Review: Harper's Team
| Published date | 01 June 2008 |
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| Author | Peter Woolstencroft |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300218 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Spring 2008 | 487 |
| Reviews |
Another thing Byers has in common with his political opponents on the
right is an idealized view of Canada’s place in the world.
Intent for a Nation
fits into a pattern of polemical treatises by writers such as J.L. Granatstein
and Andrew Cohen, which hark back to a mythical era of Canadian greatness
and lament Canada’s loss of global influence. But here again we confront a
fundamental contradiction, for while Byers (like Granatstein—albeit for very
different reasons) claims that Canada has a fine diplomatic heritage, he also
lists a large succession of policy failings spread over many decades that to-
gether suggest an entirely different picture. The relentless criticism makes
one wonder how the fervent idealism can be justified.
The result of these contradictions is that
Intent for a Nation
probably
succeeds rather better at the first objective noted above than at the second.
It is more likely to appeal to those who already agree with what it says than
to those who might be willing to be converted. This is a shame, as there is a
pressing need for a new coherent and convincing foreign policy vision for
Canada. Michael Byers’ work will help contribute to that but on its own does
not provide it.
Paul Robinson/University of Ottawa
HARPER’S TEAM
Behind The Scenes In The Conservative Rise To Power
Tom Flanagan
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007. 326pp,
$34.95 cloth (ISBN 978-0-7735-3298-4)
Elections leading to change often produce many books, but the 2006 Cana-
dian federal election was exceptional. To date, eight books have been pub-
lished accounting in some measure for the Conservative party’s accession to
government, albeit with a minority. Tom Flanagan’s book is uncommonly in-
teresting in that he writes as both a central insider and a leading political sci-
entist. Flanagan, on the one hand, references Edmund Burke, Aristotle,
Friedrich Hayek, the “median voter theorem,”and academic election studies;
on the other, he discusses the highs and lows of campaigns, the panoply of
events, people and committees, and the mundane (how many buses does a
party need to campaign in the prairies?).
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