These disciplines use economic methods operating with the terms of utility maximization and private interest for the explanation of a political process and institution origin and also for the development and realization of the state policy. Unlike economics and political science, taken separately, a political economic approach focuses on an "economic" behavior in the political process, and on a "political" behavior in the economic sphere. This approach relies on Arrow's discussion of cycles in the majority voting (Arrow 1963), Black's median voter theorem (Black 1948), Downs's discussion of party competition (Downs 1957), Riker's theory of coalition, Coase's costly transactions (Coase 1960), Schelling's coordination games (Schelling 1960), Buchanan and Tullock's relationship between supermajorities and externalities (Buchanan 1962) and Niskanen's analysis of agency costs in inter- and intra-institutional relationships (A New Handbook 1996, 645-675). The political economy of the state policy was developed on the crossing of macroeconomics, game theory and social choice theory. There are two main research programs within its framework: economic results of political cycles – W. Nordhaus (Nordhaus 1975), A. Alesina and H. Rosenthal (Alesina 1995), K. Rogoff and A. Sibert (Rodoff 1988) – and budget deficits – V. Grilli, D. Masciandaro and G. Tabellini (Grilli 1991), R. Barro (Barro 1979), J. Buchanan and R. Wagner (Buchanan 1977).

A more empirical approach can be found in following American and other English speaking authors: D. Lowery, V. Gray, M. Fellowes (Lowery 2005), B. L. Leech, F. R. Baumgartner, T. M. La Pira, N. A. Semanko (Leech 2005), J. K. Glenn (Glenn Winter 2004/2005), M. T. Heaney (Heaney 2004), W. Mayer, A. Mourmouras (Mayer 2004) and H. Ward (Ward 2004).

Much of the politics of the circumpolar north is characterised by the activities of various groups with a sense of grievance and varying degrees of alienation. The non-indigenous populations often regard themselves and their hinterland regions as being exploited by their respective southern metropolitan centres with little thought being given by those centres to balanced economic development, the provision of services equivalent to those available in the south or proper environmental protection. The indigenous populations usually feel alienated for much the same rea- sons, but with the added political dimension of a desire for increased self-government (Weller, Geoffrey R 2002, 3).

As for the US education, enormous expenditures make it an important political issue and a target for interest group. Between 1959 and 1995 the number of national interest groups involved in education grew from 563 to 1,312. The number of organisazions involved in state and local education is many time that. Lobbying expenditures on education issues have more than doubled since 1998 (Godwin 2012. P. XIX, 1).

The most active interest groups in the US education can be divided into five broad categories: producer groups (Kahlenberg 2006; Hannaway 2006; Green 2006; Itkonen 2009), business organizations (McFarland 1978), educational equity organizations (Handbook of Education Politics and Policy 2008, Haar 2002), religious and ideological associations (Green 2006) and government organizations (Besieged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics 2005, McDonell 2005). Prior to 1983 the producers of education – teachers, principals and school district superintendents – controlled educational policy. Today, the battle over how to reform education pits groups representing those producers against well-organized groups that want to hold districts, school and individual educators responsible for student outcomes (Goodwin. 2012, 283 – 286).

Given the impact of federal funding and regulations, it is vital for colleges and universities to be well-represented in Washington. A good illustration of higher education institution involvement in the interest group politics and lobbying is university contributions to the 2012 Presidential Race. The University of California with the sum of $1,212,245 and the Harvard University with $668,368 were among the top five givers to a democratic nominee Barack Obama (The website of the Center for Responsive Politics).

There is as much variation in institutional representation in the national capital as there is in very other aspect of higher education. Large number of institutions has staff whose job descriptions include federal relations in whole or in part, and many of them commute regularly to Washington. Beginning in the early 1970s, a few individual institutions began establishing their own Washington offices, and now there are more than a dozen of them. In addition, most of the large state systems of higher education have offices in the capital to represent the interests of all their member institutions.

Also in Washington are hundreds of associations representing higher education. For example, there are regional and state coalitions of colleges and universities and consortia of institutions of the same general type (e.g., church-related institutions, or historically black institutions). There are associations of people in the same roles in their institutions (e.g., chief financial officers, or members of governing boards, or professors within each disciplines), associations of people with the same general concerns (e.g., about the quality of graduate education, or the nature of international education), and associations of personnel with the same type of tasks to perform for the higher education community (e.g., accreditation). In fact, The Encyclopedia of Associations now lists several hundred groups whose customary work concerns various aspects of higher education, more than two hundred of which are located in the Washington area. Many of these groups do no federal relations at all, but some are engaged in educational or lobbying activities of one sort or another. Additionally, law, lobbying, and consulting firms are sometimes retained by individual institutions to advance their interests with the federal government, and ad hoc groups often spring up to work on a specific policy issue and then disband when the issue has been resolved (Cook 1998, 3-10).

