Does Politics Stop at the Water's Edge in Canada?

Abstract

Do political parties matter when it comes to Canadian foreign policy? Conventional wisdom says they do. We often hear the argument that some past decision would not have been made if only another had been in power, or that some current policy is likely to be overturned as soon as another comes into power. The parties themselves have worked hard to encourage this way of thinking, playing up the coherence and continuity of foreign policy priorities within parties and the supposedly stark differences between them. Yet there are some enduring patterns in Canadian foreign policy that seem to over-ride differences. Governing parties sometimes pursue policies that seem starkly at odds with what they have told us about their purposes and priorities. And while Canadians seem to have strong feelings about parties' foreign policy choices, opinion polls suggest that foreign policy issues usually have little to do with most Canadians' voting decisions. In fact there are a number of reasons why we might expect political parties to matter very little in Canada, perhaps even less than in other comparable countries. How do we reconcile these apparent discrepancies? When and how does make a difference?Much has been written about the question of parties and foreign policy in Canada, but most of it takes the form of a passing reference here or there, never really explained or supported. We still do not yet have any sustained efforts to think about the question theoretically, or to try to answer the question systematically (as opposed to anecdotally) . This is particularly striking in the textbooks on Canadian foreign policy. Most of them have paid at least some attention to the role of parliament - or, in most accounts, the non -role of parliament - in foreign policymaking. But their concern is with the relationship between the prime minister and parliament as an institution, or between the cabinet and parliament in general terms, and they refer to parties and partisanship only incidentally.1 Kim Richard Nossal' s landmark The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy - which, as the title suggests, is specifically concerned with the political institutions and processes that bring about foreign policy decisions - covers political parties in about three pages.2 Nossal concludes that parties generally have not been important, mostly because of the broad consensus between the two major parties on foreign policy issues during the Cold War.3 This is probably correct, and might still be true even after the end of the Cold War. But even where there is broad agreement on foreign policy goals, there can still be important disagreements about how to pursue them, and these differences over means and details could still leave plenty of room for parties and partisanship to play a pivotal role in foreign policymaking.The question of parties and partisanship deserves more attention than it has received so far, whether we ultimately decide that parties are important or not. If parties and partisanship do matter, then we need to say more about when, why, and how, in much the same way that we would want to assess and explain the role of interest groups, the bureaucracy, or the news media. If parties don't matter, or matter very little, then that would seem to be important in itself, if for no other reason than the possible negative implications for Canadian democracy.4Before we can get started on answering the question, we need to untangle some of the different ways in which we might say that party matters. It might be that the major parties have consistently had different priorities when it comes to foreign policy, and that these different priorities have more or less consistently translated into different policies. It might be that the major parties do not have consistent priorities, but that their efforts to outmaneuver one another in the electoral game have shaped their positions on various foreign policy issues, which are sometimes translated into effects on actual policy outcomes. …