Statesmen, strategists, and diplomats : Canada's prime ministers and the making of foreign policy /

This collection of well-researched essays is premised on the view that in the debate about the relative influence of structure versus agency in foreign policy, Canadian prime ministers do make a difference. Each essay focuses on one or two prime ministers. Each prime minster had to work within the larger geopolitical context framed by the United Kingdom, the United States, and the world beyond these two major powers. The essays provide useful correctives: R. B. Bennett was more successful than usually thought, Diefenbaker more consistent with Canadian foreign policy patterns than thought, and Pearson more in line with Diefenbaker's policies than thought. Also, as time unfolded, the UK mattered less and the US more. Recent prime ministers faced more and more intractable constraints on their policy-making freedom, several of them domestic and connected increasingly to diaspora politics. Accordingly, the gap between rhetoric and policy realities grew. Partisan differences, examined with a sharp academic eye, begin to dim. Though the editor insists that prime ministers matter, the essays show that structural constraints on leaders' initiative persist and have probably increased. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates through faculty. --Thomas Michael Bateman, St. Thomas University