Forging new identities : explaining success and failure in Canadian arms control initiatives 1990-2004

Although Great Powers are often thought to be the most influential actors in terms of international arms control efforts, during the 1990s Canada showed itself capable of successfully leading several arms control initiatives. This research sets out to (a) explain why Canada has been able to enjoy these successes while other recent Canadian arms control leadership efforts have failed, and (b) further the abstract thinking around Canadian foreign policy. This is done by introducing the Identity Management model of arms control to explain the process by which Canadian arms control processes succeed or fail, and testing it against four post-Cold War Canadian-led initiatives: the Open Skies initiative, the landmines initiative, the MOX fuel initiative, and the small arms initiative.Within the Identity Management model, Canada is classified as an Activist State, a categorisation that rejects and improves upon the popular, yet heavily flawed, Middle Power concept. Blending together critical insights from realism and constructivism, the Identity Management model focuses on the foreign policy preferences of states, distinguishing between the preferences of Great Powers, such as the United States, and the preferences of Activist States. The foreign policy preferences of Activist States are designed and promoted by important elite domestic actors, and expressed as the country's chosen identity on a given arms control issue. The Identity Management model thus postulates that while states such as Canada can express independent policy initiatives, these identities are offered up into the international system, the character of which is defined by the foreign policy preferences of Great Powers. Overall, the Identity Management model establishes that Canadian arms control initiatives are successful only when Canada's chosen identity accurately reflects the constantly changing character of the international system