Still notable: Reassessing theoretical “exceptions” in Canadian foreign policy literature

Abstract

This article revisits our 1993 field analysis of the theoretical condition of Canadian foreign policy (CFP) literature, which was in turn a response to Maureen Molot's 1990 argument that said literature had “been captured by its own preoccupations and ha[d], therefore, remained highly descriptive.” In our analysis, we found the field to be marked by promising yet exceptional and arrested theoretical openings and a lack of cumulation, broadly understood. We are struck today by the degree to which our core assessment still holds. In this article, we return to the arguments advanced in 1993 as the foundation for evaluating some key theoretical developments in the intervening years. We focus on the “critical turn” in CFP, the contributions of feminist scholars, and the rise of mainstream social science or “problem-solving” approaches, which we see as the most explicitly and self-consciously “theorized” approaches within the field. We conclude by looking afresh at the question of cumulation and reflecting on the fluidity of who and what constitutes the field today.