Political Science

Taxes connect us to one another, to the common good, and to the future. This is a book about taxes: who pays what and who gets what. More than that, it’s about the role of government, about citizenship and our collective well-being, about the Canada we want. The contributors, leading Canadian practitioners and scholars, explore how taxes have become a political “no-go zone” and how changes in taxation are changing Canada. They challenge the view that any tax is a bad tax and provide broad directions for fairer and smarter approaches.
This is a book that will be of interest to anyone concerned with public policy and public affairs, economics, and political science and to anyone interested in challenging the conventional wisdom that lower taxes and smaller government are the cures to what ails us.

Strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) involves lawsuits brought by individuals, corporations, groups, or politicians to curtail political activism and expression. An increasingly large part of the political landscape in Canada, they are often launched against those protesting, boycotting, or participating in some form of political activism.


A common feature of SLAPPs is that their intention is rarely to win the case or secure a remedy; rather, the suit is brought to create a chill on political expression. Blocking Public Participation examines the different types of litigation and causes of action that frequently form the basis of SLAPPs, and how these lawsuits transform political disputes into legal cases, thereby blocking political engagement. The resource imbalance between plaintiffs and defendants allows plaintiffs to tie up defendants in complex and costly legal processes. The book also examines the dangers SLAPPs pose to political expression and to the quality and integrity of our democratic political institutions. Finally, the book examines the need to regulate SLAPPs in Canada and assesses various regulatory proposals.
In Canada, considerable attention has been paid to the “legalization of politics” and the impact on the Charter in diverting political activism into the judicial arena. SLAPPs, however, are an under-studied element of this process, and in their obstruction of political engagement through recourse to the courts they have profound implications for democratic practice.

The Responsibility to Protect, the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), focused on three international responsibilities in the area of human security: the responsibility to prevent, the responsibility to react, and the responsibility to rebuild. The report acknowledged the difficulty of identifying countries likely to experience widespread civil violence and then predicting when this would occur. But the authors of this book submit that if ever a case of a “responsibly to prevent” was possible to anticipate, South Sudan was it.
A Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended the Sudanese second civil war in 2005 with a call for a referendum to be held in South Sudan in 2011 to determine the region’s future, In the event, an overwhelming majority voted for independence for the region. The question that motivated this book is whether the CPA would set in motion a process resulting in yet another brutal conflict, and, if that conflict was widely predicted, what should be the response of the international community in terms of “responsibility to prevent”?
Mass media coverage has been identified as an important factor in mobilizing the international community into action in crisis and potential crisis situations; however, the impact of media reporting on actual decision-making is unclear. Thirty-plus years of research has demonstrated consistent agenda-setting effects, while a more recent stream of research has confirmed significant framing effects, the latter most likely to occur in cases where advocacy framing is used. This book examines the way in which the press in Canada and the United States interpreted the potential for violence that accompanied South Sudan’s independence in 2011, and whether or not their governments had a responsibility to prevent.

It is possible to eliminate death and serious injury from Canada’s roads. In other jurisdictions, the European Union, centres in the United States, and at least one automotive company aim to achieve comparable results as early as 2020. In Canada, though, citizens must turn their thinking on its head and make road safety a national priority.
Since the motor vehicle first went into mass production, the driver has taken most of the blame for its failures. In a world where each person’s safety is dependent on a system in which millions of drivers must drive perfectly over billions of hours behind the wheel, failure on a massive scale has been the result. When we neglect the central role of the motor vehicle as a dangerous consumer product, the result is one of the largest human-made means for physically assaulting human beings. It is time for Canadians to embrace internationally recognized ways of thinking and enter an era in which the motor vehicle by-product of human carnage is relegated to history.
No Accident examines problems related to road safety and makes recommendations for the way forward. Topics include types of drivers; human-related driving errors related to fatigue, speed, alcohol, and distraction and roads; pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit; road engineering; motor vehicle regulation; auto safety design; and collision-avoidance technologies such as radar and camera-based sensors on vehicles that prevent crashes. This multi-disciplinary study demystifies the world of road safety and provides a road map for the next twenty years.

