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The United States has long represented one of Canada's primary international allies. This partnership has remained strong despite turbulent times in the relationship, such as the one brought forth by the Trump presidency. Our article seeks to understand the sources of such continuity through the lens of continentalism. While historical accounts of continentalism have portrayed it as a passive force stemming from Canada's material self-interest, scholars have recently identified the emergence of an evolved form of continentalism that represents a dominant idea and a coherent analytical framework in Canadian foreign policy. Has this new form of continentalism indeed gained widespread acceptance among Canadians? We answer this question by considering continentalism in the ideational realm. Using novel public opinion data, our analysis investigates whether continentalist attitudes have become embedded in Canadians' national identity and foster closer alignment preferences vis-à-vis the United States. We find significant and robust evidence of such effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic and policy debates on alliances are yet to incorporate insights from foreign policy analysis (FPA) literature. Generally, bilateral relations between allies are either analyzed with insights from traditional IR theories (such as realism) or with policy-oriented work that does not engage any scholarly literature (focusing on only the day-to-day issues of international politics). I argue that FPA theories that make linkages between scholarly work and policy-oriented questions in an evidence-based and analytical fashion are capable of accounting for the most significant policy questions of modern international politics. This article analyzes US–Turkey relations in, arguably, their worst decade, with a role theoretic outlook. I claim that despite being close political and military allies since the 1940s, US–Turkey bilateral relations are witnessing their worst decade since the Arab uprisings in the MENA, due mostly to ideational factors that shape foreign policy. The conflictual relations originate from a change in US and Turkish foreign policy-makers' role conceptualizations vis-à-vis their countries' roles in the MENA region after the Arab uprisings and the role conflict this has caused with one another. Misaligned interests during the Arab uprisings, especially after 2014 in the Syrian civil war, have exacerbated the bilateral ties further. Drawing insights from elite interviews conducted in Turkey (2014–2016), Washington DC, and Ankara (2018–2020), I explain the sources of conflict in US–Turkey relations with a role theory perspective and offer policy prescriptions in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Sino-African relations within the framework of comparative analysis of foreign policies. It offers a constructivist analysis of the diplomatic strategies of Niger and Burkina Faso in their relations with the PRC and Taïwan since the sixties. Drawing inspiration from an eclectic approach combining, on the one hand, agents and structures and, on the other, domestic and systemic factors, it explains the fluctuating strategies of diplomatic recognition of the two States with regard to the two "China" by the social construction of the national interest. The results corroborate the postulates of constructivism on the weight of ideas and contexts in the making of the national interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article finds that states can use street renaming as an act of retaliation against other international actors (states and international organizations). Specifically, it shows how states can employ street renaming to symbolically insult and thus diminish their opponent's sense of self. After situating the practice of retaliatory street renaming within the study of emotions in international relations (IR), and symbolic insults in diplomacy, in particular, the article surveys a multitude of cases in which states used street renaming to humiliate and defy other international actors. To further substantiate this thesis, the article then delves into one illustrative case: Israel's 1975 decision to rename all streets carrying the name of the United Nations 'Zionism Street' in response to UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which determined that 'Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination'. The article concludes by calling for more scholarly attention to street renaming and other symbolic acts in IR. La dénomination des rues comme insulte symbolique et gifle diplomatique en relations internationales [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper criticizes the epistemic foundations of democratic state-building, which are derived from a model of political transitions according to which liberal democratic institutions will transform a hitherto authoritarian and troubled country into a more prosperous and stable society and, therefore, foreign interventions to establish these institutions are realistic and worthy investments, provided they are properly planned based on knowledge of what has worked elsewhere. This expectation is based upon two epistemological premises. The first premise, linearity , is that social and institutional change exhibits identifiable input–output relations connecting socioeconomic conditions and outcomes. The second premise, ergodicity , is that these relations, inferred from past samples, provide reliable probabilistic projections about future outcomes, which can guide the focus of policy interventions. Drawing from the study of complex systems, the paper indicates why these two premises offer a flawed conception of political transitions and why radical and large-scale interventions, such as state-building, will tend to generate unintended consequences rather than the planned effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses second-wave feminist interventions in Canadian foreign policy debate with reference to two analytic streams: (1) political science and international relations (IR) perspectives since the late 1990s that stress the formal decisional aims of advocacy and the role of transnational networks in pressuring reluctant governments and (2) sociological approaches that underline movements' cultural as well as statist dimensions and the significance of their domestic political strategies. Examining engagement by the Voice of Women (VOW) in nuclear weapons debates and National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) in free trade controversies confirms sociological expectations of campaigners' varied claims and contributions and the importance of their political rootedness in Canada. Consistent with political science and IR arguments, the study finds NAC paid growing attention to international political opportunities in 1990 and following. The conclusion considers implications of the analysis and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do intellectual leaders of professional schools of