- We've moved. For the next couple of years, we'll be located on the 8th floor of the OISE/UT Building at 252 Bloor Street West. The best view on campus!
- Our new director, Louis Pauly, began his five-year term of office on July 1, 1997.
- David Welch became our associate director and supervisor of the the Centre's new Collaborative Master of Arts Program in International Relations
- In August, Stephen Wasby took up residence as the 1997/98 Bissell-Fulbright Chair in Canadian-American Relations.
- Also in August, Michael Greven started his year as our new visiting professor in German and European Studies.
- During the past summer, Meric Gertler and David Wolfe inaugurated the new CIS Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems.
- In September, Tina Lagopoulos joined us as secretary to the director.
-This issue of our newsletter provides profiles of our new staff and reviews of CIS activities. It also highlights coming events and some of our plans for the future..
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The challenge of succeeding Len Waverman as director of CIS is a daunting one. Over the course of eight busy and productive years, Len built a respected forum where academic researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners from the worlds of business, government, and journalism could meet to exchange ideas on international affairs. During a period of rapid change in so many policy environments, the agenda was always open, the conversation always stimulating. And out of that conversation came a wealth of publications, some by permanent members of the University's faculty and others by the many visitors who found a welcoming home away from home in the Centre. Along with Sylvia Ostry, who joined the Centre in 1990 and served as chair of its advisory board for eight years, Len constructed solid foundations for the future. We are all in his debt.
Let me take this opportunity as well to record the gratitude of the University community for the assistance given to Len and the CIS staff by an accomplished advisory board. As the Centre moves into a phase of transition, I hope we can continue to rely in other ways on the support of the individuals who served on that board. During the coming months and years, I hope to develop new avenues for many other members of the community to become involved in the life of the Centre.
I am delighted to report that Sylvia Ostry will be remaining in residence as our first Distinguished Research Fellow. Her long and incredibly fruitful career as scholar and policy adviser to governments, business, and international organizations continues. As noted elsewhere in this newsletter, her influential publications continue to appear with amazing regularity, and her new research projects continue to progress. Her advice and counsel will remain very important to us.
One final note of thanks. During the past six months, John Kirton served as acting director. With a steady hand on the tiller, he kept the ship on course and made it look easy. He's a pro, but I know the task was more difficult than he made it seem. Of course, he could not have run the Centre single-handedly. I know that John is as grateful as I am to Mary Lynne Bratti and the hard-working administrative staff of the Centre for doing so much over so many years to keep the ship afloat and the rudder in prime working condition.
Before I drift away with this sailing metaphor, let me end these brief remarks with a word on the future of CIS. The generous infrastructure support provided to the Centre by the Government of Ontario over many years has now come to an end. The University has nevertheless given us a renewed vote of confidence. In an era of constrained resources, we have been given a modest annual budget to cover the basic expenses of the Centre. With sensible economies and new programs capable of attracting new sources of support, there is every reason to believe that the life of the Centre will remain vibrant. Further ensuring such an outcome, the University has provided us with newly renovated office and conference facilities in the OISE/UT building.
As of the opening of the 1997/98 academic year, CIS has also been given responsibility and the resources to begin an innovative teaching program, the Collaborative MA in International Relations. We thus become an important teaching unit of the University's School of Graduate Studies. The new program complements and enhances our longstanding role as a research centre.
The actual scope of our activities during the next few years will depend upon the talents of the scholars who are attracted to the Centre and upon our collective ability to convince new supporters from both the private and public sectors that the work we do here is worthwhile. The Centre is not a private think-tank with an ideological agenda. It is also not a government agency with a political agenda. We are an integral part of a great university.
Our most fundamental resources are the minds of our new students, of our graduate researchers in residence, of our permanent and visiting faculty members, and of the many friends who attend and contribute to Centre conferences, seminars, and publications. The Centre provides a meeting place for people with interests in the myriad theoretical and policy challenges currently confronting the societies of which they are a part.
As a global economy emerges, as international security structures shift fundamentally, as the natural environment changes in ways that respect no borders, and as international politics and domestic politics become increasingly difficult to disentangle, there is no shortage of items on our teaching and research agendas. In such a world, the university and its traditions bear an ever more important responsibility. Independent scholarship and teaching becomes ever more essential if we are to leave a civilized, prosperous, and peaceful world to our children. I am therefore very optimistic about the future of CIS.
