Suchergebnisse

Canada in international affairs -- Streams in the investment policy process -- The evolution of foreign investment policy -- Streams in the trade policy process -- The evolution of international trade policy -- Streams in the defence policy process -- The evolution of national defence policy -- Streams in the development policy process -- The evolution of international development policy -- Streams in the human security policy process -- The evolution of human security policy -- Canada's international policies -- Case Studies. Introduction -- Policy making and the culture/trade quandry / Lisa Baroldi -- Negotiating the Convention on anti-personnel landmines / John Cadham -- Sino-Canadian relations, 1949-2005 / Anemone Fritzen -- Canada-US relations and the Devils Lake dispute / Kevin Ma -- Turning the corner on the Kyoto Protocol / Maite Ormaechae -- International assistance to secure access to essential medicines / Kate Press

An oft-claimed advantage of scientific studies of international politics is the intersubjectivity of such inquiries. Although the ultimate promise of scientific knowledge is the understanding it imparts to patterns of association among classes of events, much contemporary research falls considerably short of this goal. As a result, the principal, immediate value of such research lies in its adherence to scientific practices that ensure that findings are not wholly dependent on the methods of measurement and analysis adopted by a particular researcher. More than a decade ago James Caporaso demonstrated the utility of measurement validation as a specific application of the general scientific mandate that inquiry be intersubjective. 1 Yet despite widespread positive reaction to Caporaso's examination of alternative measures of the concept "integration," his study stands out as a rare example of the type of systematic investigation of measurement validity that must be undertaken in order to fulfill this scientific mandate. 2

A revision and extension of status-field theory is applied to the analysis of foreign policy interactions among 32 black African states in the middle 1960s. In the revision of the theory, directed-dyads are partitioned into four sets, based on the relative position of the actor-nation in each dyad. Hypotheses relating status distance on economic development and power to three patterns of foreign policy behaviour (cooperation, conflict, and interaction) then are tested for each partitioned set. Throughout, the goal is to retain the generality and parsimony of status-field theory and to increase empirical correspondence. The findings support the utility of the partitioning procedure and confirm the relative importance of power in relations between states, also found in previous tests of the theory and in recent analyses of African foreign policy.

This article integrates the context and process of mediation in an exploration of the ways in which third parties may alter the parameters of a dispute in order to manage conflict. It does so through a focus on the role that mediation may play in fostering new norms of conflict management. Adopting an evolutionary approach to the development of norms in conflict systems, the study examines the strategies that may be employed by mediators to bring about normative change. A case study of the mediation activities of US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Middle East during the period 1973-76 confirms that Kissinger's mediation effort did foster conditions necessary for the creation of new norms. The case also confirms the presence of a number of discrete elements associated with the development of a new normative order to restrain conflict. These findings are important insofar as they suggest that Kissinger's contribution to the Arab-Israeli peace process was more than a short-term, tactical success. Indeed, the analysis suggests that mediation may accomplish more than a reordering of the preference structure of disputants. It may well promote and embed within a conflict system new kinds of behaviour that are not realized for a number of years but whose importance and potential extend well beyond the more limited success of the moment. This suggests, in turn, that we may have to reconceptualize our criteria for what constitutes success in international mediation and pay greater attention to the ways in which mediation can foster change in regional conflict systems.