Abstract
From the earliest studies of soft power in International Relations, the importance of educational exchanges has been well-established. Studies of international education in the context of Canadian soft power often draw on cases from the higher education sector. This article argues that greater attention should be paid to the K-12 level, especially as budgetary pressures in Ontario’s education system are leading school boards to rapidly expand their international student recruitment efforts. Although this is not an example of intentional soft power projection, it nevertheless represents an important reminder that subnational actors may accidentally become paradiplomats whose actions have consequences on the international level. Further, this case reveals the importance of paying attention to actors typically overlooked by IR scholarship. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power and in conversation with prior research on international education as a mechanism of soft power projection, this article traces the thread between budgetary pressures in Ontario school boards and the broader context of soft power projection.
Keywords
Introduction
In Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Joseph Nye notes that one of the difficult elements of managing soft power is that its sources are not centralized. 1 Instead, soft power emerges from multiple sources. This decentralization stands in stark contrast to hard power, the coercive capacity of a nation that is much more frequently understood as residing in the hands of national government decision-makers. Soft power is an alternative operation for influence that sees the preferences of one state align with another not by force, threat, or promise, but because preferences are shifted into greater coherence. This shift takes place largely within the domain of culture.
The role of education in shaping culture and society is well-established in the literature on the sociology of education, 2 and it is little surprise that theorists of soft power would identify the strategic importance of student exchanges in projecting international power. 3 Nye points to the liberalizing influence that students from the Soviet Union who participated in student exchanges throughout the Cold War would go on to have during their careers. While other academic exchange programs have received attention in recent years due to allegations of espionage to benefit of China and the impact of international students at the postsecondary level on the Canadian housing market, the same level of attention has not been paid to the impact of primary and secondary education exchanges (especially from the perspective of international politics).
In this article I explore recent changes to Canadian soft power projection through K-12 student exchanges. Such exchanges have flown largely below the radar of IR scholars, due in large part to Ontario school boards being accidental paradiplomats. Indeed, school boards in Ontario are a curious level of government. Often, school boards receive little public engagement and experience low voter turnout in elections, and elected trustees serve part-time with low remuneration while being expected to offer a publicly-accountable balance to full-time professional administrators. Corporate governance models limit the political power of trustees and school boards, and the replacement of local taxation powers with centralized per-pupil funding from the Ministry of Education has reduced their ability to set their own fiscal priorities. 4 These constraints to school board agency are significant; by calling attention to Ontario school boards I do not wish to downplay these limitations. My argument is that we must pay attention to Ontario school boards—despite their limitations of agency—if we want to understand Canadian soft power projection today, because the boards have accidentally become paradiplomatic agents of Canadian soft power projection.
Scholars of Canadian political science and IR have explored paradiplomacy from multiple perspectives. In contrast to track two or unofficial diplomacy, paradiplomacy sees actors functioning in official capacities, but representing subnational, rather than national, units. 5 Perhaps the most familiar case of paradiplomacy in Canada has been the Québécois efforts to project identity, increase international engagements with the broader Francophone world, and, at times, strengthen claims to sovereignty. 6 Other provinces, some cities, and even non-governmental actors such as police departments have undertaken paradiplomacy, 7 although not at the scale of the provincial government of Quebec. As Leah Sarson has recently argued, Indigenous governance can also be understood from the perspective of paradiplomacy, given the influence that Indigenous nations have had on international relations. 8 Considered as an instance of both soft power projection and paradiplomacy, the impacts of the growth of student exchanges in response to Ontario school board budget pressures is doubly curious. Not only do we have a limited-agency actor engaging at a higher level of analysis than may be typical for that actor, but we also have an example of how paradiplomacy can arise accidentally. This case study merits further attention from IR scholars in Canada as well as from political scientists and policy analysts examining the business of school board governance. The first section explores the concept of soft power and its relationship to educational programming. The second section turns to the case study of Ontario school board budgetary pressures to provide context for the growth of student exchange strategies, while the third explores the implications of Ontario school boards as accidental paradiplomats of soft power projection. The conclusion reflects on future research trajectories and the complex role of school boards in Canadian governance.
