Foreign Ministries And The Information Revolution

Anchored in new institutionalist approaches in political science, the book provides a comparative in-depth analysis of information technology effects in the foreign ministries of Canada, Norway and Slovakia.

Anchored in new institutionalist approaches in political science, this book reconceptualizes diplomacy as an institution of the modern state order and identifies its key organizing principles maintained by the global group of foreign ministries. With this conceptualization as a point of departure, the book provides a comparative analysis of information technology effects in the foreign ministries of Canada, Norway and Slovakia.

This book provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the multidimensional influences of technological development on contemporary international relations. The contributions here are drawn from different disciplines, including political science, international relations, sociology, economy, law, biochemistry and bioethics, as well as from different locations, including Poland, the US, Brazil and Israel. This variety allows the complexity of the issues, challenges and implications of technological changes on the structure, functioning and substantive scope of international relations to be fully presented and explored. This collection represents essential reading for anyone with an interest in the dynamic interplay between modern technologies and the transformation of the contemporary international system, and especially for international relations scholars and students.

Mass communications and advances in communications technology pose fundamental challenges to the traditional conduct of diplomacy by reducing hierarchy, promoting transparency, crowding out secrecy, mobilizing global social movements, and increasing the importance of public diplomacy in international relations. But the primary source of change, the force that acts as a common denominator and accelerates other changes, is communications and information technology (CIT). Where nations were once connected through foreign ministries and traders, they are now linked to millions of individuals by fibre optics, satellite, wireless, and cable in a complex network without central control. These trends have resulted in considerable speculation about the future of diplomacy. Contributors include Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo), Ronald J. Deibert (University of Toronto), Eytan Gilboa (Holon Institute of Technology and Bar-Ilan University, Israel), Steven Livingston (George Washington University), Evan H. Potter (Universty of Ottawa), Gordon Smith (University of Victoria), Peter J. Smith (Athabasca University), Elizabeth Smythe (Concordia University College of Alberta), and Allen Sutherland (Government of Canada).

In The Ideas and Practices of the European Union’s Structural Antidiplomacy, Steffen Bay Rasmussen offers a comprehensive analysis of the different facets of EU diplomacy, arguing that it constitutes a unique form of international agency called structural antidiplomacy.

Ministries of foreign affairs are prominent institutions of state diplomacy. They remain the operators of key practices associated with diplomacy: communication, representation and negotiation. This book fills a gap by approaching ministries of foreign affairs in a comparative and comprehensive way.

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.