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The debate over economic globalization has reached a fever pitch in the past decade and a half with Western governments and multinational corporations trumpeting its virtues and a multitude of activists and developing-world citizens vociferously denouncing it. Both sides would agree that globalization is a recent development that is changing the way people and nations do business, but in Globalization Unplugged, Peter Urmetzer questions whether national economies are losing their sovereignty and whether the topic of globalization merits as much discussion as it receives. Urmetzer's focus is specifically on Canada and he demonstrates that current levels of trade are not unprecedented and, fur...
Energy has been an important element in Moscow’s quest to exert power and influence in its surrounding areas both before and after the collapse of the USSR. With their political independence in 1991, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania also became, virtually overnight, separate energy-poor entities heavily dependent on Russia. This increasingly costly dependency – and elites’ scrambling over associated profits – came to crucially affect not only relations with Russia, but the very nature of post-independence state building. The Politics of Energy Dependency explores why these states were unable to move towards energy diversification. Through extensive field research using previously unta...
The Cold War claimed many lives and inflicted tremendous psychological pain throughout the Americas. The extreme polarization that resulted from pitting capitalism against communism held most of the creative and productive energy of the twentieth century captive. Many artists responded to Cold War struggles by engaging in activist art practice, using creative expression to mobilize social change. The Art of Solidarity examines how these creative practices in the arts and culture contributed to transnational solidarity campaigns that connected people across the Americas from the early twentieth century through the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. This collection of original essays is div...
Biotechnology has become one of the most important issues in public policy and governance, altering the boundaries between the public and the private, the economic and the social, and further complicating the divide between what is scientifically possible and ethically preferred. Given the importance of biotechnology in shaping relations between the state, science, the economy, and the citizenry, a book that explores the Canadian biotechnology regime and its place in our democracy is timelier than ever. Three Bio-Realms provides the first integrated examination of the thirty-year story of the democratic governance of biotechnology in Canada. G. Bruce Doern and Michael J. Prince, two recognized specialists in governance innovation and social policy, look at particular 'network-based' factors that seek to promote and to regulate biotechnology inside the state as well as at broader levels. Unmatched by any other book in its historical scope and range, Three Bio-Realms is sure to be read for years to come.
Why do some governments try to limit immigrants' access to social benefits and entitlements while others do not? Through an in-depth study of Sweden, Canada, and the Netherlands, Immigration and the Politics of Welfare Exclusion maps the politics of immigrants' social rights in Western democracies. To achieve this goal, Edward A. Koning analyzes policy documents, public opinion surveys, data on welfare use, parliamentary debates, and interviews with politicians and key players in the three countries. Koning's findings are three-fold. First, the politics of immigrant welfare exclusion have little to do with economic factors and are more about general opposition to immigration and multicultura...
Can North America survive as a region in light of the political turbulence provoked by the global economic crisis? Or have regional integration and collaboration reached a plateau beyond which disintegration is likely? In North America in Question, leading analysts from Canada, the United States, and Mexico provide theoretically innovative and rich empirical reflections on current challenges sweeping the continent and on the faltering political support for North American regionalism. This collection begins by reviewing the recent trajectories and events that have undermined North America's trilateral relationship, then addresses concerns that go beyond NAFTA and economic issues, including labour, immigration, energy, the environment, quality of citizenship, borders, women's and civil society struggles, and democratic deficits. Although demonstrating that many informal dimensions of North American integration continue to flourish, the contributors assess whether the future will hold greater economic instability, security crises, and emerging bilateral relationships.
"This expanded and updated edition of Canadian Natural Resource and Environmental Policy examines policy making in one of the most significant areas of activity in the Canadian economy - natural resources and the environment. It discusses the evolution of resource policies from the early era of exploitation to the present era of resource and environmental management, including the Kyoto Protocol. Using an integrated political economy and policy perspective, the book provides an analytic framework through which ideological perspectives, administrative structures, and substantive issues are explored." --Résumé de l'éditeur.
For more than three decades, the fate of British Columbia’s old-growth forests has been a major source of political strife. While more than 5 million hectares of wood were being clearcut, the BC wilderness movement and forest industry supporters clashed, as they continue to do, both pressing their arguments in a variety of forums, ranging from television studios and logging road blockades to royal commission hearings and cabinet ministers’ offices. The resulting record of conflict confirms American historian Paul Hirt’s characterization of forest policy as "party an ideological issue, partly biological, partly economic, partly technical, and wholly political." Talk and Log is a compreh...
This pioneering collection offers a comprehensive investigation into how to study public policy in Latin America. While this region exhibits many similarities with the North American and European countries that have traditionally served as sources for generating public policy knowledge, Latin American countries are also different in many fundamental ways. As such, existing policy concepts and frameworks may not always be the most effective tools of analysis for this unique region. To fill this gap, Comparative Public Policy in Latin America offers guidelines for refining current theories to suit Latin America's contemporary institutional and socio-economic realities. The contributors accomplish this task by identifying the features of the region that shape public policy, including informal norms and practices, social inequality, and weak institutions. This book promises to become the definitive work on contemporary public policy in Latin America, essential for those who study the area as well as comparative public policy more broadly.
Why do Canadians vote the way they do? The primary objective of the ongoing Canadian Election Studies (CES) has been to investigate that question. After more than four decades of gathering and analyzing data, principal investigators of the CES come together in this volume to document the history of these surveys and consider their future. This wide-ranging collection of essays provides useful background and insights on the relevance of the CES, and lends perspective to the debate about where to steer the CES in the years ahead. Contributors outline how the CES project began and how far it has come, assess the quantity and types of data that have been collected, and explore the theoretical and methodological developments that have been involved. Looking toward the future, the book highlights the challenges that lie ahead and provides suggestions for change.