Distance education interest group analysis can contribute to this subfield of political science. The Sloane Foundation's Asynchronous Learning Network, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Online University Consortium, as well as blogs, wikis, and virtual reality sites provide a great number of possibilities for distance education program administrators, faculty, educational technologists, instructional designers, e-Learning developers and trainers, IT leaders, and distance education IT support staff to constitute interests for the distance education.

In the state of Alaska, the Alaska Staff Development Network (ASDN) aims to improve student achievement by providing researched-based distance learning and face-to-face professional development programs for Alaska’s teachers and school administrators. pereformulirovat

In Russia, education has a huge potential for interest group politics. Heyneman's article (1998) is a good starting point. The author (Heyneman 1998, 25) correctly highlights disadvantages of the USSR education which make modern reforms much more complicated. He also describes new actors and elements in the Russian education. These included reduction of central control; an increase of parental and community choice; the establishment of religiously-affiliated schools financed with public resources; and a flowering of pedagogical specializations based on classical traditions (gymnasia, lyceums, foreign languages, dance), religious belief (Catholic, Orthodox, Islam), long suppressed pedagogical philosophies (Steiner, Montessori, Dewey, Schiller, Bloom), and courses of study based on new economic demands - business management and western economic (Heyneman 1998, 25).

Interest groups in the Russian distance education can develop by an electronic distributed university, an uniform educational complex. All regional divisions, including the northern and Siberian regions, are connected by a uniform corporate network and realize educational programs on the basis of the uniform information educational environment with the use of a uniform content, library resources, the uniform faculty, uniform administration.

Associatia dolzha mopre actively work to promote education interests in state agencies. Association of northen and siberian uni, arctic univ. - bolse info

both UAF and russian are involved in the Arctic.

As the interest group politics, international relations theories can also analysis the distance education issue through the constructivist point of view.

IV.B International relations theories

Henry (2012, 45-47) points out that interests now are not defined just by anarchy or geopolitical circunstances, as the realist perspective highlights, or by institutional relashionship and rules, as the liberal perspective argues. They are also defines by independent and collective identities.

Identities shape or give meaning to material and institutional realities. Power and institutions are not objective but subjective or intersubjective realities. They have no meaning on their own but depend on the interpretations that actors (subjects) confer on them. The identity perspective emphasizes shared ideas and truthful opinions, such as those, according to some analysts, exchanged between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev while they were in office in the 1980s.

The construction of identities involves a process of discourse by which actors define who they are and how they behave toward one another. This approach to understanding international behavior follows in the idealist tradition because it is ideational, seeing ideas as more influential causes than institutions or power. But it also imphasizes cumulative practices such as repetitive communications. These practices are not institutions that influence material interests, as the liberal perspective emphasizes. Rather, they are verbal practices or substantive narratives that cumulate to substantiate and construct identities, which then influence interests and institutions.

One of the more compelling approaches developed to study the collective impact of experts, and consensual expert opinion, on the international policy process is Peter Haas’s epistemic communities’ model. Haas (1992) offers an approach that examines the role that networks of knowledge-based experts – epistemic communities – play in articulating the cause-and-effect relationships of complex problems, helping states identify their interests, framing the issues for collective debate, proposing specific policies, and identifying salient points for negotiation. He argues that control over knowledge and information is an important dimension of power and that the diffusion of new ideas and information can lead to new patterns of behavior and prove to be an important determinant of international policy coordination.

Many of the major dimensions of contemporary international relations can be traced to the late nineteenth century, when crafts and guilds were declining and scientific and engineering expertise were increasingly applied to commercial research, development, and governance. While the transfer of authority to the sphere of the secular and the rational can be traced back to the eighteenth century and the granting of Noblesse de la Robe in France, the integration of scientists and engineers into a new rationalized corporate structure really began with the second industrial revolution of the 1880s.

Later, as Harvey Brooks observed in 1965, much of the history of social progress in the XXth century can be described in terms of the transfer of wider and wider areas of public policy from politics to expertise (Brooks 1965, 68). The process of professionalization accompanied the expansion of bureaucracies in many countries. In the United States, for example, the number of scientific and technical personnel employed by the federal government grew from 123,927 in 1954 to 189,491 in 1976 to 238,041 in 1983. From 1973 to 1983 alone, the proportion of scientists and engineers with doctoral degrees grew by 51 percent, and the proportion with master degrees grew by 44 percent. In international bureaucracies, such as the United Nations, the budgeting of funds indicates a shift away from the more traditional political and security considerations of the General Assembly and toward the more technical concerns of specialized agencies. The percentage of the UN budget allocated for specialized agencies steadily rose from 45.1 percent in 1950 to 60.5 percent in 1985. Two specialized areas involving science and technology – that of food and agriculture and that of health – have come to control over 25 percent of the resources of the UN system (Haas 1992).

