What’s Next for an Arctic in Turmoil?
by Barry Scott Zellen
But political elites in Nuuk have tried valiantly to interpret election results in favorable terms. After all, they reason, Naleraq didn’t take first place, and Demokraatit (which did take first) didn’t win an outright majority, so a coalition would once again be formed – indicating to some a reassuring but illusory sense of continuity, and not the change that voters have actually embraced. This hunger for electoral change cannot be denied, as it is reflected in the electoral outcome. It’s just change of a Greenlandic (and inherently parliamentary) sort, not like that experienced in American elections where its two-party system produces a sense of administration whiplash when there’s a party turnover, in contrast to parliamentary systems when a minority government is formed with a coalition.