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The University of Toronto's newest MA program, which is headquartered at CIS, is off to a flying start. Sixteen students are inaugurating the program in September. They will be joined in 1998 by an additional eleven already admitted (four deferrals, and seven students accepted into the Combined LL.B./M.A. The latter group will be spending the 1997-98 academic year at the law school. From as far east as Israel and as far west as Hawaii, these students bring stellar academic records and a breathtaking range of interests and backgrounds. The applicant pool was very impressive for the first year of a graduate program, and we had to turn away a large number of extremely well-qualified candidates.
In addition to the four core courses designed specifically for the program and co-taught by two (or, in one case, three) faculty members from the various participating departments (History and Philosophy of International Relations Thought; Postwar International Systems; International Governance; and Dynamics of the Global Trading System), the incoming class will be required to take International Economics: Theory and Institutions (a half-course mounted by the Economics department specifically for the collaborative programme) and International Law I: Public International Law (mounted by the Law School). These, plus a language requirement, additional coursework or research required by their home departments, and an exciting seminar series at the Centre, will certainly keep the inaugural cohort busy.
The Centre's new facilities in the OISE/UT building will certainly contribute to a lively sense of intellectual community, and the incoming class will no doubt make an important contribution to the life of CIS. In this, the "shake-down cruise" year of the program, we can look forward not only to gratifying successes, but also to the inevitable glitches. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to salute the faculty who have bravely undertaken to help launch the program by teaching the required courses (Alan Alexandroff, Stephen Clarkson, Harriet Friedmann, Jim Graff, Sue Howson, John Kirton, Alan Rugman, Craig Scott, and Wesley Wark), and the staff at CIS who have thus far demonstrated truly impressive patience, ingenuity, creativity, and survival skills (most notably Eileen Lam, the program administrator, and Mary Lynne Bratti).
We will have periodic updates on the programme in future newsletters. Meanwhile, detailed, up-to-date information is available on the World Wide Web at
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This new research program at CIS is organized around the implications of the economic and social dislocation in industrial societies. This dislocation is associated with the coincidence of three processes: the emergence of a new information technology paradigm; the globalization of production, investment and financing; and the gradual decline of traditional methods of mass production. Further, it is putting a spotlight on the capacity of governing institutions at local, supranational, and, increasingly, regional levels to efficiently and equitably help business firms and their workers adapt to change.
The nature of certain new technologies and their development, in particular, is refocusing attention on the role of regions. Complex systems of technology, production processes, industrial organizations, and their supporting infrastructures, exhibit distinctive spatial characteristics. Production relations tend to aggregate over time among networks of nearby firms and knowledge-centres, especially universities. Process-level knowledge-learning by doing-tends intentionally or unintentionally to be shared within such networks.
Together, the forms of collaboration and interaction associated with both traded and untraded interdependencies highlight the importance of regional institutions in facilitating adjustment to technological innovation and to globalization. The goal of PROGRIS is to contribute to our understanding of how existing and emerging institutions of governance are facilitating or impeding broader processes of social learning, especially within North America and Europe.
At the centre of this project is an eminent group of experts from Asia, the U.S. and Europe, chaired by Sylvia Ostry and supported by Alan Alexandroff. The group is now actively monitoring the China-WTO accession negotiations in Geneva as well as developing an informal policy dialogue with key players in Washington. A series of investigative meetings have already taken place in Geneva and Washington.
In addition, a number of important research papers have been and are continuing to be produced on subjects ranging from Chinese administrative and legal reform to East Asian industrial and innovation policies. These and others will eventually be published in a book on the project. The next phase of the project will be to hold meetings in Beijing and Shanghai to foster dissemination of key research findings and discussion of key issues among senior Chinese government officials and influential academics in the fields of trade policy and legal studies.
This project has entered its third year of existence at CIS. Sponsored by the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), it is led by John Kirton. The research coordinator is Julie Soloway. The objective of the project is to provide the CEC council, comprised of the environment ministers from Mexico, Canada and the United States, with an analytical framework for monitoring on an on-going basis NAFTA's environmental consequences. To the extent possible, the project also seeks to identify any specific environmental effects related to NAFTA.
In the summer of 1995, the project entered its exploratory phase of work, which focused on the main elements of NAFTA and its more general regime and their direct and immediate effects on trade and investment flows within North America.
The project also considered the dimensions of environmental quality in the project and identified major processes that can be used to link environmental development in Canada, Mexico and the United States to NAFTA-induced economic and policy changes. This work was presented and discussed at a workshop in La Jolla, CA in April 1996.
Phase II of the project sought to adjust and strengthen the framework through specific issue studies in the area of energy and agriculture. The agriculture studies are entitled Concentrated Feedlot Production of Cattle in the U.S. and North America: Environmental Implications of Expanded North American Trade and Maize in NAFTA: The Environmental Implications. The energy study is entitled NAFTA and Electricity Restructuring in North America.
