Canadian Foreign Policy from the roaring 1990s
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702017709245 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
Canadian Foreign Policy
from the roaring 1990s
Bessma Momani
Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
As a field of study, Canadian Foreign Policy has undergone dramatic changes over the
last three decades, becoming disconnected from debates about our identity and values
and more focused on Canadian foreign and defence policy. This transition in Canadian
Foreign Policy reflects the changing priorities of successive Canadian governments and
structural shifts in Canadian academia. Yet, such change has unfolded gradually and
incrementally, such that key challenges remain for scholars interested in working, pre-
senting, and publishing in Canadian Foreign Policy. Using my own experiences as a
student and teacher of foreign policy in Canada, I reflect on these transformations
within Canadian Foreign Policy and their implications, beginning with the ‘‘golden
age’’ of Canadian Foreign Policy during the 1990s to its decline under the Harper
government and, finally, to our current climate of fragmented academic and professional
research. In the current climate, participating in traditional and ‘‘new’’ social media
places professional incentives (namely, tenure and promotionvia peer-reviewed outlets)
in tension with emerging opportunities to engage in more open critical analysis of
Canadian Foreign Policy.
Keywords
Canadian Foreign Policy, CFP, academia, professional research, Harper government,
defence policy, Bill C51, traditional media, social media
Participation in the Generations project has encouraged me to reflect on some pol-
itical and academic trends that I hadn’t recognized. Over the last 30 years, Canadian
Foreign Policy (CFP) as a field of study has gone through dramatic changes, but
these have unfolded so gradually and unobtrusively that I had hardly noticed them.
And I think this is probably true for a number of scholars who study foreign policy
International Journal
2017, Vol. 72(2) 192–202
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702017709245
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Corresponding author:
Bessma Momani, University of Waterloo, Department of Political Science, 200 University Avenue,
Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
Email: bmomani@uwaterloo.ca
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