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Best Practices

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 September 2008
AuthorPetra Dolata-Kreutzkamp,Veronica Kitchen
DOI10.1177/002070200806300305
Published date01 September 2008
Subject MatterCanada-Germany RelationEssays in Honour of Robert Spencer
Implicitly and explicitly, Canadians and Germans look to each other for best
practices and lessons learned about politics and policy on such varied topics
as approaches to federalism, electoral reform, environmental protection, wel-
fare state reform, education, and immigration and integration. Comparisons
of Canadian and German practices provide alternative metrics by which to
evaluate the success or failure of various policy alternatives. Sometimes
studying how another country—one that shares some institutional and nor-
mative characteristics—deals with similar challenges can prompt us to pose
different questions or arrive at illuminating solutions.
Some of our policies have become so ingrained as to become part of po-
litical culture. An outsider’s view of our political culture can force us to reflect
on practices we might not otherwise have consciously considered. The two
pieces in this section fall into that category of comparison. After spending
long periods of time as journalists-in-residence in the opposite country, Lars
von Törne and Andrew Cohen offer outsiders’perspectives on, respectively,
the Canadian policy of multiculturalism and the German habit of memori-
alisation. Von Törne takes an idea—multiculturalism—that has a taken-for-
granted meaning in each country. The comparison reminds Germans that
multiculturalism can be a complex set of policies, rather than a simple by-
| International Journal | Summer 2008 | 545 |
Petra Dolata-Kreutzkamp &
Veronica Kitchen
Best practices

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