When socialization fails: breaking the habit of engagement with China

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Abstract Why do states sustain failing policy? The literature on path dependency and cognitive habits shows how foreign policy logics become axiomatic. Yet these explanations focus too much on people and not enough on policies. We argue that the content of policies matters for the degree and depth of their entrenchment. Policies with long-term time horizons, immeasurable objectives and diffuse effects are especially vulnerable to stasis. Engagement policies toward China are a paradigmatic example. We focus on Canada's engagement policy, which exhibits both stasis and change, and refer to similar policies of other countries. Drawing on primary evidence including interviews with high-level diplomats and decision-makers, we find that engagement aimed at socializing China was sustained despite growing evidence of its failure—including through a multi-year diplomatic crisis. Change only became possible through ‘institutionalized debate’, meaning the purposeful creation of formal channels for debate. The article makes three contributions. First, we identify a novel explanation of stasis, showing that the content of policies matters. Second, we introduce a practical pathway—institutionalized debate—that can disrupt stasis once a policy logic is habituated. Finally, we identify an aspect of socialization ignored in the literature: when operationalized as policy, it becomes resistant to reversal.