Tuesday 28 January 2014

Keystone XL and the American Political System

I just finished watching President Obama's State of the Union speech. I didn't expect him to mention the KeystoneXL pipeline explicitly, but was struck by his comments on American energy policy. I was struck by the emphasis on natural gas as a bridge fuel toward more renewables. I was also struck by his emphasis on the improving efficiency of the United States and his continued commitment to weaning America off of fossil fuels. All of this brings me back to KeystoneXL. Like the softwood lumber dispute of several years ago, KeystoneXL has become a new litmus test of bilateral relations for many Canadians. Alberta's leadership in particular has been desperate for construction of this pipeline to commence in the hope that it will relieve some of the price discount on Alberta bitumen relative to crudes from other jurisdictions.

I have maintained for some time that the pipeline will get built, but not nearly as fast as Canadians would like. In part, the frustration of Canada's political leadership in dealing with the United States stems from differences between the two countries that Canadians DO NOT understand as well as they think. All of this inspired me to write a short piece that appeared in Policy Options almost two years ago (Fall 2012) which has stood the test of time.

It didn't get much attention then because it appeared as an "online extra." Thought I'd post it here on a night when the U.S. system was putting itself on display.

 http://www.irpp.org/en/po/canada-in-the-pacific-century/a-dubious-disbelief/

Tuesday 21 January 2014

Whither North America

In early January, American University's Robert Pastor died after a 3 1/2 year battle with cancer. Last week I penned a short OpEd in the Edmonton Journal about it. Newspapers being what they are these days, I had to slash it to 750 words.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Opinion+What+left+North+American+idea/9389663/story.html

Although it is just a rough draft, I thought I'd post the full 1600 word piece here.


Is North America Over?

New Year’s Day 2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). About a week later, January 8, Robert Pastor, one of the NAFTA’s fiercest defenders, and one of academia’s most tireless advocates of deeper North American integration, died after a 3 ½ year battle with cancer. To the citizen on the street, Robert Pastor is hardly a household name. Yet, among those in academia or public policy for whom North America was a focus, Robert Pastor’s work could not be ignored. Indeed, for much of the past three decades we have all—academics, politicians, and the general public-- implicitly been debating the merits of his policy prescriptions.

Why This Blog....

This is an experiment I've been meaning to try for several years, but never taken the time to do. Part of it was laziness in figuring out how to actually do it, so apologies for the lack of sophistication here so far (still working on Twitter). However, it was also about making the commitment to actually contribute to such a blog regularly enough to make it worthwhile-- aiming for once a week.

This blog draws its inspiration from a 2005 article by Stephen Walt in the Annual Review of Political Science titled "The Relationship Between Theory and Policy in International Relations." (link) It is a piece that explores the gaps between theory and policy in the study and practice of international relations. Specifically, many of the norms and incentives that confront scholars of IR versus practitioners in government are at odds with each other. Academic debates are too often restricted to the pages of scholarly journals or professional meetings, and frequently communicated in abstract disciplinary jargon unusable to most policy-makers, and inaccessible to the average citizen. The flip-side of that coin is that policy-makers are frequently confronted with multiple time-sensitive problems for which they do not have time to read even the most practically-oriented scholarly advice. Yet, scholarly frames of reference, theory, and analysis can be vitally important in broadly shaping policy outcomes.

Moreover, there is much less cross fertilization between academia and government today than in decades past. There are many reasons for this, among them the institutional imperatives placed on each group of professionals. There is little incentive for academics to effectively suspend their research careers to spend time in government. And universities have not been especially good at bringing senior civil servants, and their experience, into the fold. Those few academics who have spend time in government are most likely to do so only after reaching a level of seniority and prominence that affords them the luxury of a leave of absence to work in government. Harvard's Joseph Nye Jr. (of soft power fame) is a rare exception, having several times taken prominent roles in government or as an adviser to policy-makers.

In many ways, the two camps need each other badly.

This blog is partially aimed at filling this gap with, hopefully, interesting and timely thoughts on international relations, political economy, Canada-U.S. relations and other interests; things that are important, but don't lend themselves to long-form essays or the lengthy peer-review process in the ivory tower.

Redefining the Floor....Down

I was scrolling through some YouTube clips the other day and came across the great Seinfeld episode in which Frank Costanza invites Seinfeld...