The global health regime is caught in a paradox, whereby connecting "human" to "(inter)national" security to prevent the spread of infectious diseases unwittingly introduces into this complex and expertise-reliant domain of "low politics" the notion of "sovereign decisionism"-states' prerogative to identify a threat and counter it with exceptional measures that may in turn constrain their ability to unilaterally securitize disease. This article introduces an analytical framework presenting three pathways through which state leaders with different conceptions of sovereignty and varying constraints on their legitimacy among their domestic audiences may nevertheless securitize policy domains traditionally considered as falling within the scope of sub-state "low politics." Two of the pathways begin with scientific objectivation rather than politicization, and one trades power concentration for collaboration with sub-state and global authorities. I then compare the Canadian and American responses during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic to uncover how these contextual factors disposed Donald Trump to COVID-19, while Justin Trudeau emulated the World Health Organization's of the virus without centralizing state powers.

This article details the Russian government's efforts to influence Canadians' perceptions of the war in Ukraine. Specifically, we examined Russian information campaigns tailored to Canadian audiences on X (formerly known as Twitter) and the supportive ecosystems of accounts that amplify those campaigns. By 2023, this ecosystem included at least 200,000 X accounts that have shared content with millions of Canadians. We identified ninety accounts with an outsized influence. The vast majority of the influential Canadian accounts were far right or far left in orientation. These networks were among Canada's most prolific and influential political communities online. We determined this by comparing these networks' potential influence to the online community engaging with Canada's 338 members of Parliament on X and a sample of twenty influential X accounts in Canada. The sophistication and proliferation of Canada-tailored narratives suggest a highly organized and well-funded effort to target Canadian support for Ukraine.

From the earliest studies of soft power in International Relations, the importance of educational exchanges has been well-established. Studies of international education in the context of Canadian soft power often draw on cases from the higher education sector. This article argues that greater attention should be paid to the K-12 level, especially as budgetary pressures in Ontario's education system are leading school boards to rapidly expand their international student recruitment efforts. Although this is not an example of intentional soft power projection, it nevertheless represents an important reminder that subnational actors may accidentally become paradiplomats whose actions have consequences on the international level. Further, this case reveals the importance of paying attention to actors typically overlooked by IR scholarship. Drawing on Joseph Nye's theory of soft power and in conversation with prior research on international education as a mechanism of soft power projection, this article traces the thread between budgetary pressures in Ontario school boards and the broader context of soft power projection.

Processes of making, sustaining, reforming, and un-making world orders are constants in global politics and development. Understood in the neo-Gramscian tradition pioneered by Robert Cox, ideas, institutions, and material capabilities combine to shape the range of possibilities for more and less stable orders. Sports mega-events (SMEs)-most prominently, the Olympic Games-have played an underappreciated role in this process. This paper examines the ways in which the Olympics manifested and supported the rise of globalized neoliberal hegemony in the early 1980s, the reconfiguration and erosion of this order through the 1990s and 2000s, and efforts to fundamentally revise this order in the new millennium. Particular emphasis is placed on the dual role of SMEs and the Olympics as manifestations of conspicuous consumption and the pursuit of prestige on the one hand, and as focal points for sanctions campaigns and boycotts on the other.

While both formal and informal regionalisms examine the political ramifications of economic flows of capital, goods, and people, there is a blurring of such conceptual dichotomies in practice. Hence, in order to offer a more accurate account of the distinctions and overlap between the formal and informal - and to rectify the tendency to overlook the agency of African state actors and non-state actors - this article offers an agential constructivist approach that seeks to advance a praxis - or praxes - of the region. To that end, the article advances the concept of bifurcated interregionalisms as a means of analyzing cases of regional dynamics and regionalisms in Southern Africa and East Africa. The article concludes by offering some reflections on the future of regionalisms in an emerging global order in flux whereby illiberal and xenophobic variants of regionalisms compete with the liberal and cosmopolitan versions.