Education and soft power projection
The concept of soft power arose in the twilight of the Cold War, as IR theorists sought to make sense of a world that was shifting away from coercive power politics towards more subtle forms of influence. In response to trends of hard power's reduced fungibility, tangibility, and coerciveness, Joseph Nye argued that “soft power resources” were becoming more important for the successful navigation of world politics, placing at centre stage the global reach of American culture in attracting others to shared priorities. 9 Rather than influencing the particular outcome of a decision through direct incentives or threats, soft power works as an ex ante influence to set the terms of one nation’s decision in a manner favourable to the nation exercising influence via soft power. Nye states that “soft power rests on the ability to set the political agenda in a way that shapes the preferences of others,” demonstrating the foundational logic that “if I can get you to want to do what I want, then I do not have to force you to do what you do not want to do.” 10 Stated in such terms, it seems almost self-evident that a soft power strategy would reduce costs, risks, and uncertainties by bringing another’s preferences in line with one’s own. The question, of course, is how this can be accomplished. This section reviews the concept of soft power, focusing particularly on Nye’s original formulation to demonstrate the longstanding connection between education and soft power. 11
Nye would go into much greater detail in the definition of soft power in his 2004 book of that title, exploring not only the nature but also the sources of soft power. The conceptualization of soft power as an influence on the preferences of others remains constant; however, the sustained reflection permits greater nuance, especially as it pertains to the decentralization of soft power. In an introductory reflection, Nye draws a parallel to a familiar concept from political economy that illustrates the concept while also indicating the difficulty of wielding soft power with the same dexterity as was possible with traditional forms of hard power: Much as Adam Smith observed that people are led by an invisible hand when making decisions in a free market, our decisions in the marketplace for ideas are often shaped by soft power—an intangible attraction that persuades us to go along with others’ purposes without any explicit threat or exchange taking place.
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But Nye’s point is not that soft power is beyond the scope of a state’s control in toto. He offers examples of successful strategies that America undertook during the Cold War to influence preferences in the Soviet Union. For the purposes of this article, the most significant is his focus on educational and academic exchanges, which are held up throughout the work as meaningful examples of American soft power projection. While many policy-makers feared that Soviet scientists would steal intellectual property on their research exchanges, Nye is careful to point out that “visitors vacuumed up political ideas along with scientific secrets” and “many such scientists became leading proponents of human rights and liberalization inside the Soviet Union,” offering the example of Aleksander Yakovlev. 15 Student exchanges are presented as particularly valuable soft power projection strategies because they permit the formation of a longstanding relationship between the student and the host country. In the American case, the inclusion of over two hundred future heads of state in such exchanges is taken as a strong value proposition for future alliance-building; these students-turned-world-leaders would eventually be explicitly identified as one of the greatest assets to America’s standing on the world stage. 16 This is not only a matter of elite diplomacy and courtship of future leaders. Nye reports that soon after 9/11, when government officials were tasked with considering public diplomacy efforts to improve America’s image in the Middle East, they quickly put forward policy proposals to increase student scholarships and visiting fellowships. 17 Nye’s own project was largely prompted by a desire to explore how soft power might have a greater role to play in service of American foreign policy (combining hard and soft power resources to form smart power). As both an analytical tool and a strategic policy direction, soft power has since this time been discussed in many national contexts. The American emphasis present in reviewing Nye’s work is not an attempt to Americanize the Ontario case study discussed below, but instead to demonstrate the longstanding connection between education and the earliest discussions of soft power.
In addition to the broader application of soft power in a variety of policy domains, 18 further research specifically on soft power projection through student exchanges has similarly reflected positively upon the promise of national student exchange strategies. Australia’s New Colombo Plan explicitly frames the development of student exchange programs in terms of foreign policy goals, via efforts to build relationships and project public diplomacy throughout the Indo-Pacific region. 19 Considerations of soft power are explicitly invoked in UK student exchange programs in that cast a wide net in terms of recruitment, but also inform more targeted efforts, such as South Korea’s efforts to build lasting relationships with Uzbekistan. 20 Japan’s use of student exchanges for soft power projection, highlighted by Nye as a significant example of the practice, has been shaped to build both regional and targeted (Japan-US) relations. 21 Similarly, China’s development of a variety of exchange arrangements, including bilateral exchanges with the European Union, mark a significant strategic element of Chinese soft power projection. 22 In Canada, the soft power implications of internationalization in higher education enrollments have been studied, although there is a general recognition that accelerated international student enrolments in the Canadian higher education sector is largely driven by university budgets rather than foreign policy. 23 While these studies of the higher education sector provide interesting insights that resonate with the K-12 experience, direct attention to the dynamics of policymaking at the school board level provides an important opportunity to consider the impact of these often-overlooked actors on shaping Canadian soft power projection.
