ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the relation between transnationalism and legitimacy in the Arctic Ocean by focusing on three actors: the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the European Union (EU) and China. It discusses major legal shifts in the contemporary world: the increasing recognition of Indigenous Peoples rights, the development of a supranational organisation in an international system dominated by a Westphalian model and the rise of a country, in a Western dominated world, claiming an equal right to norm making. The chapter analyses in three distinct sections the arguments that the ICC, the EU and China associate with their legitimacy claims. It also discusses the results and compares the strategies of the three actors in the analytical terms of procedural, substantive and output legitimacy. The funding instrument it intends to develop in the context of the establishment of the Arctic stakeholder forum is also an argument of means relevant in the output legitimacy strategy.