The literature on world regions is largely gender-blind. This article suggests ways in which the study of regionalism can incorporate gender analysis, based on the case of North America. It argues that this can be done in three ways: through an examination of the gendered impact of regional integration; through an examination of how gender concerns are, or can be, mainstreamed into regional policies; and through research on new forms of feminist-inspired activism that may shape regional outcomes. After applying these perspectives to the case of North America and the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, it argues that despite the failure of the Canadian government to achieve the inclusion of a gender chapter, the inclusion of language around gender discrimination in the labour chapter makes the new agreement a more effective (if still limited) tool for promotion of some forms of gender equality.

During the 2021 mass protests in Colombia, and while international calls for the Colombian government to respect human rights were intensifying, Canada's position remained somewhat ambiguous. Part of Canada's ambiguity can be explained by a simplistic characterization of Colombia as a "weak state." This article assesses Canada's bilateral relationship by historizing the development of Colombia's governance in the key overlapping sectors of security, human rights, and natural resources. From extensive fieldwork, we distinguish two competing rationalities based on the articulation of the notions of "conflict" and "dissent" with the notion of the "rule of law." We believe that Canada's bilateral relation with Colombia in the last decades has overlooked the contradictions that exist between democratizing rationalities and antipolitical rationalities. As a result, Canada's foreign policy has been based on an overly simplistic conception of the relationship between development, security, and the rule of law.

This article critically examines the use of national border closures at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. After explaining why targeted border closures generally do not work and how they violated international law at the time, we examine the unprecedented case of total border closures. Positing that since the current instruments and institutions of global health governance did not anticipate this phenomenon, the legality of total border closures rests on less certain grounds. Then, after asking why nearly every government implemented some form of border closure in March 2020 if neither science nor law provided adequate motivation for their use, we conclude that in the face of a global health emergency, border closures represent an opportunity for political leaders to show determined action, redirect blame to other jurisdictions, and reinforce nationalism. We proceed to argue that both targeted and total border closures have profound legal, epidemiological, and political significance as performances that contradict global realities while undermining notions of global solidarity. Such political theatre means that citizens must weigh these consequences against any perceived benefits of border closures as they would any other politically driven government action, and contest and challenge them appropriately. Citizens must not unduly defer to scientists or lawyers on early COVID-19 border closures because these were primarily political-not scientific or legal-decisions. In this vein, we conclude with some guiding political considerations for scrutinizing government decisions to close borders and observations for the future of global health cooperation during infectious disease outbreaks.

Current policies to manage ethnic minority unrest in Xinjiang are not working, and do not address the core root causes behind ethnic tensions. Drawing upon lessons learned from global approaches to improving inter-ethnic relations, and factoring in China's institutional behaviour and norms, this essay looks at policy responses that could be entertained by the state to improve the conditions of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. It suggests that in the short-term (under a year) the state could be more responsible in using the big data it collects for targeted surveillance, in tandem with a community engagement approach. In the medium-term (one to three years), the state could employ practices to reduce ethnic prejudice by encouraging increased meaningful intergroup contact, and promoting a positive media portrayal of ethnic minorities. In the long-term (three years plus), improving the relative socioeconomic ethnic inequalities is paramount.

This article considers the role of surveillance within security concerns related to the Arctic in Canada and North America. More pointedly, it examines how surveillance contributes towards situational awareness and the current emphasis on technological research and development to meet current and future security requirements. The article argues that Canada's focus on surveillance within the Arctic offers a flexible strategy that navigates the complex and evolving security environment in addition to the political and fiscal realities of our time. However, the article warns that emphasizing the role of novel technology within strategic considerations risks undermining sound policymaking as the potential for new technology to transform defensive capabilities remains speculative. The article illustrates this approach to security by analyzing Canada's Arctic surveillance capabilities and goals under the All Domain Situational Awareness (ADSA) program. Further, it links Canada's efforts to North American defence by theoretically examining the role of surveillance in the Strategic Homeland Integrated Ecosystem for Layered Defence (SHIELD) concept and the recent NORAD/USNORTHCOM strategic outlook.

