The New Geo-Governance: A Baroque Approach

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

In The New Geo-Governance, Paquet argues that the world no longer
consists of Westphalian nation-states in which governments can do
whatever they please inside their own territory. To a point, that is
true. NATO intervened when Slobodan Milosevic abused Kosovo’s ethnic
Albanians, and war criminals from Rwanda faced trials in international
courts. Yet Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe can strip white farmers
of their lands, even if those lands were acquired after the end of the
colonial era in 1980, and neighbouring governments say and do nothing as
Mugabe’s theft leads to famine. Nation-states and the national
governments retain power that they can use, constructively or otherwise.


Chapter 5 provides useful information on Canada’s role in the world,
especially in the western hemisphere. Chapter 8 includes discussions of
the fishery around Australia and the Canada–U.S. management of the
fishery in the Gulf of Maine. Saltwater fisheries certainly exemplify
the need for international co-operation.

Chapter 11, “Toward a Baroque Governance in 21st Century Canada,”
suggests that this country and its people must make major changes in
order to remain united and prosperous. Productivity growth has been
“lacklustre.” The health and educational systems are inefficient.
Canadians must become more competitive in global markets.

Reading this book requires one’s full attention. Long, convoluted
sentences combine with obscure charts and jargon, and guarantee that it
will not have a big audience. Even the most scholarly reader may be
stymied by chapter

titles such as “Techno-nationalism and Meso-Innovation Systems: A
Cognitive Dynamics Approach,” and by sentences so long that when they
end, it is difficult to remember how they began. If Paquet hopes to
communicate with more than a small, select group, he must learn to
simplify, or he must find an editor who can simplify for him.