The global food crisis is a stark reminder of the fragility of the global food system. The Global Food Crisis: Governance Challenges and Opportunities captures the debate about how to go forward and examines the implications of the crisis for food security in the world’s poorest countries, both for the global environment and for the global rules and institutions that govern food and agriculture.

In this volume, policy-makers and scholars assess the causes and consequences of the most recent food price volatility and examine the associated governance challenges and opportunities, including short-term emergency responses, the ecological dimensions of the crisis, and the longer-term goal of building sustainable global food systems. The recommendations include vastly increasing public investment in small-farm agriculture; reforming global food aid and food research institutions; establishing fairer international agricultural trade rules; promoting sustainable agricultural methods; placing agriculture higher on the post-Kyoto climate change agenda; revamping biofuel policies; and enhancing international agricultural policy-making.

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Canada and the Middle East: In Theory and Practice provides a unique perspective on one of the world’s most geopolitically important regions. From the perspective of Canada’s diplomats, academics, and former policy practitioners involved in the region, the book offers an overview of Canada’s relationship with the Middle East and the challenges Canada faces there. The contributors examine Canada’s efforts to promote its interests and values—peace building, peacekeeping, multiculturalism, and multilateralism, for example—and investigate the views of interested communities on Canada’s relations with countries of the Middle East.
Canada and the Middle East will be useful to academics and students studying the Middle East, Canadian foreign policy, and international relations. It will also serve as a primer for Canadian companies investing in the Middle East and a helpful reference for Canada’s foreign service and journalists stationed abroad by providing a background to Canadas interestsand role in the region.
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

With nearly 600 cross-referenced entries, The Language of Canadian Politics offers brief essays on the many facets of the Canadian political system, including institutions, events, laws, concepts, and public policies. Concisely written, it is an important resource for people interested in contemporary politics, as well as those interested in the historic context of contemporary political behaviour. Readers not familiar with Canadian government and politics will find the book an invaluable introduction; others will welcome this updated indispensable reference.
The fourth edition builds on the strengths of earlier editions. Almost every entry has been revised to reflect contemporary Canadian political events, and many new ones have been added. The results and immediate aftermath of the 2006 federal election are included in various updated entries. There are entries on the merged Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties as well as new entries on the Anti-Terrorist Act, the Public Safety Act, and the Council of the Federation. The Sponsorship Scandal and the Gomery reports are included in several entries. There is new information on National Security Certificates, and the O’Connor inquiry into the "extraordinary rendition" of Maher Arar comprises part of the revised material on commissions of inquiry. As a further resource, Internet sites have been added to many of the entries.

Many have questioned the wisdom of the international intervention in Afghanistan in light of the escalation of violence and instability in the country in the past few years. Particularly uncertain are Canadians, who have been inundated with media coverage of an increasingly dirty war in southern Afghanistan, one in which Canadians are at the frontline and suffering heavy casualties. However, the conflict is only one aspect of Afghanistan’s complicated, and incomplete, political, economic, and security transition.

In Afghanistan: Transition under Threat, leading Afghanistan scholars and practitioners paint a full picture of the situation in Afghanistan and the impact of international and particularly Canadian assistance. They review the achievements of the reconstruction process and outline future challenges, focusing on key issues like the narcotics trade, the Pakistan—Afghanistan bilateral relationship, the Taliban-led insurgency, and continuing endemic poverty. This collection provides new insight into the nature and state of Afghanistan’s post-conflict transition and illustrates the consequences of failure.

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

The Fence and the Bridge is about the development of the Canada-US border-security relationship as an outgrowth of the much lengthier Canada-US relationship. It suggests that this relationship has been both highly reflexive and hegemonic over time, and that such realities are embodied in the metaphorical images and texts that describe the Canada-US border over its history.
Nicol argues that prominent security motifs, such as themes of free trade, illegal immigration, cross-border crime, terrorism, and territorial sovereignty are not new, nor are they limited to the post-9/11 era. They have developed and evolved at different times and become part of a larger quilt, whose patches are stitched together to create a new fabric and design.
Each of the security motifs that now characterize Canada-US border perceptions and relations has a precedent in border-management strategies and border relations in earlier periods. In some cases, these have deep historical roots that date back not just years or decades but centuries. They are part of an evolving North American geopolitical logic that inscribes how borders are perceived, how they function, and what they mean.

