Democracy And Foreign Policy In An Era Of Uncertainty

In an era of significant geopolitical shifts, unrelenting violent confrontation, nationalism and identity politics, the institutions in which Canada and its allies have invested significant capital such as trade, political, and security organisations are being tested and stretched to the limit. This edition will look back on Canada’s approach to encouraging democracy abroad, it will consider ways to enhance middle power democracy statecraft in an era of growing international and domestic insecurity, backsliding and populism, and discern patterns and recurring themes in Canadian support for rights and democracy, as well as efforts to grapple with novel trends like digital threats to democracy.

At the end of the Second World War, a growing concern that Canadians' civil liberties were not adequately protected, coupled with the international revival of the concept of universal human rights, led to a long public campaign to adopt a national bill of rights. While these initial efforts had been only partially successful by the 1960s, they laid the foundation for the radical change in Canadian human rights achieved by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1980s. In Toward the Charter Christopher MacLennan explores the origins of this dramatic revolution in Canadian human rights, from its beginnings in the Great Depression to the critical developments of the 1960s. Drawing heavily on the experiences of a diverse range of human rights advocates, the author provides a detailed account of the various efforts to resist the abuse of civil liberties at the hands of the federal government and provincial legislatures and the resulting campaign for a national bill of rights. The important roles played by parliamentarians such as John Diefenbaker and academics such as F.R. Scott are placed alongside those of trade unionists, women, and a long list of individuals representing Canada's multicultural groups to reveal the diversity of the bill of rights movement. At the same time MacLennan weaves Canadian-made arguments for a bill of rights with ideas from the international human rights movement led by the United Nations to show that the Canadian experience can only be understood within a wider, global context.

The promotion of democracy by the United States became highly controversial during the presidency of George W. Bush. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were widely perceived as failed attempts at enforced democratization, sufficient that Barack Obama has felt compelled to downplay the rhetoric of democracy and freedom in his foreign-policy. This collection seeks to establish whether a democracy promotion tradition exists, or ever existed, in US foreign policy, and how far Obama and his predecessors conformed to or repudiated it. For more than a century at least, American presidents have been driven by deep historical and ideological forces to conceive US foreign policy in part through the lens of democracy promotion. Debating how far democratic aspirations have been realized in actual foreign policies, this book draws together concise studies from many of the leading academic experts in the field to evaluate whether or not these efforts were successful in promoting democratization abroad. They clash over whether democracy promotion is an appropriate goal of US foreign policy and whether America has gained anything from it. Offering an important contribution to the field, this work is essential reading for all students and scholars of US foreign policy, American politics and international relations.

Freedom in the World is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The methodology of this survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories.

Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008. It finds that where social, economic, and technocratic ties to the West were extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, the external cost of abuse led incumbents to cede power rather than crack down, which led to democratization. Where ties to the West were limited, external democratizing pressure was weaker and countries rarely democratized. In these cases, regime outcomes hinged on the character of state and ruling party organizations. Where incumbents possessed developed and cohesive coercive party structures, they could thwart opposition challenges, and competitive authoritarian regimes survived; where incumbents lacked such organizational tools, regimes were unstable but rarely democratized.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Focuses on the defense capabilities of key Asian powers in the context of their grand strategies. Through a combination of country, regional, and topical studies, the book assesses how Asian states are modernizing their military programs in response to China's rise as a regional power, the war on terrorism, changes in U.S. force posture, the revolution in military affairs, and local security dilemmas. In addition to this central theme, each chapter examines the changing balance of power in Asia and identifies likely threats and opportunities that may arise in the next five years.

This book offers a serious investigation of one of the most controversial contemporary American Studies issues: President Donald Trump's foreign policy. Actually, an ambiguous, inconsistent uncertainty would best describe President Trump's approach to foreign affairs. This book investigates Trump's foreign policy agenda, style, principles, priorities, and patterns. The main challenge of this book is to check whether President Trump's foreign policy initiatives are faithful to the traditional and modern-era foreign policy schools (such as 'America First'), or whether they are merely inconsistent, impulsive, incoherent initiatives which lack the complexity of a serious foreign policy agenda or doctrine? This book puts the nature of Pax-Americana and US Exceptionalism face to face with the assumption of a post-American world. It also examines the 'Trump Doctrine' as what Trump himself described as a 'brand new' foreign policy. Thus, this book offers a further assessment of the assumption that Trump is establishing a new school of American foreign policy.