Professor Kirton also conducted research on NAFTA's institutional framework, the roughly 50 bodies (Committees, Subcommittees and working groups) that were created by NAFTA.
Phase III of the project is further developing the issue studies and holding expert workshops. The project team will then compose a final report, with an enriched analytic framework, for the Council and the Free Trade Commission.
Two research projects are presently underway at CIS under the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean, which is led by Al Berry and Gustavo Indart.
A Ford Foundation grant is funding a research project on the impact of restructuring and trade liberalization in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly on labour markets and income distribution. Two Latin American researchers visited CIS in 1997 while participating in this project: Andrea Vigorito (University of the Republic, Uruguay) and Pilar Romaguera (University of Chile. The visits of five other Latin American researchers are scheduled for the coming months.
The second project is entitled After NAFTA. It is being supported by FOCAL and the IDRC. Ten individual projects are underway in two areas: 1) Labour markets and social policy, and 2) Trade and investment. They include, for example: The Impact of Economic Restructuring and Trade Reform on the Labour Markets, Income Distribution, and Poverty in Mexico (Diana Alarc\n, COLEF, Mexico and American University); The Impact of Liberalization on the Jamaican Labour Market (Sudhanshu Handa and Damien King, University of the West Indies, Jamaica); Impact of Liberalization on the Labour Market and Income Distribution in Uruguay (Gustavo Indart, CIS); Mexican Trade in Manufacturing Products After NAFTA (Donald Daly, York University, and Jane Morrison and Eduardo Zepeda, COLEF, Mexico); The Complementarity Between U.S. FDI and U.S. Exports to Latin America (Edward Safarian and Walid Hejazi, CIS); Comparison of the Response of Canadian and Mexican SMEs to NAFTA and Trade Liberalization (Al Berry, CIS, and Clemente Ruiz, UNAM, Mexico). For further information on these and other projects, contact Gustavo Indart at CIS.
CIS was also named Canadian counterpart in CIDA's SPEAL II Program. A major international conference is being organized on LAC-Canada issues. In addition, several mini-courses will be taught by U of T faculty and others in four different LAC countries.
Finally, the program continues to organize and host an active series of seminars, conferences, and visits. One highlight was a luncheon seminar with H.E. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, President of Brazil last April.
This program is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The lead investigators are Alan Rugman, of the U of T Faculty of Management, and John Kirton. Julie Soloway is the research coordinator.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the first international trade liberalization agreement to incorporate environmental regulations, both in several provisions within the core NAFTA text but, above all, through the side agreement establishing the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). These regulations will have significant impacts on corporate strategy and Canadian competitiveness since, at the moment, many environmental regulations are being used as barriers to trade.
Despite NAFTA, which has helped to foster economic integration throughout North America, many regulations and standards, including the administration of environmental regulations, remain subject to political influence (lobby groups). An opportunity exists for the CEC to introduce dispute settlement procedures to avoid environmentally-related trade disputes, and to promote convergence in national environmental regulations in ways that enhance both the environment and Canadian competitiveness.
Canadian exporters from a wide range of sectors, notably the automotive, forest products, and other natural resource sectors, have experienced or faced the prospect of the denial of full entry to the U.S. market. This has had adverse effects on the sales of these firms, and consequently on Canadian competitiveness. Environmentally related trade disputes also bring important, hard-won and environmentally effective regulations under constant threat, as they are treated as disguised barriers to trade.
This is an issue of increasing concern to the business and environmental community as it threatens to undermine the benefits of economic integration and the environmental advances of NAFTA's trade and environment regime.
This research program will generate both a theoretical understanding and a set of practical recommendations regarding the array of environmental regulations faced by Canadian business in the U.S. market. It will also generate efficiency-based strategies which Canadian business can use to overcome those regulations with a heavy protectionist impact and no environmental benefit. More specifically, it will explore how U.S. firms seek shelter within protectionist coalitions resulting in regulatory barriers to Canadian firms. It will identify a way of distinguishing between environmentally motivated and effective regulations and those which are essentially protectionist in inspiration or impact. Finally, the research will identify successful strategies Canadian business can pursue to overcome protectionist regulations through business strategy adjustments and interventions in the U.S. political process.
