Hollowed Halls

The study of Canadian foreign policy is in disarray. That is pretty much the conclusion Brian Bow and Andrea Lane reach in Canadian Foreign Policy: Reflections on a Field in Transition, their edited volume on what they describe as an academic discipline — known by the initials CFP — that has “been crumbling for twenty years or more but manages to survive in some form.”

It may well be that the practice of Canadian foreign policy is also in disarray, but that is not the subject of this book. In fact, the sixteen essays gathered here say very little about what ails our foreign policy, even though they imply that a revival of CFP scholarship would have salutary effects on matters of state. Indeed, the editors cite the need for a major review of the country’s foreign policy as a reason to revive the study of it.

What accounts for the decline of CFP when the challenges of actual Canadian foreign policy are more complex and demanding than ever? The...