School board budgets and international student strategies
School boards arose in the nineteenth century as education became viewed less as an aristocratic privilege and more as a public good. 24 From the outset, this had a directly civic function, with public schools deemed to be essential in ensuring that the next generation would know and uphold the values of nineteenth-century society. 25 Public schooling in Canadian colonies lagged behind systems in the US, 26 and officials in Upper Canada became concerned that children sent away to American schools would return with republican commitments. 27 To combat this, “grammar schools” were created in the province, with local authorities known as “district boards” developed to oversee them. 28 Over the decades, school boards of different sizes were created, amalgamated, and redistributed in an effort to meet administrative and political goals of the day. 29 In general, centralization of authority at the provincial level and standardization of curricular and funding models have diminished the autonomy of local school authorities, but the path was neither politically nor financially clean.
The roots of the current school board budgetary crisis in Ontario began with the controversial Education Quality Improvement Act of 1997. This act brought about sweeping changes to the K-12 system in Ontario, including the removal of power of local taxation from district school boards in favour of per-pupil grants determined by the Ministry of Education. 30 While central grants had previously covered around 70 percent of educational expenditures, local taxation grew as a share of educational expenditures through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. 31 As may be expected, the power of local taxation offers greater flexibility to local decision-makers, and the centralization of taxation decisions limits school board autonomy—especially in Ontario, where boards running a deficit could have their administration taken over by Ministry officials. 32 The per-pupil funding formula is largely made up of Grants for Student Needs, with other adjustments made for centrally identified priority areas (including rural boards, declining enrolment adjustments, and student transportation grants), with other circumstance-based revenue generation opportunities implemented locally based on central guidelines (such as educational development charges for future capital expenditures). 33 Aside from potential withdrawals from an accumulated surplus reserves, regulatory constraints meant that local school boards were—and are—severely limited in terms of their budgetary decision-making.
Successive provincial governments in Ontario since the Education Quality Improvement Act have witnessed increased budgetary strain, due to periods of falling behind inflation as well as unfunded program expansions. While the Dalton McGuinty (2003–2013) and Kathleen Wynne (2013–2018) governments funded an inflation-adjusted 20 percent increase to per-pupil funding from 2003 to 2015, serious funding pressures remained due to changes around small class sizes, full-day kindergarten, and lingering insufficiencies for at-risk, special education, and additional-language learning programs. 34 The subsequent Doug Ford government saw inflation-adjusted funding decline by $800 per pupil between 2017–2018 and 2021–2022. 35 While some of the revenue decreases follow from the change to the secondary student funding that accounts for two e-learning courses (regardless of whether or not students opt out of the “optional requirement”) there is speculation that the sale of curriculum and course content may lead to new revenue streams. At present, one of the last levers solely in the hands of local school boards is fee-paying international student recruitment.
