Canada's International Policies: Agendas, Alternatives, and Politics Tomlin, Brian; Hillmer, Norman and Hampson, Fen

Canada's International Policies is a landmark study of policy change and innovation in Canada's international relations. It explains why policies change when they do. The volume provides students of Canada's international relations with a close-up view of the critical factors and forces that contribute to policy transformation so that they can understand the how and why of the policy making process. It shows how policy makers wrestle with tough policy choices and why they end up making the decisions they do. The breadth of the volume is impressive, focusing on important turning points in the evolution of Canada's international policies across the domains of trade, investment, development, defence, and human security from the early days of the Cold War to the present. It describes a changing international environment and how that environment has impinged on policy choices. It also discusses the complex domestic and bureaucratic politics of decision-making. Canada's International Policies offers an innovative application of an evolutionary multiple streams model of decision-making to explain why certain problems land on the policy agenda and why a particular policy alternative is selected to address specific problems. In doing so, it highlights the importance of statecraft and the specific qualities of leadership that come into play in the ongoing policy battles between ideas, interests, and values. Unlike so many texts on international relations that offer dry, theoretical discussions of the foreign policy process, Canada's International Policies gives students a real taste of the rough and tumble world of decision-making, viewed through the lens of a sophisticated, analytical framework.