Among the factors that have contributed to the uncertainties faced by decision makers are the increasingly complex and technical nature of the ever-widening range of issues considered on the international agenda, including monetary, macroeconomic, technological, environmental, health, and population issues; the growth in the complexity of the international political system in terms of the number of actors and the extent of interactions; and the expansion of the global economy and the modern administrative state.

In the case of international environmental issues, decision makers are seldom certain of the complex interplay of components of the ecosystem and are therefore unable to anticipate the long-term consequences of the measures designed to address one of the many environmental issues under current consideration. Without the help of experts, they risk making choices that not only ignore the interlinkages with other issues but also highly discount the uncertain future, with the result that a policy choice made now might jeopardize future choices and threaten future generations.

While national epistemic communities may emerge and direct their activities largely towards a single country, as in the case of the U.S. community and the Russian / Soviet community, they may in some cases become transnational over time as a result of the diffusion of community ideas through conferences, journals, research collaboration, and a variety of informal communications and contacts. Collaboration in the absence of material interests binding together actors in different countries with common policy agendas strongly suggests the existence of an epistemic community with transnational membership.

The solidarity of epistemic communities members derives not only from their shared interests, which are based on cosmopolitan beliefs of promoting collective betterment, but also from their shared aversions, which are based on their reluctance to deal with policy agendas outside their common policy enterprise or invoke policies based on explanations that they do not accept.

The Arctic has a good capacity for the development of epistemic communities in international relations. The realities of the Circumpolar North with its vast distances, great cultural diversity, and small communities and institutions call for a common effort by the involved nations and scientific experts. The Arctic represents a fifth of the Earth's surface, a globally vital ecosystem, an important platform to conduct research and understand our dynamic platform. Sustainable development of the region is thus critical to the rest of the world. The last decades have given the melting of sea ice from rapid climate change. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposal of 1987 that the Arctic states could initiate co-operation in various fields, one being protection of the Arctic environment (Koivurova 2010), and the Declaration on the Protection of the Arctic Environment, signed by eight Arctic states in Rovaniemi, Finland, in June, 1991, led to a partnership between governments and indigenous peoples to safeguard the Arctic environment and ensure the sustainable development of the region through what is now the Arctic Council (Kullerud 2009).

Though the legal capacity of many Arctic institutions (e.g., the Nordic Council, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Arctic Council, the University of the Arctic, etc. – naiti dokumenti – saiti Arctic Council) is often limited to non-legally binding and informal arrangements, consultative mandates and soft-law declarations arrangements, their current collaboration indicates that these measures often prove to be adequate in solving (grammar infinitive) existing challenges in the Arctic. The activities of NGOs such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents the Inuit of Alaska (USA), four regions in Canada, Chukotka (the Russian Federation), and Greenland (Denmark), also point to the efficiency of informal strategies in advancing pan-Arctic diplomacy and the rights of indigenous peoples. Concerned activists and NGOs, including indigenous actors, have raised the level of public awareness in respect of the negative and often destructive impacts of Southern and global developments and actions on Arctic ecosystems, livelihoods and the health of Arctic peoples (Loukacheva 2010, 129-130).

Taking into account a broad spectrum of experts, the distance education in the Arctic can contribute to the constructivist approach. For example, Vrasidas (2000) points out that the goal of constructivist educators is to guide students to think and act like experts, the goal, for example, for a course Telecommunications for learning and instruction, is not to simply teach the basic technology systems, teaching methods, and learning principles. Instead, the goal is to provide students with opportunities to think like experts in making decisions about selecting such systems for appropriate use, structuring learning activities, and employing sound pedagogical strategies in real-life contexts.

Instructional designers should always be aware of their epistemological and philosophical assumptions because those assumptions will guide their teaching and evaluation practices. A teacher should situate himself on the continuum. There are times that a more objectivist approach is appropriate and there are other times that a more constructivist is appropriate. It always depends on the context, content, resources, and learners. Learning theories and epistemological assumptions of different instructional design paradigms are tools which educators can use to make informed instructional decisions as they undertake the task of developing curricula and designing instruction.

In the conclusion of this part, it should point out that climate change will clearly be the biggest challenge to the international relations in Polar regions in the years to come that try to keep their development sustainable to which the next part will be devoted.