This article analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on foreign aid. Using examples from Canadian foreign aid, it argues that, despite the terrible toll it is exacting, the crisis has accelerated some significant positive pre-existing trends, both by destabilizing the perception of aid as flowing essentially from the Global North to Global South and by reinforcing awareness of the importance of joint efforts for global public goods and humanitarian assistance, as well as debt relief. However, it has also reinforced potentially harmful self-interested justifications for aid, which could align assistance more with donors' priorities than the needs of the poor. An important trend reversal is the renewed emphasis on well-being. Two other crucial trends remain unclear-the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on multilateral approaches and on aid flows. How donors respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath over the next few years will depend on their political will, and will profoundly shape the future of development co-operation.

What drives consumer activism during trade disputes? We investigate this important and timely question using a survey experiment in the context of the recent Canada-US trade dispute. We find that Canadians are more likely to express willingness to take punitive actions in the form of boycotting during a trade conflict when they learn that Americans are taking such actions (retaliation), when many fellow citizens are taking such actions (peer pressure), and when they are rallied by their government (elite cue). Among the three conditions, peer pressure has the largest effect. These findings contribute to our understanding of the microfoundations of consumer activism during international trade disputes. They also have important policy implications in a world where both protectionism and populism are rising.

Following Brexit (the withdrawal of the UK from the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community at the end of 31 January 2020), the British government stated that it hoped to reach a new trade agreement with Canada to be modelled after the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the first free-trade deal for which Canadian provinces were directly involved at every stage of negotiations. In the UK, while there are mechanisms for the involvement of devolved regions in European policy, there is no clear constitutional doctrine as to the roles they should play in elaborating trade policy more generally. Moreover, the asymmetric nature of the UK's devolution system complicates the involvement of its devolved governments in trade negotiations. By providing a specific focus on the cases of Quebec and Scotland, this article provides a comparison of substate governments' roles in trade negotiation and trade promotion. It concludes that, while there seems to be only limited scope for substate governments' formal input into future trade negotiations, their trade and investment promotion organizations allow them to pursue different objectives over trade within a unified national framework.

Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), launched in June 2017, marks the first time that sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) have been mentioned in an overarching Canadian aid policy. The inclusion of SOGI in the policy document sent an important signal to domestic and international development partners on the need to consider these sources of discrimination and marginalization. This article asks two basic research questions. First, what is the place of SOGI in Canada's "feminist" international assistance? Second, what additional steps does Canada's development program need to take to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people in the Global South? Based on an analysis of official documents and secondary sources, we argue that FIAP itself sends only a weak signal about the importance of SOGI-related concerns, but Canadian foreign aid has expanded its understanding of LGBTI issues and has begun to commit dedicated resources to addressing them. Nonetheless, the initial programming (2017-2019) was channelled in an ad hoc manner and through one, major stand-alone commitment, rather than through a broader framework that would guide SOGI's integration into Canadian programs over the long term. If serious about addressing LGBTI rights more systematically, the Canadian government needs to expand its definition of what SOGI entails and move beyond niche programming to recognize the cross-cutting dimension of LGBTI rights in foreign aid, especially in the area of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The Government of Canada introduced its new Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) to guide its foreign aid programming in June 2017. This feminist turn mirrors earlier adoptions of feminist aid and foreign policy by Sweden and echoes the current Canadian government's feminist rhetoric. This paper examines the FIAP and its Action Areas Policies to ask what kind(s) of feminism are reflected in the policy and what groups of people it prioritizes. The paper examines the values, goals, and gaps of the policy in order to understand what feminist values and goals are being operationalized and pursued and what gaps and contradictions exist. By examining the FIAP's Action Area Policies using a discourse network analysis of the groups represented in the policies, we demonstrate the failings of the FIAP to incorporate an intersectional approach. Our results show that the FIAP adopts a mainstream liberal feminism that excludes many peoples and groups from the core of Canada's aid efforts.

Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy, introduced in 2017, is an ambitious and forward-thinking policy focussed on gender equality and women's empowerment. The emphasis on a feminist vision, however, raises questions about how feminism is defined and interpreted by Canada's partners in the Global South. In this article, we examine the interpretations of feminism(s) and a feminist foreign policy from the perspective of NGO staff members in East and Southern Africa. The research involved interviews with 45 Global South partner country NGO staff members in three countries (Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi). We consider the partner organization reflections on Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy using a transnational feminist lens. Our findings provide insights into future considerations for Canada's feminist foreign policy priorities, consultations, and programme design.