The 2015 strategy for K-12 international student exchanges frames the program as providing a richer and more global experience for students in Ontario schools, but also explicitly recognizes the attractive economic promise of international student programs. The four stated goals of the strategy are: the increased interaction of Ontarian students with the world through meeting international students, studying international languages, and twinning with other schools; high-quality experiences for international students in Ontario, both in terms of curricular and extracurricular experiences; showcasing and developing Ontario’s expertise in education; and providing international students with pathways to post-secondary education and the workforce. 36 In its more fiscally oriented pages, however, the strategy notes that “some boards may also be able to offset declining enrolment through accepting larger numbers of tuition-based visa students, gaining new revenue sources in the process.” 37 The school board benefits in different ways from domestic and international students. As the strategy notes, international students “choose Ontario as a place to learn and to share intercultural experiences,” and while they are a valuable addition to the learning environments that they join; however, the report notes that “they may also be recruited by boards in response to issues of declining enrolment in some areas, or as an additional source of revenue”—a much more pragmatic rationale. 38
The years since the strategy’s publication have seen increases to the international student program, with readily apparent motivations and difficulties. 39 Reports in 2017 spoke of rapidly growing programs across the province, with recruiters attending international events and drawing on global networks. 40 With rapid expansion, however, cracks began to show. Investigative reporters found an unregulated industry where students in their early teens were sometimes left stranded by insufficiently attentive host families or custodians. 41 Scholars have highlighted that the attractiveness of the revenue stream, given the centralization and tightening of purse strings for education, have led to a financialized focus of policy development—creating a feedback loop where increased budgetary pressures lead to expanded recruitment to boost revenues, only to justify a slowing of provincial investment in education. 42 While international student programs offer a revenue stream that is within the school board’s control, the funding gaps that have only deepened since the late 1990s have given school boards a strong financial incentive to build their own strategies. The majority of media and political attention around international student recruitment has focused on the post-secondary level, which involves a much larger volume of students. However, as I argue in the following section, recalling the role of education in soft power means that ignoring the complex issue of K-12 international students also overlooks the potential political implications of school board actions on the international stage.
School boards and soft power paradiplomacy
To suggest that school boards are accidental paradiplomats projecting Canada’s soft power is to say that they have stumbled into the business of building cultural bridges to export understandings of Canadian society. This is not, as in the case of Quebec, a purposeful paradiplomacy whereby a subnational government seeks to articulate a strong message about its culture, identity, and society, and to forge beneficial networks on the international stage. Instead, financial pressures have left school boards with international student recruitment as one of the only methods of revenue generation within their control. Yes, the provincial-level strategy highlights that domestic students will benefit from the diversity of experiences that such programs may bring to their learning environments, but in a post-amalgamation Ontario education sector where school boards now service many communities, the primary benefit at the school board level of analysis is financial. And yet, I argue that there remains a force of soft power projection that accompanies the programming. This section proceeds with an analysis of promotional materials and program structures alongside the logic of education-based soft power projection described by Nye.
While many individual school boards have developed specialized program offerings, the standard international student experience involves a one-year exchange. At the elementary level, this typically involves a parent or guardian moving to the school community to live with the child, and at the secondary school level, students are generally placed with a “home-stay” family that has been vetted by the school board. The Ontario Association of School Districts International, the organization representing school boards that participate in international student exchange programs, explicitly links the discussion of typical experiences of international students to cultural exposure: Many students stay for several years during high school with an aim of pursuing a post-secondary pathway at a Canadian university or college; other students study in Ontario for a shorter time period with the goal of improving language skills and learning about a different culture… Each long-term student is required to have a legal custodian while studying in Ontario, and while some students live with a relative or family friend, most students live with a family in Homestay. Living with an Ontario family for an extended time period is an excellent way for international students to learn about Canadian culture in a caring and supportive environment.
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Writing for leaders in the American higher education sector, Nye offers a useful framework for considering how educational programming can serve as soft power projection. Even if the case of international student programs designed by Ontario school boards are accidentally paradiplomatic, considering their entanglement with soft power projection provides an interesting window into the current status of Canadian soft power. Nye suggests that the attractiveness of a nation’s culture is the first of three key resources of soft power, and notes that educational and academic exchanges are important opportunities because of their immersive experience. 46 Although high tuition fees may appear at first glance to be exclusionary and potentially a limiting factor for soft power projection, this actually falls broadly in line with Nye’s understanding of such educational exchanges as being an opportunity for foreign elites. 47 This economic elitism is perhaps even a strength of the program from Nye’s perspective: “because exchanges affect elites, one or two key contacts may have a major political effect.” 48 The efforts by school boards to offer opportunities to engage with cultural highlights alongside their educational programming seeks to present national culture in the most favourable terms, foregrounding the attractiveness of Canada. Here, too, we find a symbiosis between the development of a clear value proposition—with competition for international student recruits, school boards want to highlight the quality of cultural experiences and excursions that complement the academic elements—and Canadian soft power projection. As Nye notes, a culture’s level of attractiveness is an important factor in building the relationships that will subsequently serve as a soft power resource for a country. 49 Again, we find an alignment of interests between school boards, seeking to close financial gaps, and national soft power politics.