international affairs, whose institutions primarily educate and train master's students for careers in government, the non-governmental sector, and the private sector, differ from academic administrators in disciplinary departments, whose primary raison d'être is producing the next generation of scholars whose primary task is to conduct basic research, in terms of how they see the academic enterprise and their expectations of faculty research and writing? The results of our recent survey of deans of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA), the leading professional body for international relations-oriented policy schools, and chairs of Top-50 political science departments, reveal some predictable differences but also some surprising overlap. Specifically, we find a clear convergence between disciplinary departments and APSIA schools on the core requirements for promotion and tenure: Peer-reviewed publications in high-impact scholarly journals and leading university presses. But rather than relax demands for other activities by their faculty as they hold them to the expectations of their disciplines, APSIA deans still expect significant policy and broader public engagement from them. In other words, policy schools' faculties face a greater array of professional demands than their disciplinary colleagues. APSIA schools simultaneously embrace the disciplinary criteria for excellence and still try to maintain a close policy focus as they seek to bridge the gap between these two worlds. How feasible this effort will turn out to be hinges on whether policy school faculty can indeed do it all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an alternative explanation for the processes by which foreign policy is made. It does so across three different countries, across different governments, across issues that had real "blood and treasure" at stake, across different domestic and international contexts, and while holding the target of policy, the United States, constant. Available theories argue that formal political institutions or norms determine who will influence the making of policy and how they will do so. However, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—countries with strikingly similar formal rules for making foreign policy—have been following, for decades, fundamentally different foreign policymaking processes, and they have been doing so without resorting to any normative justifications. The article contrasts the theoretical expectations of rational choice institutionalism and norm-based arguments on foreign policymaking with a logic of habit not captured by the logics of consequences or appropriateness of rational choice institutionalism and norm-based explanations. The article makes two contributions. First, it furthers the theoretical development of the concept of habit in international relations and offers a means of studying habits empirically. Second, it challenges the assumption that the power of domestic actors in foreign policy is a function of formal institutions or prevailing norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that efforts to strengthen the theoretical foundations for foreign policy analysis (FPA) should take as a vantage point the smallest social unit—the human being. It advocates far-reaching engagement with psychology and the life sciences for insights on the individual in the social context. Research on emotion, as a general human phenomenon and one that has been extensively researched across disciplines, is thought to offer a particularly promising conceptual lens on foreign policy. For cues on how to incorporate scientific findings with historical analysis and situate resulting hypotheses in relation to prevailing theoretical paradigms, the article draws on classical realism. Especially mid-twentieth century realists such as Hans Morgenthau expressed a nuanced conception of human agency and the interplay between emotion and cognition. Substantial aspects of their theories, based largely on experience and intuition, have been corroborated by recent scientific research. This review is structured around four central issues. These have been both the loci of much criticism levelled at classical realism and remain a challenge to IR as a whole: the levels of analysis problem, the "scaling up" of emotion, the classification and choice of emotion(s), and the accessibility of the political world to scientific method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1999, Canada participated in NATO's Operation Allied Force, a seventy- eight-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia meant to end the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians. Officially, Canada's interests in developing its foreign policy toward Kosovo were humanitarian and regional stability considerations. These were shared with the rest of its NATO allies. Thus, on the surface, it would seem that Canada and its NATO allies had similar concerns during the decision-making process around Kosovo. Digging deeper, an analysis of the primary sources available suggests that Canada did, in fact, have additional and unique considerations during the Kosovo crisis, namely national unity. This analysis amply illustrates the close interconnection between domestic issues and Canadian foreign policy. During the Kosovo War, Canada had to balance sovereignty sensitivities with humanitarian concerns. From the first time Kosovo was mentioned in Parliament on 18 November 1991 to the end of the Kosovo War on 11 June 1999, Canadian parliamentarians attempted to distinguish what Canada's views on Kosovo were. Historians have likewise been occupied with the same task: distinguishing the Canadian contribution and position. Like the parliamentarians, not one of the Canadian historians who has written on the topic has questioned the official government version of what motivated Canada's policy in Kosovo. They all credit a combination of humanitarian and regional concerns. Therefore, there was consensus at the time, and has been since, about what motivated Canada's policy toward Kosovo. However, an analysis of the primary sources reveals that Canada did in fact have an additional and unique consideration during the Kosovo crisis: national unity. Canada's domestic national unity issue influenced Canadian foreign policy toward Kosovo at every stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, several sociologists have moved beyond grand theories of international relations, and empirically examined the motivations of US foreign policy leading into the 21st century. This article discusses the work of three political sociologists who have examined US foreign policy from three prominent perspectives: Michael Mann, William Robinson, and Julian Go. Working from a neo-Weberian perspective, Mann highlights the rise of neoconservatism within the US government that has encouraged foreign expansion. From a neo-Marxist perspective, Robinson emphasizes the importance of transnational capitalist class interests, including the promotion of neoliberal policies, on US foreign