PRICING TERRITORY, GOVERNING FUTURES: LESSONS FROM GREENLAND FOR THAILAND UNDER IMAGINATIVE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

This study examines Greenland as a critical case of contemporary governance in which strategic valuation and future authorship have displaced rule-based sovereignty. It applies Imaginative Public Administration (IPA) and Governmental Power Market-ing (GPM) as analytical frameworks and employs a qualitative, theory-driven literature review and conceptual synthesis to analyze governance beyond formal institutions. The findings demonstrate how Greenland was transformed from a legally sovereign territory into a strategically priced security asset governed through future-oriented security imaginaries rather than formal annexation. U.S. future authorship, Denmark’s institutional custodianship, NATO’s alliance multiplication, and China and Russia’s asymmetric roles collectively produced governance without conquest. The study finds a similar risk for Thailand—losing future‑authoring power to external valuation. It argues that strategic autonomy can be restored only by building cognitive, symbolic, and co‑creative capacities to reassert co‑authorship in the global power market.

Keywords: Imaginative Public Administration; Governmental Power Market-ing, strategic valuation; future authorship, Greenland, operational sovereignty, strategic narratives