CIS organized and hosted "Canada and the Challenge of APEC: The Road to Vancouver" on May 27, 1997 in anticipation of the upcoming APEC Leaders Summit in November 1997. The well-attended conference was designed with three central purposes. Its first was to hear directly of the plans and prospects for Vancouver from those preparing the event and from those who had the experience of delivering the APEC Leaders' Meeting at Subic, Philippines last year. The second was to provide a critical appraisal of those plans, and suggestions for improvement, from the business, professional and academic community and the broader array of stakeholders for whom APEC is directly relevant. The third was to examine in detail the three critical dimensions of APEC's work: its trade and investment liberalization and facilitation; its economic and technical cooperation; and its future development as an institution and community in the interest of all its members and their many stakeholders in civil society.
Among the speakers at the conference were Len Edwards of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, John Wolf, of the U.S. State Department, John Curtis, chair of the Economic Committee of APEC, Bilahari Kausikan, High Commissioner of Singapore to Canada, Lawrence Krause of the University of California at San Diego, Richard Harris, of Simon Fraser University, Stuart Smith, Chair of the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy, and Tim Reid, President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
To enhance the value of the conference, a one day workshop was held entitled "Strengthening Civil Society Development in East Asia" CIS ASEAN Chair Johan Saravanamuttu. This facilitated a more in-depth treatment of the critical issues of development and civil society within the Asia Pacific region and an ongoing research-based dialogue among leading scholars and professionals assembled from around the Pacific.
On the eve of the APEC summit in November, corporate CEOs from across the region will be holding a special conference in Vancouver that will be opened by Prime Minster Jean Chrétien. Sylvia Ostry has been invited as one of twelve "global thinkers" to speak to the attendees.
Directed by Janice Stein and Alan Alexandroff, the Program's ambitious agenda continues to expand. during the past year, the focus has been on developing a course offered in the Faculty of Law on dispute resolution. the course is taught by Stein, Alexandroff, Philip Siller, and Jeffrey Rose. The Faculty now offers a certificate in dispute resolution. on the publication front, this past June the C.D. Howe institute released Citizen Engagement and Conflict resolution: lessons for Canada in International Experience, by Janice stein, David r. Cameron, and Richard Simeon, with Alan Alexandroff. The piece has attracted a great deal of attention. Return to the table of contents.
In April, the Centre held a panel discussion on "The WTO Telecommunication Agreement and its Impact on Canada." Leading the discussion were Jonathan Aronson, Director of the School of International Relations and Professor in the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California, and Meriel Bradford, Vice-President, Teleglobe Canada.
In May, CIS sponsored lectures by Don Johnston, Secretary General of the OECD, on "Unemployment-Who is to Blame?" and by Andrew Griffith, Counsellor at the Canadian Permanent Mission in Geneva, on "The WTO's Trade and Environment Challenges."
In June, CIS hosted a luncheon seminar by Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs (International). His topic was "Managing Global Financial Markets: The Role of the G-7."
Stephen Blank, holder of the Bissell Chair during the 1996-97 academic year, gave several public lectures and seminars over the course of the year. Many people from inside the University as well as from the broader community heard presentations, including: "Canada and the United States: Visions of the 21st Century," "Rediscovering North America," and "The Politics of Cyberspace: A perspective on Corporate Strategy."
Klaus Conrad, our German and European Studies professor for the year gave popular lectures on such topics as monetary integration in Europe, problems of economic adjustment in Germany, and trade and the environment.
CIS ASEAN Chair Johan Saravanamuttu has been presenting a very well-received series of lectures and seminars on ASEAN, APEC, and policy developments in the southeast Asian region at universities across the country.
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On May 21, CIS hosted a reception in honour of Gerald Helleiner on the occasion of the publication of Global Development Fifty Years After Bretton Woods. Essays in Honour of Gerald K. Helleiner. The book was published by Macmillan, in cooperation with the North-South Institute, and was edited by Roy Culpepper, Al Berry, and Frances. Stewart.
This summer, Cornell University Press released Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy by Louis Pauly. The book explores the political foundations of evolving global financial markets. At its core is an examination of the emergence of multilateral economic surveillance, especially as practiced by the International Monetary Fund. The book combines original historical material with international economic and political analysis. Jacques de Larosiere, now president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, calls it "an absolutely remarkable piece that brings together the realities of the global markets of today and the international financial institutional setting which has evolved over the years."
Also recently published is Competition Policy in the Global Economy: Modalities for Cooperation, edited by Len Waverman, William Comanor, and Akira Goto. The book appears in the respected Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy Series. In a policy arena of rapidly increasing importance to international trade and investment, the book brings together path-breaking contributions from policymakers, lawyers, and prominent scholars from several countries.