policy. And working from a world-systems perspective, Go underscores how the US is a hegemon in decline attempting to regain its imperial footing through military aggression. While these researchers cover much ground and raise important questions, their perspectives also contain several blindspots that future work on issues of US foreign policy could address. Most importantly, these three theoretical perspectives have neglected the importance of ideology in making sense of contemporary US foreign policy, and this article argues that future work should more intensively examine how ideology influences foreign policymaking in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of the former Spanish Sahara has divided the international community for more than four decades. Morocco, in the name of historical rights, considers it a part of its territory. The Polisario, in the name of the self-determination of peoples, wishes to administer it. Mexico chose its side in 1979 by recognizing the SADR, an emanation of the Polisario, in the name of this same principle of self-determination. Through this article, we want to understand the historical and ideological reasons that push Mexico to this choice and force it to maintain it while its international role and its dominant ideology have changed for more than thirty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work analyzes a decisive moment in Brazilian foreign policy toward Africa to have occurred from 1974 to 1975, when the continent’s Portuguese colonies became independent. Beginning with the previous historical context characterized by Juscelino Kubistchek’s government’s approaches to Africa, but placing a special emphasis on the period of Independent Foreign Policy (PEI) launched during Jânio Quadros’ government and maintained by successor João Goulart, the article analyzes the foreign policy employed by the military governments of Castelo Branco, Costa e Silva and Médici, up to the Geisel period, when Brazil came to recognize former colonies as independent states, including Angola under the leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). This recognition is granted particular attention at the end of the article, due to the controversy generated at the time and that persists in Brazilian foreign policy 40 years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sociedade civil desempenha um papel cada vez mais importante na formulação da política externa nos países emergentes. Este artigo investiga se a opinião pública é sensível a efeitos de framing no que diz respeito à política externa. Através de um survey experimental aplicado a uma amostra de 1530 estudantes na Universidad de Buenos Aires e na Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda, descobrimos que os participantes são sensíveis a efeitos de framing em temas de política exterior. Os entrevistados mudaram suas preferências quando foram estimulados com informações sobre o crescimento econômico brasileiro e os gastos militares de forma comparada com a Argentina. Por sua vez, esse efeito foi ainda mais pronunciado entre a) pessoas que tendem a se informar menos sobre assuntos internacionais e b) entre indivíduos mais nacionalistas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Le Japon, l'Australie et la Corée du Sud, les trois plus proches alliés des États-Unis en Asie-Pacifique réagissent tous différemment à la modernisation de l'Armée populaire de libération, selon la situation de sécurité immédiate propre à chacun. Au Japon, plus directement affecté par les opérations de la marine de l'APL et des autres forces militaires chinoises, la réaction est la plus directe : une augmentation des investissements dans les capacités maritimes et de surveillance ainsi qu'une coopération plus étroite avec les États-Unis et les autres partenaires de même sensibilité dans la région. Pour Canberra, la menace chinoise est encore lointaine mais, même en Australie, la portée et les actions de l'APL inquiètent, menant à des projets d'augmentation des forces militaires et à encourager le déploiement permanent de troupes américaines. Enfin, en Corée du Sud, la République populaire démocratique de Corée reste la première menace, bien que le récent soutien sans faille de la Chine à Pyongyang ait mené à des débats sur la nécessité ou non de redéfinir une stratégie de sécurité datant de plusieurs décennies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growing pressure on foreign policy-makers in Canada and other societies to pay more attention to religion as they study international relations, formulate policies, conduct diplomacy, and deliver programs abroad. This pressure is multifaceted and has both domestic and international sources. Yet, for a variety of reasons, 'negotiating the religious dimension' abroad carries important caveats. The purpose of this paper is to review the rationale for including religion in the policy process and to work through some of the methodological and normative challenges this endeavour represents for scholars and practitioners. It argues for a modest facilitative approach to creating safe and inclusive forums within which ideas with religious dimensions could be broached and contested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dans cet article, l’auteur étudie la façon dont se sont comportés les Européens lors de la crise irakienne et, dans ce contexte, cherche à cerner les contours d’une éventuelle identité européenne. En 2002/2003, le conflit a agi comme un révélateur et a laissé apparaître d’importantes convergences dans la manière dont les opinions publiques européennes ont appréhendé la question de l’intervention militaire, le rapport aux Etats‐Unis et le rôle de l’Union européenne sur la scène internationale. On ne peut certes avancer que les Européens se caractérisent par une culture diplomatique et stratégique commune, d’une part parce que les élites politiques ont pris des positions opposées, d’autre part parce que la période étudiée est trop brève pour en juger. Cependant, si l’on se réfère à un sentiment minimal d’appartenance commun et au partage de critères d’interprétation identiques, il semble qu’on puisse identifier en Europe les éléments d’une sphère publique en voie d’émergence. In this article the author examines the Europeans’ behaviour during the Iraq crisis and attempts to sketch European identity in this context. The conflict of 2002/2003 revealed how European public opinion apprehended the question of military intervention, relations to the United States and the role of the European Union on an international scale. It certainly can not be affirmed that Europeans are united in diplomatic and strategic policies, as, on the one hand, the political elite was at odds with itself and as, on the other, too short a period of time was analyzed in the article to be conclusive on this issue. However, elements of an emerging European public sphere can be discerned when referring to a minimal spirit of togetherness and to the sharing of identical criteria of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]