The book focuses on the International Development Research Centre as a unique institution that has funded research in the developing South—research proposed and undertaken by Southern researchers—and how, as a result, it has had tremendous impact despite a relatively small budget. The IDRC is much better known in the developing South than in Canada; in many of the roughly 150 countries in which it has provided research funding it has contributed to creating a very positive image of Canada. The centre’s arms-length relationship with Canadian government assistance provides it with enormous freedom and flexibility—it was established in 1970 with its own act under the Trudeau government. The IDRC board is one-half international and one-half Canadian and is the only governmental agency in the world that has this structure, giving them unique insight into Southern development issues.
One of the IDRC’s founding principles was its insistence on having Southern researchers decide which projects would be put forward for possible funding, and much care has been taken to avoid “research imperialism” or “colonialism.” An analysis of the path less travelled, but which IDRC found amenable, is fundamental to this history of the centre, and the book highlights the decisions, ideas, and practices that flow from this basic premise.

Africa’s Deadliest Conflict deals with the complex intersection of the legacy of post-colonial history—a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions—and changing norms of international intervention associated with the idea of human security and the responsibility to protect (R2P). It attempts to explain why, despite a softening of norms related to the sanctity of state sovereignty, the international community dealt so ineffectively with a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which between 1997 and 2011 claimed an estimated 5.5 million. In particular, the book focuses on the role of mass media in creating a will to intervene, a role considered by many to be the key to prodding a reluctant international community to action.

Included in the book are a primer on Congolese history, a review of United Nations peacekeeping missions in the Congo, and a detailed examination of both US television news and New York Times coverage of the Congo from 1997 through 2008. Separate conclusions are offered with respect to peacekeeping in the Age of R2P and on the role of mass media in both promoting and inhibiting robust international responses to large-scale humanitarian crises.

How can bitter enemies who have inflicted unspeakable acts of cruelty on each other live together in peace?
At a time in history when most organized violence consists of civil wars and when nations resort to genocidal policies, when horrendous numbers of civilians have been murdered, raped, or expelled from their homes, this book explores the possibility of forgiveness.
The contributors to this book draw upon the insights of history, political science, philosophy, and psychology to examine the trauma left in the wake of such actions, using, as examples, numerous case studies from the Holocaust, Russia, Cambodia, Guatemala, South Africa, and even Canada. They consider the fundamental psychological and philosophical issues that have to be confronted, offer insights about measures that can be taken to facilitate healing, and summarize what has been learned from previous struggles.
Dilemmas of Reconciliation is a pioneering effort that explores the extraordinary challenges that must be faced in the aftermath of genocide or barbarous civil wars. How these challenges of reconciliation are faced and resolved will affect not only the victims’ ability to go on with their lives but will impact regional stability and, ultimately, world peace.

After decades of extraordinary successes as a multicultural society, new debates are bubbling to the surface in Canada. The contributors to this volume examine the conflict between equality rights, as embedded in the Charter, and multiculturalism as policy and practice, and ask which charter value should trump which and under what circumstances? The opening essay deliberately sharpens the conflict among religion, culture, and equality rights and proposes to shift some of the existing boundaries. Other contributors disagree strongly, arguing that this position might seek to limit freedoms in the name of justice, that the problem is badly framed, or that silence is a virtue in rebalancing norms. The contributors not only debate the analytic arguments but infuse their discussion with their personal experiences, which have shaped their perspectives on multiculturalism in Canada. This volume is a highly personal as well as strongly analytic discussion of multiculturalism in Canada today.

