POLI 3569 ONLINE-ONLY VERSION, WINTER 2021 Professor Brian Bow (
[email protected]) UPDATED JANUARY 10 The purpose of this course is to provide a basic overview of Canada’s political and diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. There will be some attention to specific policy questions here and there, but most of the course is organized around “bigger” debates about how to think about how Canada fits into the world, what it can and should try to accomplish, and who gets to make those choices. The first part of the course—Module 1, below—lays out the conventional history of Canada’s foreign relations, emphasizing the way that past developments shape current and future decisions. Module 2 looks at a variety of different critiques of this conventional view (realist, neomarxist, feminist, postcolonial, etc.), to try to give you a sense of the main theoretical debates. Module 3 shifts the focus to the political structures of foreign policy decision-making in Canada (e.g., parliament, bureaucracy, provinces, etc.). And Module 4 wraps things up by connecting the previous debates to some difficult foreign policy choices facing Canada today (e.g., relations with China, climate change, trade, arms exports, etc.). Basic format of the course As with almost all Dalhousie courses this year, POLI 3569 for Winter 2021 is going to be online only. Most parts of the course are asynchronous (i.e., students engage with the course material on their own time, within weekly sections); however, unlike some other courses, POLI 3569 provides a choice between synchronous and asynchronous options for some course components.