‘An enemy at the gates’ or ‘from victory to victory’? Russian foreign policy

Russian foreign policy reflects an evolving balance between vulnerability and opportunity. For much of President Putin's second term, Russia has been on the defensive. Despite increasing economic strength, observed in greater activity and an apparently more confident rhetorical stance, Russian diplomacy reflected a sense of vulnerability in Moscow. Indeed, diplomacy was largely inward looking: on the one hand it was a tool with which to unite and mobilize the Russian population rather than confront the West; on the other hand, it was a means of preventing external interference in Russian domestic affairs. On another level, Moscow sees an international situation destabilized by the unilateral actions of the US and an attempt by the ‘western alliance’ to assert and export its value system. But Moscow also believes that the international situation has reached a moment of transition, one which presents an opportunity for a Russia that lays claim to a global role. Russian foreign policy reflects a broad consensus in Moscow that asserts Russia's status as a leading power with legitimate interests. This moment of opportunity coincides with Moscow's desire to rethink the results of the post‐Cold War period and to establish Russia as a valid international player. Continuing constraints and recognition that its domestic priorities proscribe Moscow from seeking confrontation with the West, which it cannot afford. Nonetheless, the attempt to establish the legitimacy of sovereign democracy as an international model of development appears to represent an important development in how Russia will approach wider European politics.     

The changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector in metropolitan and rural regions, 1976–1997

This paper documents the changing geography of the Canadian manufacturing sector over a 22‐year period (1976–1997). It does so by looking at the shifts in employment and differences in production worker wages across different levels of the rural/urban hierarchy—central cities, adjacent suburbs, medium and small cities and rural areas. The analysis demonstrates that the most dramatic shifts in manufacturing employment were from the central cities of large metropolitan regions to their suburbs. Paralleling trends in the United States, rural regions of Canada have increased their share of manufacturing employment. Rising rural employment shares were due to declining employment shares of small cities and, to a lesser degree, large urban regions. Increasing rural employment was particularly prominent in Quebec, where employment shifted away from the Montreal region. The changing fortunes of rural and urban areas were not the result of across‐the‐board shifts in manufacturing employment, but were the net outcome of differing locational patterns across industries. In contrast to the situation in the United States, wages in Canada do not consistently decline, moving down the rural/urban hierarchy from the largest cities to the most rural parts of the country. Only after controlling for the types of manufacturing industries found in rural and urban regions is it apparent that wages decline with the size of place .