Biography	20 seconds	Quicktime
Model Citizen	3 minutes	Quicktime
Using the Model Citizen Concept to Engage Canadians	1 minute	Quicktime
Multilateral Institutions	3 minutes	Quicktime

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Transcript:

Bio

I am Jennifer Welsh. I am a Canadian. I teach international relations at the University of Oxford and I have been a research fellow in the Department of Foreign Affairs. I’ve taught international relations at Canadian Universities, but I’ve been living in the UK for the last 5 years.

Model citizen

I introduced this idea of the model citizen because I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the idea of Canada as a middle power. It wasn’t working for me as a touchstone for my own thinking about Canada’s role in the world, but I also think it wasn’t providing an inspiration for Canadians about their country’s role in the world. I developed the idea of the model citizen out of alternative visions for Canada that we might engage in, in a post 911 world. There’s a model of Canada that says Canadian foreign relations should effectively be about Canada-US relations, that that’s where our destiny lies. There’s a vision of Canada that is Canada as the “new Norway”, the lean mean Scandinavian country that brokers peace agreements, that tries to play a niche role in the international system. There’s a view of Canada as a wielder of soft power in the international system, often associated with the Axworthy years. And I think I draw a bit from that last concept, but I increasingly think a huge aspect of Canadian foreign policy is simply being what we are, which is a highly successful model of a liberal democracy. And that has a foreign policy function, because it is an incubator of ideas, of models, of experiments in nation-building for other countries around the world. So that’s one aspect of modeling.

I use the model citizen and the word “model” as a verb as well. “To model”. Not on the cat walk, but on the idea that you model for someone else, you demonstrate, you assist, you instruct. Not necessarily imposing and providing the answer, but helping someone else help themselves. And I see this as a bit of an analogy for what Canada might do in state building and state reconstruction. Again, that’s a slightly different approach from what you might see coming out of the United States, it’s probably slightly more akin to the European approach to reconstruction. But it is also very uniquely Canadian. We have our unique niche to play. My own view is that Canada’s value-added on state building can be in the area of rule of law and issues related to building a judiciary, a functioning Charter, a civilian police force. When I think of where we have expertise, that would be a major area.

The citizen idea, if I can just say a word about that, really comes from viewing the global space as a community with citizens in it. And that Canada will rarely act alone or independently, but will be contributing alongside others – much as a private model citizen might do. So I try to get across this idea in the book of both citizenship and modelling as a way of thinking of Canada.

Using the Model Citizen Concept to Engage Canadians

I think what it does is that it can provide two things. First of all, it can provide a sounding board – does this seem right to you as a way of thinking about our country, or do you have another vision of Canada that you want to engage against this one? I think it’s always useful to have a vision out there or an idea out there that people can react to and mold themselves. But I think, secondly, the reason why it’s useful is that it’s a very participatory concept. Model citizen suggests that you are engaging ordinary citizens as well in your foreign policy.

This step needs to come first. We talk about our values and interests being so important to what we do in the world, but before you can articulate those, you have to have a sense of what you are, and who you are. So it’s a nice way for Canadians to engage in that thinking process - “what do we want to be?”. And then your interests and your values flow from that. But this primary discussion is very important.

Multilateral Institutions

I think in a sense the Iraq war shone a spotlight on some of the challenges of our multilateral system. I’ll mention three of them. The first challenge is that they are very slow moving in their decision-making. We’re seeing this now also over Darfour. Because the systems have developed consensus decision-making, it’s very hard to get quick results. As you see in a crisis like Darfour, or even Rwanda, that is just not good enough if you actually want to be able to respond to things that are happening.

The second problem with our multilateral institutions is that they are increasingly being seen as illegitimate, as secretive, as operating according to one code in private, and another code in public. They are not necessarily representative of all the parts of the world; they are influenced by petty politics and aren’t generating the outcomes people would like to see.

The last problem facing multilateral institutions is the challenge that the United States poses. How do you manage a multilateral system when you have one very powerful state? I would argue this isn’t a new problem, but it’s a particular configuration of that problem.

Those are some of the issues facing multilateral institutions. I think some of the solutions lie most obviously with reform: thinking about a different membership for some of our key bodies, like the United Nations. Also investigating leaner decision-making procedures, actually segmenting the type of problems that come to foreign organizations - where certain issues would require full consensus, others you might be able to move with a subset of players in the organization to allow us to respond more rapidly to some of these crises.

I think the last problem is in a way the hardest to solve. But there is a solution for it, and that is to reengage the United States in the multilateral system by reminding the United States of why multilateralism is important and can work. It is to demonstrate that it’s a way for the United States to minimize risk, to share burdens. That’s an incredibly pragmatic argument to be making, especially in the current environment. Multilateralism is way of sharing the spotlight when things go bad, but also when things go well, and of sharing the burden. For a super power that has interests all over the world and doesn’t have unlimited resources, that burden-sharing message might be a way of reengaging the United States.