Stephen Clarkson, Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Canadian State.(Book Review)

Stephen Clarkson, Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Canadian State (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2002)

STEPHEN CLARKSON's Uncle Sam and Us is, without a doubt, an important contribution to Canadian political economy. Proceeding with theoretical sophistication and impressive empirical detail, Clarkson aims to clarify how, and to what extent, external forces associated with globalization and transnational integration have affected the Canadian state. Examining both the structural changes that have transformed the political framework of the Canadian state and the paradigm shift from postwar Keynesianism to neoconservative governance, Clarkson provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the often greater causal importance of the choices and policy decisions made by domestic political actors during the period when economic globalization was accelerating.

Uncle Sam and Us confronts simplistic versions of the now popular "globalization thesis" by rejecting the suggestion that the demise of Keynesian welfarism and the transformation of advanced capitalist states was the inevitable consequence of external forces associated with economic globalization. Clarkson reveals just how important domestic political and ideological choices have been to the transformation of the Canadian state over the past two decades. …