NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS - NEW AND ARRESTED DIRECTIONS IN CANADIAN FOREIGN-POLICY LITERATURE

The literature on Canadian Foreign Policy has often been characterized as overly descriptive and theoretically weak. This type of characterization, advanced most recently by Maureen Molot, is no longer wholly accurate. By reviewing several relatively recent contributions and debates in this literature, it is demonstrated that in pockets, the subfield has advanced substantially in theoretical sophistication. Nevertheless, it continues to manifest important gaps and limited cumulation. The article speculates on why this should be so, and on how the theoretical condition of the subfield can be advanced. Approaches which incorporate the interplay of internal and external influences on policy, which barrow from important developments in the wider fields of International Relations and Comparative Politics, and which engage in comparison across issue-areas, countries and time are advocated. Applications drawing on ''historical materialist,'' regime, and epistemic community literatures are specifically promoted.