Parties and Partisanship in Canadian Defence Policy
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Author | Brian Bow |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400105 |
| Subject Matter | Political Parties & Foreign Policy |
Brian Bow
Parties and
partisanship in
Canadian
defence policy
| International Journal | Winter 2008-09 | 67 |
On the face of it, defence and security policy would seem to be the aspects of
Canadian foreign policy to which parties and partisanship would matter least
of all. Policymakers may play the game of pa rty politics when it comes to
trade or the environment, but in the realm of “high politics”—where the
survival of the state is at stake—we expect them to set politicking aside and
take their cues from the clashing of forces “out there” in the wider world.
And since in this anarchic realm, as Thucydides said, “the strong get what
they can, and the weak accept what they must,” we expect policymakers in a
comparatively small state like Canada to have few real choices to make, at
least o n issues th at are import ant to the major powers. This global -scale
structural constraint is reinforced, moreover, by Canad a’s profound
dependence on the United States, both for its security and its prosperity. Yet
while Canadian policymakers are tightly hemmed in by external constraints,
Brian Bow is assistant professor of political science at Dalhousie University. He would like
to thank, for helpful criticism and suggestions, Adam Chapnick and the audiences for two
presentations of draft versions of this paper: at the 2008 International Studies Association
conference and at a talk hosted by the Liu Institute for Global Issues at University of British
Columbia. Any errors are the author’s own.
| Brian Bow |
| 68 | Winter 2008-09 | International Journal |
they face few obstacles at home. Th e virtual absence of direct thr eats to
Canada means that the public generally pays little attention to defence policy
issues, and the parliamentary system mean s that the governing party is
usually in a position to push through with its policy agenda without worrying
too much about domestic political opposition.
This juxtaposition of external constraint and domestic permissiveness
helps to explain why party differences seem to have little effect on policy
outcomes when it comes to long-term priority-setting (as reflected, for
example, in patterns of defence spending), or where direct, tangible security
considerations are clearly at stake, but do seem to make a difference where
the policy in question is important primarily in terms of symbolic cues for
domestic audiences.
The argument here is that party differences cannot be reliably used to
predict the “direction” of Canadian defence policy, but there are ways in
which they may help us to understand policy outcomes in particular
episodes. Some asp ects of Canada’s defence and security poli cies are
essentially carved in stone by the country’s place in the world (both
geographically and politically), and there are therefore some important
continuities that run through the policies of both Liberal and Conservative
governments. Other aspects of defence and security policy
have
changed over
time, and in some cases these changes have coincided with changes in
government. But these changes tend to be smaller than we might think, or,
where there have been genuinely significant changes, those changes are
usually better explained by altered political circumstances, either in the
international context or in the domestic political arena.
In looking at specific defence policy decisions, there are two kinds of
cases in which party seems to matter. Th ere are cases where the part y in
power seems to make a direct and relatively clear-cut difference to the policy
chosen, but these tend to be where the US is relatively disinterested or the
national security implications of the policy choice are indirect or ambiguous.
And there are cases where the party in power seems to matter, even where
the stakes are high, but these all tend to be cases where the effect of party or
partisanship is
indirect
—that is, the fact of the governi ng party’s power
having created an opportunity for certain “policy entrepreneurs” or interest
groups to influence the policy agenda. In these cases, however, the influence
of these actors seems to be genuinely exceptional, in the sense that their
goals or strategies are not widely shared within the party itself. It therefore
seems that it is these exceptional individuals or coalitions—and not parties
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