Two high-level commissions—the Sutherland report in 2004, and the Warwick Commission report in 2007—addressed the future of the World Trade Organization and made proposals for incremental reform. This book goes further; it explains why institutional reform of the WTO is needed at this critical juncture in world history and provides innovative, practical proposals for modernizing the WTO to enable it to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. Contributors focus on five critical areas: transparency, decision- and rule-making procedures, internal management structures, participation by non-governmental organizations and civil society, and relationships with regional trade agreements.

Co-published with the International Development Research Centre and the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Public concern about inequitable economic globalization has revealed the demand for citizen participation in global decision making. Civil society organizations have taken up the challenge, holding governments and corporations accountable for their decisions and actions, and developing collaborative solutions to the dominant problems of our time. Critical Mass: The Emergence of Global Civil Society offers a unique mixture of experience and analysis by the leaders of some of the most influential global civil society organizations and respected academics who specialize in this field of study.

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Can good governance be exported? International development assistance is more frequently being applied to strengthening governance in developing countries, and in Exporting Good Governance: Temptations and Challenges in Canada’s Aid Program, the editors bring together diverse perspectives to investigate whether aid for good governance works. The first section of the book outlines the changing face of international development assistance and ideas of good governance. The second section analyzes six nations: three are countries to which Canada has devoted a significant portion of its aid efforts over the past five to ten years: Ghana, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. Two are newer and more complex “fragile states,” where Canada has engaged: Haiti and Afghanistan. These five are then compared with Mauritius, which has enjoyed relatively good governance. The final section looks at challenges and new directions for Canadas development policy.
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

From Civil Strife to Peace Building examines peace-building efforts in the fragile West African states of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire, with a focus on the role of the private sector in leading the reconstruction initiatives. Given that aid and debt relief, the traditional remedies for dependency and underdevelopment, have not been effective, the private sector is increasingly viewed as a major player in the revival of regional economies. Private sector support, however, requires government intervention to improve investment climates, curb corruption, strengthen the security sector, and reduce the cost of doing business.

The contributors discuss ways in which West African governments can encourage the greater involvement of business in humanitarian support with incentives that demonstrate alignment with business objectives and profit margins, making humanitarian support simple and, more importantly, profitable and sustainable for both local and foreign investors.

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

The early twenty-first century has seen the beginning of a considerable shift in the global balance of power. Major international governance challenges can no longer be addressed without the ongoing co-operation of the large countries of the global South. Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN states, and Mexico wield great influence in the macro-economic foundations upon which rest the global political economy and institutional architecture. It remains to be seen how the size of the emerging powers translates into the ability to shape the international system to their own will.
In this book, leading international relations experts examine the positions and roles of key emerging countries in the potential transformation of the G8 and the prospects for their deeper engagement in international governance. The essays consider a number of overlapping perspectives on the G8 Heiligendamm Process, a co-operation agreement that originated from the 2007 summit, and offer an in-depth look at the challenges and promises presented by the rise of the emerging powers.
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Despite two centuries and three major reform movements, mental patients have remained on the outside of the mainstream of society, often living in poverty and violence. Today we are undergoing yet another period of reform and, in a historical first, ex-mental patients, now calling themselves consumers and psychiatric survivors, have been recruited in record numbers by the Ontario government to participate in the change process.
A Fragile Revolution investigates the complex relationship between ex-mental patients, the government, the mental health system, and mental health professionals. It also explores how the recent changes in policy have affected that relationship, creating new tensions and new opportunities.
Using qualitative interviews with prominent consumer and survivor activists, Everett examines how consumers and survivors define themselves, how they define mental illness, and how their personal experience has been translated into political action.
While it is clear that consumers and survivors have affected the rhetoric of reform, they know that words do not equal action. As they struggle to develop their own separate advocacy agenda, they acknowledge that theirs is a fragile revolution, but one that is here to stay.