Current publications of the NAFTA Environmental Effects Project include: John Kirton and Rafael Fernandez, "NAFTA's Institutions: Their Environmental Impacts and Potential," Trade and Environment Series 5 (Montreal: North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 1997); "Building a Framework for Assessing NAFTA Environmental Effects," Trade and Environment Series 4 (Montreal: Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 1997); John Kirton and Julie Soloway, "Assessing NAFTA's Environmental Effects: Dimensions of a Framework and the NAFTA Regime," Trade and Environment Series 1, (Montreal: Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 1996).
At a reception honouring Len Waverman last spring, CIS Senior Research Fellow Ed Safarian thanked Len for believing that life continues for professors long after their formal retirement dates. Ed's recent publications make the point even clearer. They include the fruits of several recent CIS projects: N.S. Siddharthan and A.E. Safarian, "Transnational Corporations, Technology Transfer and Imports of Capital Goods: The Recent Indian Experience," Transnational Corporations (April 1997); A.E.Safarian, "Trends in the Forms of Business Organizations," in Competition Policy in the Global Economy (London: Routledge, 1997); and Farid Harianto and A.E. Safarian, "MNEs and Technology Diffusion: A Southeast Asian Experience," in P.J. Buckley and J.-L. Muchielli, eds., Multinational Firms and International Location (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1997). Ed also contributed to three chapters in the new volume, Trade, Innovation, and Industrial Performance: India-Canada Linkages, edited by Sunder Magun and published by the Centre for Trade Policy and Law. What retirement?
Forthcoming and recently released output from the Program on Trade, Environment and Canadian Competitiveness includes: John Kirton, "The Commission for Environmental Cooperation and Canada-U.S. Governance in the NAFTA Era" American Review of Canadian Studies (1998); Alan Rugman and John Kirton (eds.), with Julie Soloway, Trade and the Environment: Economic, Legal and Policy Perspectives, (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1998); Alan Rugman, and Julie Soloway, "An Environmental Agenda for APEC: Lessons from NAFTA", The International Executive (November 1997); Alan Rugman, John Kirton, and Julie Soloway, "Canadian Corporate Strategy in a North American Region", American Review of Canadian Studies (1997); Alan Rugman, John Kirton, and Julie Soloway, "NAFTA, Environmental Regulations and Canadian Competitiveness," Journal of World Trade (31(4), 1997); Alan Rugman and Julie Soloway, "Corporate Strategy and NAFTA when Environmental Regulations are Barriers to Trade", Journal of Transnational Management Development (1997); and several case studies available from CIS.
Publications coming out of the May 1997 APEC Conference at CIS include: John Kirton, "Canada and APEC: Contributions and Challenges," Asia Pacific Papers 3 (Vancouver: Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 1997); John Kirton, Karen Minden, and Steve Parker, Linking the APEC Community: Canada's Objectives for APEC 1997, (Vancouver: Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 1997); and John Kirton, Karen Minden, Steve Parker and Isobel Studer (eds.) Canada and the Challenge of APEC: The Road to Vancouver (Vancouver: Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 1997).
The year Peter Warrian spent as a fellow of the Centre yielded Hard Bargain : Transforming Public Sector Labour-Management Relations. The book was published by McGilligan Books, Toronto. The Program on Latin America and the Caribbean has released 24 working papers to date. They are being circulated among 60-75 centres and researchers in both Canada and Latin America. Many more are in production, most connected with the projects noted above. Contact CIS for further information..
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The CIS Seminars will actually comprise a series of meetings of research groups organized around particular sub-fields and important topics within the broader field of international studies.
-The NAFTA Series, initiated last year by John Kirton and Stephen Blank, the Bissell-Fulbright Chair in 1996-97, will continue. The seminars link on-going work on NAFTA and its effects across a range of social, environmental, and political issue-areas. In a tangible way, they also link collaborative research projects underway at U of T, Pace University in New York, cole des Hautes tudes Commerciales in Montreal.
-A new series, Emergent Perspectives in 'Development' Strategy, is being launched this year. Gavin Smith, Professor of Anthropology at U of T is the organizer. Richard Sandbrook of Political Science, Al Berry of Economics and Sue Horton of Economics are also helping to get the series underway.
-A series of seminars continues on Global Governance and the G-7. The seminars are connected to the continuing work of the G-7 Research Group directed by John Kirton and Peter Hajnal.
-Seminars will also continue to be offered by U of T faculty and distinguished visitors on international theoretical and policy issues of general interest.
Sessions already scheduled for the first semester are listed above. Once again, please check the CIS website regularly for announcements and updates. Announcements will also occasionally be made by mail and e-mail, so please keep us advised if your coordinates change. New addresses for our mailing list are most welcome.).
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