Diplomatic Missions:

The Ambassador in Canadian Foreign Policy

 

edited by Robert Wolfe

Heads of mission represent Canada to the world. They are also exemplars of the latest trends in public management-missions abroad deliver the full range of government services from integrated offices whose size has been shrinking steadily. Diplomatic Missions places the role of Canada's Ambassadors in the context of a changing foreign ministry, a changing state, a new world order, and rapidly evolving technologies of transportation and communications. Canada has 149 missions and offices abroad, but the foreign policy literature has little to say about the role of its ambassadors. Even official reports do not articulate an explicit Canadian doctrine on the practice of diplomacy. The American literature on ambassadors is extensive, but the experiences of a superpower's diplomats differ from those of a small country.

Contributors to this book include both scholars of foreign policy and recent Canadian ambassadors. Following an analytic introduction, the second chapter situates ambassadors in the literature on diplomacy. Other chapters address expectations placed on Ambassadors; the role of provincial representatives; the history of foreign service recruitment; diplomatic change in Washington; the challenges of small missions; the contrasts between representing Canada in a G-7 capital and in a populous developing country; civil society organizations and diplomacy; the promotion of Canadian exports; and the perspective of domestic departments. Both diplomats and students will find that Diplomatic Missions makes an important contribution to their understanding of the practice of foreign policy.

Contributors include:

 

Andrew F. Cooper, University of Waterloo

Louis Delvoie, Queen's University and Royal Military College

Lucie Edwards, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Anthony T. Eyton, The ARA Consulting Group

Paul Frazer, Canadian Embassy, Washington

Janet L. Graham, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Paul Heinbecker, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Richard Kohler, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

David Lee, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Hector Mackenzie, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Jean-Marc Métivier, Canadian International Development Agency

Kim Richard Nossal, McMaster University

Alan B. Nymark, Health Canada

Michael Pearson, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Peter Sutherland, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Alison Van Rooy, The North-South Institute

Robert Wolfe, Queen's University

Diplomatic Missions is published by the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development and the School of Policy Studies; it is available from McGill-Queen's University Press.

Paper ISBN 0-88911-801-9 $22.95

Cloth ISBN 0-88911-803-5 $55.00

(outside Canada, prices are US dollars)

 

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School of Policy Studies

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last revised 10 Oct 98