In the post-NAFTA era, Canada and Mexico face dramatic and irreversible changes from the Bush revolution in foreign public policy, the rising economic power of China and India, new concerns about border security and human rights, and the trends of economic integration. The essays in Big Picture Realities: Canada and Mexico at the Crossroads address the sea change in the political economic order of North America and chronicle the attempts of Canada and Mexico, two very different societies, to come to terms with the accumulated and often contradictory effects of micro and macro changes.
Contributors are Canadian and Mexican scholars and leading authorities in security, immigration, human rights, foreign policy, Canada-Mexico relations, and market integration. This book is particularly valuable for public policy experts and scholars and students in international relations.

Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History traces the history of social policy in Canada from the period of First Nations’ control to the present day, exploring the various ways in which residents of the area known today as Canada have organized themselves to deal with (or to ignore) the needs of the ill, the poor, the elderly, and the young.
This book is the first synthesis on social policy in Canada to provide a critical perspective on the evolution of social policy in the country. While earlier work has treated each new social program as a major advance, and reacted with shock to neoliberalism’s attack on social programs, Alvin Finkel demonstrates that right-wing and left-wing forces have always battled to shape social policy in Canada. He argues that the notion of a welfare state consensus in the period after 1945 is misleading, and that the social programs developed before the neoliberal counteroffensive were far less radical than they are sometimes depicted.
Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History begins by exploring the non-state mechanisms employed by First Nations to insure the well-being of their members. It then deals with the role of the Church in New France and of voluntary organizations in British North America in helping the unfortunate. After examining why voluntary organizations gradually gave way to state-controlled programs, the book assesses the evolution of social policy in Canada in a variety of areas, including health care, treatment of the elderly, child care, housing, and poverty.

Long-Term Solutions for a Short-Term World demonstrates the complexity of the challenges that poor countries face and introduces the readers to the concept and impact of participatory research for development. Participatory research requires researchers to work with communities, governments, and other relevant actors to deal with common problems. Finding solutions requires participants to reflect critically on the cultural, economic, historical, political, and social contexts within which the issue under investigation exists.
The book contains a collection of essays from development researchers and professionals, each of whom is an activist who has made significant contributions to the struggles of the poor in their own societies. Essays are presented as case studies and, in each, the contributor explains the specific development problem, the paths followed to solve the problem, lessons learned as a result of the research, and the development challenges on the horizon in his field of research. Together, these essays present a fascinating picture of how some of today’s most pressing development issues are being dealt with through research, demonstrating how interdisciplinary and alternative approaches can be implemented in new and innovative ways.

Global warming has had a dramatic impact on the Arctic environment, including the ice melt that has opened previously ice-covered waterways. State and non-state actors who look to the region and its resources with varied agendas have started to pay attention. Do new geopolitical dynamics point to a competitive and inherently conflictual “race for resources”? Or will the Arctic become a region governed by mutual benefit, international law, and the achievement of a widening array of cooperative arrangements among interested states and Indigenous peoples?
As an Arctic nation Canada is not immune to the consequences of these transformations. In Canada and the Changing Arctic: Sovereignty, Security, and Stewardship, the authors, all leading commentators on Arctic affairs, grapple with fundamental questions about how Canada should craft a responsible and effective Northern strategy. They outline diverse paths to achieving sovereignty, security, and stewardship in Canada’s Arctic and in the broader circumpolar world.
The changing Arctic region presents Canadians with daunting challenges and tremendous opportunities. This book will inspire continued debate on what Canada must do to protect its interests, project its values, and play a leadership role in the twenty-first-century Arctic.
Forewords by Senator Hugh Segal and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and of National Defence Bill Graham.

Suffering from a divided membership, the United Nations is at a crossroads, unable to assure human or national security. The UN has been criticized as irrelevant by its most—and least—powerful members alike because it can’t reach consensus on how to respond to twenty-first-century challenges of global terrorism, endemic poverty, and crimes against humanity.
Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed a package of sweeping reforms that would safeguard the rule of law, outlaw terrorism, protect the innocent from abusive governments, reduce poverty by half, safeguard human rights, and enlarge the Security Council. Intended to reinvigorate the institution and galvanize its members into action, his proposals are extensive and innovative, courageous and controversial.
This volume assembles the perspectives of current practitioners, leading academics, civil society representatives, and UN officials on transforming the secretary general’s proposed reforms into action. Their assessments are frank and their views varied, but they do agree on one thing—the United Nations must be made more effective precisely because it is indispensable to the promotion of economic development and collective security in the twenty-first century.
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

