An Institutional Design Framework for Multi-Sector Land and Resource Governance Across Large-Scale Arctic Surface Estates

Arctic Alaska presents one of the most institutionally complex land and resource governance environments in North America, characterized by overlapping authority among federal agencies, the State of Alaska, Alaska Native corporations established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, tribal governments, and private landowners across vast surface estate acreages encompassing oil and gas development, mining, subsistence uses, commercial fisheries, conservation, and rapidly changing ecological conditions. The institutional architecture of Arctic land governance was substantially shaped by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, and subsequent federal and state legislative and regulatory actions that created an unprecedented mosaic of land tenures, management mandates, and governance authorities across approximately 375 million acres. This paper develops an institutional design framework for multi-sector land and resource governance across large-scale Arctic surface estates, synthesizing institutional analysis and development scholarship, common-pool resource theory, and indigenous governance literature to identify the design principles, coordination mechanisms, and adaptive governance capacities essential to effective multi-sector management under conditions of jurisdictional complexity, rapid ecological change, and competing use demands. The framework analyzes boundary rule design, authority allocation mechanisms, horizontal coordination architectures, and adaptive monitoring systems as interacting institutional components that together determine governance performance across the multi-sector landscape. Application of the framework to specific governance challenges in Arctic Alaska, including subsistence co-management, energy development permitting, and climate-adaptive conservation planning, illustrates its analytical utility and generates design implications for institutional reform. The framework contributes to Arctic governance scholarship and to institutional design theory for complex multi-tenure resource environments. Cross-sectoral linkages to related governance frameworks developed in companion studies inform the analysis.