IV.C Sustainable development and changing adaptive capacity

Arctic societies have a well-deserved reputation for resilience in the face of change. But today they are facing an unprecedented combination of rapid and stressful changes involving environmental processes (e.g. the impacts of climate change), cultural developments (e.g. the erosion of indigenous languages), economic changes (e.g. the emergence of narrowly based mixed economies), industrial developments (e.g. the growing role of multinational corporations engaged in the extraction of natural resources), and political changes (e.g. the devolution of politi-cal authority) (AHDR 2004, 10).

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. While non-renewable resources are finite and face eventual depletion, local economies do not necessarily need to be worse off than before the resources were exhausted. Sustainable development – in terms of creating a future stream of economic benefits – might be possible to achieve even based on non-renewable resources, if those resources can be converted into benefits that have a lasting benefit, such as e.g., education and training to help create a more diversified economy (Larsen 2010, 92).

Capacity-building is an important approach to achieving sustainable development. As discussed by Mark Nuttall capacity-building enhances the capabilities of people and institutions to improve their skills and abilities to solve problems, and strengthen their prospects for achieving sustainable livelihoods. Local communities and regional and national governments can develop the necessary skills and expertise needed to manage their natural resources and environments in a sustainable manner through a process of capacity-building. This includes developing the capacity and skills of community members so they can identify and meet their needs, participate more fully in society, and meet the challenges of, and benefit from, the opportunities of change. It is a process of building relationships between people, groups, and communities and developing the kinds of networks that can support and promote communities and vibrant cultures (Nuttall 2002).

Under co-management stakeholders share power in managing re- sources. This commonly refers to a shared decision-making process, formal or informal, between government and user group for managing a resource. It is an institutional arrangement where stakeholders establish a system of rights and obligations; rules indicating actions that stakeholders are expected to take; and procedures for making collective decisions affecting diverse interests. Co-management may include the use of traditional knowledge in resource management, where traditional knowledge refers to a body of knowledge, practice, and beliefs, which has evolved by adaptive processes and then been handed down from generation to generation (AHDR 2004). One might also see it as management fitted to a smaller scale, with resource users taking more direct responsibility, and including utilization of local knowledge. It is a flexible and participatory process, which can provide a forum for rule making, conflict manage- ment, power sharing, learning, and development among resource users, stakeholders, and government (Kristoffersen 2002).

For example, Sustainable Livestock Production Project can contribute to the sustainable development in Alaska by three core issues fundamental to food security: food affordability; food availability; food quality and safety. Alaska’s long food miles, high transportation costs, and heavy dependence on fossil fuels result in a highly vulnerable food system that is both expensive and of poor quality. Industrialized, factory farming is not an economically viable option in Alaska and has never gained traction. On the other hand, an agricultural model that is based on small and midsized, sustainable farms is exceptionally well suited to this state. The state has the capacity and the land base to produce enough meat to feed many more residents, but it have not done. This simple question is the theme for a scientific research (Sustainable Livestock Production in Alaska. 2011).

From the perspective of Capability Approach Theory, which stresses a developmental approach to education, attention should be paid to the distance education in the North, the relationship between between open-distance education and development. The Capability Approach shifts the goal of development from mere income or economic growth as ends in themselves, to that of growth of people and enhancing the quality of the human condition. Viewing development from this perspective implies that it can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedom that people enjoy. Education, in this larger sense of term, serves as a tool people can use to achieve the level of freedom that they feel is intrinsically valuable, as well as achieving rudimentary levels of knowledge acquisition (e.g., beginning with literacy and basic arithmetic), which serves as a functional key to greater educational development. Education and development policies based on Capability Theory are judged to be successful if they enhance people’s individual capabilities, whether or not they directly affect income or economic growth (Aderinoye 2004).

Distance education is very important to the North, as in other less industrialised and populated regions (Omolewa 2008). It is inclusive and free of restrictions imposed by distance and space. Moreover, it creates opportunities for those excluded from formal education because of their gender, age or status. This is a crucial point in remote areas of the North which is mostly populated by indigenous peoples. Distance learning also makes education accessible to those who are unable to study full time due to their social responsibilities and commitments.

So, distance education is an important part of sustainable development. It creates opportunities for people of the North which in other way have not to be educated enough to meet challenges threatening sustainable development.

To sum up the theoretical chapter, it should be taken into consideration that an interdisciplinary approach for the distance education analysis helps to describe and study the issue by different methods and in various aspects. Unlike the interest group politics, international relations and sustainable development taken separately, the integrative method are helping to found out adequate methodologies for dealing with a complicated subject field. Otherwise, the complex research question Distance education in the Circumpolar North by example of the United States and the Russian Federation was not fully analyzed and studied.

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