The Diplomacy of Impartiality is an analysis of a major decade in Canadian–Israeli relations, dealing with significant events that led to the Six-Day War of 1967 and its aftermath. Using primary documentation from the National Archives of Canada and the Israeli State Archives, Zachariah Kay shows that although Canada was committed to Israel’s existence, its foreign policy was governed by the scrupulous impartiality that had become a principle guideline when dealing with Israel and the Middle East.
The first section of the book deals with the Progressive Conservative government headed by John Diefenbaker in the first part of the decade and his Israeli counterpart, David Ben Gurion. The second section considers the latter part of the decade, with reference to Lester Pearson’s Liberal government and the Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol. The book shows that in spite of political differences between the leaders and their parties, the Canadian bureaucracy maintained a policy of impartiality, following the lines of non-commitment and prudence practiced prior to the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine with the State of Israel. Issues such as the Arab–Israeli conflict, nuclear power, governments and parliaments, and the pre- and post-Six-Day War are dealt with in detail. The assessed evidence proves that impartiality as a quasi-bureaucratic ordinance kept Canada on the path it maintained in subsequent decades into the twenty-first century.
The Diplomacy of Impartiality provides an essential understanding of events surrounding today’s Canadian relationship with Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict.

The essays in The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought address the contribution that political theories of modern political philosophers have made to our understandings of peace. The discipline of peace research has reached a critical impasse, where the ideas of both “realist peace” and “democratic peace” are challenged by contemporary world events. Can we stand by while dictators violate the human rights of citizens? Can we impose a democratic peace through the projection of war? By looking back at the great works of political philosophy, this collection hopes to revive peace as an active question for political philosophy while making an original contribution to contemporary peace research and international relations.

Canada signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child over a decade ago, yet there is still a lack of awareness about and provision for children’s rights.

What are Canada’s obligations to children? How has Canada fallen short? Why is it so important to the future of Canadian society that children’s rights be met?

Prompted by the gap between the promise of children’s rights and the reality of their continuing denial, Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe call for changes to existing laws, policies and practices. Using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as their framework, the authors examine the continuing problems of child poverty, child care, child protection, youth justice and the suppression of children’s voices. They challenge us to move from seeing children as parental property to seeing children as independent bearers of rights.

In The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada, Canada’s obligations and the rights of children are examined from the perspectives of research and development in the fields of developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, law and family policy.

This timely and accessible book will be of interest to academics, policy-makers and anyone who cares about children and about taking children’s rights seriously.

Edmund Burke claimed to be a practical politician, rather than a theorist. Nevertheless, says the author, Burke held consistent political principles which form a coherent political theory. By examining concepts such as natural laws, natural society, civil society, and history in Burke’s speeches and writings, the author comes to some conclusions about Burke’s political theory and its relation to commonly accepted eighteenth-century political doctrines. Succinct and balanced, this study will be of particular interest to political theorists and historians.

This book constitutes a major and comprehensive reevaluation of British defence policy in the early 1930s.The author traces the evolution of British opinion toward rearmament, from opposition to approval, between 1931 and 1935 and assesses the impact of this opinion on the formation of the Government's defence policy. He places public opinion among the many factors which determined the extent and timing of British rearmament during this period and concludes that the leaders of those Governments were not "Guilty Men" who let political considerations overrule their responsibility for national security, but rather prudent men who decided on rearmament before it was publicly acceptable.

Documented from such sources as newspaper editorials, cabinet papers, speeches of Members of Parliament, and results of by-elections, the book will be of interest to historians, students of policy decisions and public opinion, and persons interested in the events leading to World War II.

Léonard Bourdon: The Career of a Revolutionary, 1754-1807 illustrates the ways in which one individual was affected by and influenced the long and turbulent course of the French Revolution. It also rescues an active, intelligent and interesting man from a prolonged period of scholarly neglect and redeems his reputation from being perceived as a particularly cruel revolutionary terrorist.