This accidental alignment of interests informs my suggestion that school boards are accidental paradiplomats. The bleak financial situation of Ontario school boards has left these institutions with few options to explore as they attempt to meet the needs of their students and represent constituents’ interests. In an effort to recruit international students, they have recognized that developing attractive cultural experiences can improve the quality of their international education programs. Stronger programs promise to benefit international students (as improved programs may better meet their needs), domestic students (offering an opportunity for richer and more diverse classrooms with global perspectives, as well as increasing the funding for schools), and the boards’ bottom lines. But at the same time, there are impacts beyond the school system that relate to the country’s soft power projection. By designing programs that amplify the attractiveness of Canadian culture to elite members of different nations, the school boards are developing further soft power resources in line with Nye’s prescriptions of soft power. That the leadership on this effort comes from the oft-ignored local level of school board governance is particularly important, as it demonstrates that the analysis of soft power projection must be analyzed in terms of both intentional and unintentional policy efforts, in expected and unexpected places.
Conclusion
Following then minister of foreign affairs Lloyd Axworthy’s explicit endorsement of soft power in the 1990s, a debate erupted among the Canadian foreign policy commentariat. 50 Often critical of the explicit branding of the softer touch that Axworthy advocated, 51 this debate focused largely on the strategic direction of the government. The timing of the shift towards soft power policy conveniently fit with budget cuts towards hard power resources during the Jean Chrétien government—a point that was not lost on critics. 52 Although there may be great value gained from paying attention to the federal government’s direct efforts to project soft power, 53 this article has argued for a much wider net to be cast to appreciate the broad network of actors contributing in multiple and often uncoordinated ways to Canadian soft power projection. Just as Hollywood contributes to the projection of American culture without coordination with the American foreign policy establishment, so too do actors beyond the Canadian federal government’s umbrella. Further research is needed to understand the impact of non-federal and, more broadly, non-state instances of soft power projection in Canada. 54
A second conclusion that I draw from this discussion speaks to the fields Canadian political science and International Relations. Ontario school boards have received relatively limited scholarly attention, owing in part to their constraints around policy-related and financial decision-making. However, the case described above demonstrates that politically relevant externalities may follow from the actions of these oft-overlooked political bodies. Recent research by Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard on political identity-construction through history curricula in Ontario and Quebec demonstrates the importance of taking seriously the broader political implications of educational policy. 55 Even in situations where decisions around funding, curriculum, and program construction are made at a higher level of government, local implementation plans and resource decisions may introduce new elements for consideration.
It might have been easy to explain away the lack of attention if educational exchanges were not known to be powerful techniques of soft power promotion. Similarly, if public education systems in Canada had no historical or contemporary connection to civic education or political notions of citizenship or national identity, we might accept this case as an unforeseeable accident. Yet neither is the case. It may well be the case that financial prospects are motivating school board actions in expanding international student recruitment efforts, yet the political role of Canadian public education and the established connection between educational exchanges and soft power projection mean that the significance of the accidental paradiplomacy should be self-evident. Further attention must be paid to this issue to assess the soft power ramifications of these budgetary decisions and to adjudicate if soft power and its implications demands more consideration. This should be more than a matter of marketing materials promising a trip to the CN tower or to taste maple syrup—the question of what culture is shared is one of utmost importance to understand the radically unknown content of these programs.
Footnotes
Funding Statement
Government of Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Mitacs Accelerate.
Notes
Author Biography
Michael P.A. Murphy is a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University, and a Digital Policy Hub fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. He is the author of Quantum Social Theory for Critical International Relations Theorists (2021), Weak Utopianism in Education (forthcoming), more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles, and numerous book reviews and chapters, receiving over 1700 citations. He serves as editorial assistant at Security Dialogue and past president of the Education and Learning in International Affairs Section of the ISA. His work can be found at: 
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