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Short abstract

Through exploring how Greenland and Denmark collaborate to govern Greenlandic digital infrastructure, different registers of “good” governance emerge. This paper shows how this collaboration is sustained through practices of waiting.

Long abstract

How is waiting done in the governance of Greenlandic digital infrastructures? While many areas of Greenlandic governance have been “taken home”; areas such as frequencies and national (Kingdom of Denmark) security policy remain in Denmark. In our paper, we examine how waiting emerges within the collaboration in governing Greenlandic digital infrastructure between Danish and Greenlandic agencies.

We position Greenland and Denmark’s collaboration as enacted and negotiated through ongoing organisational practices, practices that wait, care for, and maintain the governance of Greenlandic digital infrastructures (Denis & Pontille, 2025). Drawing on Heuts’ and Mol’s (2013) study of what makes a “good tomato” and working from a praxiographic methodological stance (Mol, 2002), we do not aim to provide an answer to how governance across Greenland and Denmark should be carried out. Instead, we focus on what emerges in practices where the ‘goodness’ of governance is at stake.

Our analysis shows how waiting, enduring relationships, defined responsibilities, pragmatic alignments, and adhering to the specific conditions of Greenland emerge as registers of ‘good’ governance for Greenlandic digital infrastructures. These practices shape the everyday governance of digital infrastructural work in Greenland, showing how resilience emerges through sustained practices of ‘good’ governance.