Free to choose? Globalization, dependence and Canada's changing foreign investment regime, 1957-1987

This dissertation employs a combined international political economy and public policy framework to analyze Canada's changing foreign investment regime in the 1957-87 period.;In contrast to much of the previous scholarly work this research does not focus exclusively on investment screening. Instead, Canada's foreign investment regime is conceptualized in terms of three broad types of policy instruments and the differing levels of state intervention and coercion of private investors they involve. Changes in the pattern of policy instruments used to manage foreign direct investment (FDI) in the 1957-87 period are described. These changes are then accounted for by tracing the influence of three power-based relationships which are seen to act as constraints on the state's choice of policy instruments. The three relationships include: (1) Canada's changing relationship to international capital. (2) Canada's economic dependence on the United States as a source of capital and a market for the export of Canadians goods. (3) Canada's relationship to the international investment regime, which becomes increasingly hostile to national controls over FDI.;The impact of these factors, however, is mediated by a changing consensus within the Canadian state on its role in the domestic economy.;This dissertation addresses the question of how much room to manoeuvre sovereign states, such as Canada, have in their choice of economic policy instruments in an era of increasingly globalized production. It also calls into question the notion that multilateral fora and international organizations can provide an alternative for Canada to a bilateral approach to economic policy disputes. As such it challenges the idea that bilateral asymmetries and economic dependence can be counteracted through multilateralism.