Sydenham follows Bourdon’s political career from the final days of the old monarchy through Bourdon’s active participation in the Revolution. Bourdon was always aware that political development must be accompanied by educational change, and his lifelong interest in education is an integral part of his story.

Bourdon left remarkably few personal papers. During the painstaking exploration for details of his life, several critical as well as unfamiliar events of the period have been illuminated, suggesting that similar misrepresentations of many other relatively unknown French revolutionaries have distorted current understanding of this period, crucial to the growth and development of modern democracy.

The region is back in town. Galloping urbanization has pushed beyond historical notions of metropolitanism. City-regions have experienced, in Edward Soja’s terms, “an epochal shift in the nature of the city and the urbanization process, marking the beginning of the end of the modern metropolis as we knew it.”

Governing Cities Through Regions broadens and deepens our understanding of metropolitan governance through an innovative comparative project that engages with Anglo-American, French, and German literatures on the subject of regional governance. It expands the comparative angle from issues of economic competiveness and social cohesion to topical and relevant fields such as housing and transportation, and it expands comparative work on municipal governance to the regional scale.

With contributions from established and emerging international scholars of urban and regional governance, the volume covers conceptual topics and case studies that contrast the experience of a range of Canadian metropolitan regions with a strong selection of European regions. It starts from assumptions of limited conversion among regions across the Atlantic but is keenly aware of the remarkable differences in urban regions’ path dependencies in which the larger processes of globalization and neo-liberalization are situated and materialized.

The Syrian Civil War has created the worst humanitarian disaster since the end of World War II, sending shock waves through Syria, its neighbours, and the European Union. Calls for the international community to intervene in the conflict, in compliance with the UN-sanctioned Responsibility to Protect (R2P), occurred from the outset and became even more pronounced following President Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians in August 2013. Despite that egregious breach of international convention, no humanitarian intervention was forthcoming, leaving critics to argue that UN inertia early in the conflict contributed to the current crisis

Syria, Press Framing, and The Responsibility to Protect examines the role of the media in framing the Syrian conflict, their role in promoting or, on the contrary, discouraging a robust international intervention. The media sources examined are all considered influential with respect to the shaping of elite views, either directly on political leaders or indirectly through their influence on public opinion. The volume provides a review of the arguments concerning appropriate international responses to events in Syria and how they were framed in leading newspapers in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada during the crucial early years of the conflict; considers how such media counsel affected the domestic contexts in which American and British decisions were made not to launch forceful interventions following Assad's use of sarin gas in 2013; and offers reasoned speculation on the relevance of R2P in future humanitarian crises in light of the failure to protect Syrian civilians.

In this book, leading international relations experts and practitioners examine through theory and case study the prospect for successful multilateral management of the global economy and international security. In the theory section contributors tackle the big questions: Why is there an apparent rising tide of calls for reform of current multilateral organizations and institutions? Why are there growing questions over the effectiveness of global governance? Is the reform of current organizations and institutions likely or possible? Case studies include the examination of difficulties facing global development, the challenges facing the IMF and the governance of global finance, the problems of the UN 2005 World Summit and its failed reform, and the WTO and the questions raised by the prolonged Doha Development Round.

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

More than a quarter of a century has passed since Canada promised to recognize and respect the rights of children under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ratification of the Convention cannot, however, guarantee that everyone will abandon proprietary notions about children, or that all children will be free to enjoy the substance of their rights in every social and institutional context in which they find themselves, including—and perhaps especially—within families. This disconnect remains one of the most important challenges to the recognition of children’s rights in Canada.

The authors argue that social toxins are as harmful to children’s independent welfare and developmental interests as environmental toxins, and that both must be eradicated if Canada is to fulfill its commitments under the Convention. They also argue that if Canada wishes to ensure the substance of the rights outlined in the Convention are socially guaranteed, an attitudinal or cultural shift is required concerning the moral and legal status of children.

This revised, expanded, and updated edition of the bestselling Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada will be of interest to academics, policymakers, parents, teachers, social workers, and human service professionals—indeed to anyone who cares about and for children.

With the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), commentators began to situate the evolution of the status of children within the context of the “property to persons” trajectory that other human rights stories had followed. In the first edition of A Question of Commitment, editors R. Brian Howe and Katherine Covell provided a template of analysis for understanding this evolution. They identified three overlapping stages of development as children transitioned from being regarded as objects to subjects in their own right: social laissez-faire, paternalistic protection, and children’s rights. In the social laissez-faire stage, children are regarded as objects, and largely as the property of parents. In the paternalistic protection stage, children are seen as vulnerable and in need of protection. The children’s rights stage lays emphasis on children as rights-bearers, as individuals in their own right with entitlements.

In this second edition, new essays assess the extent to which children’s rights have been incorporated into their respective areas of policy and law. The authors draw conclusions about what the situation reveals about the status of children in Canada. Overall, many challenges remain on the pathway to full recognition and citizenship.

Aid and Ebb Tide: A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance examines Canada’s mixed record since 1950 in transferring over $50 billion in capital and expertise to developing countries through ODA. It focuses in particular on the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the organization chiefly responsible for delivering Canada’s development assistance. Aid and Ebb Tide calls for a renewed and reformed Canadian commitment to development co-operation at a time when the gap between the world’s richest and poorest has been widening alarmingly and millions are still being born into poverty and human insecurity.

“Russian politics, like opium, seems infallibly to provoke the most fantastic dreams and imaginings on the part of the people who study them.” — E.A. Walker, British Embassy, Moscow 1931
In March 1933 the economic section of the Soviet secret police arrested six British engineers employed by the Metropolitan Vickers Electrical Company. The arrests provoked a confrontation that brought Anglo-Soviet relations to the brink of disaster and resurrected the spectre of the show trials and purges of the technical intelligentsia that had shaken Soviet society from 1928 to 1931.
Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution is the first full-length study of the Metro-Vickers’ show trial of 1933. Based upon some new and many underutilized Soviet and British sources, Gordon Morrell examines the political, economic, social, legal and cultural dimensions of the only Stalinist political trial of the 1930s that directly engaged a foreign power.
Morrell explores the roots of the crisis by analyzing Metro-Vickers’ role in the electrification of the USSR and he examines the political, economic and diplomatic relations between Britain and the Soviets that gave the crisis its international importance. He focusses on the efforts of the British Government to understand and respond to the new Stalinist order and, importantly, casts new light on the apparent role of the British Industrial Intelligence Centre during the early 1930s.
Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution is an accessible, original and multidimensional work that makes an important contribution to the study of Anglo-Soviet relations.

In 1911 one of every three Canadians lived in urban areas; today three out of four do. This growth has raised serious issues in urban government: How should power and authority be distributed among differing, often competing, urban interests? How can municipal governments obtain the funds they need to satisfy the increased demand for community and social services? How much should citizens participate? At a conference held in Banff on alternate forms of urban government, academics and practitioners considered these, and other pressing urban problems. Problems of change in urban government, presents the results of the conference, along with other, related essays. The contributors are Lloyd Axworthy, Meyer Brownstone, Stephen Clarkson, J.A. Johnson, James Lorimer, Allan O’Brien, T.J. Plunkett, Louise Quesnel-Ouellet, Paul Tennant, and the volume editors.

This book is a comparison of the history and politics of two sister societies, comparing Canada with Australia, rather than, as is traditional, with the United Kingdom or the United States. It is representative of a particular interest in promoting more contact and exchange among Canadian and Australian scholars who were investigating various features of the two societies. Because some of them were individually involved in aspects of federalist studies, an examination of the early evolution of federalism in what once were the two sister dominions seemed quite an appropriate area in which to begin comparisons.
The book discusses Canadian federalism from about 1864 to 1880 and Australian federalism from about 1897 to 1914. It examines the background and changes wrought on early Canadian federalism and early Australian federalism.