The bureaucratization of the political process that characterizes twentieth century politics in many countries has not bypassed Canada—as evidenced by skyrocketing rates of government employment and expenditure and, even more dramatically, by the ever-expanding policy-making power of Canadian bureaucracy. One observer sees the civil service as occupying an increasingly strategic role in Canadian politics, a condition that

reflects in part the expanding role of modern government into highly technical areas, which tends to augment the discretion of permanent officials because legislators are obliged to delegate to them the administration of complex affairs, including the responsibility for drafting and adjudicating great amounts of sub-legislation required to “fill in the details” of the necessarily broad, organic statutes passed by Parliament. Some indication of the scale of such discretion is found in the fact that, during the period 1963–8, an annual average of 4,130 Orders-in-Council were passed in Ottawa, a substantial proportion of which provided for delegating authority to prescribe rules and regulations to ministers and their permanent advisers. By contrast, the number of laws passed annually by Canadian federal parliaments is rarely over one hundred.

Developments and problems in contemporary thinking about strategy

The purpose of this analysis is to review the most important changes in contemporary thinking about strategy and to draw certain conclusions. Beginning with the different stages in the evolution of “classical” theories and the coming of “academic” ideas developed as explanations of a strategy of deterrence between the two super-powers, the analysis emphasizes the relation between the new explanations of conflicts among social groups and the new categories for defining strategy. It also stresses the relation between a theory of the multiple causes of conflicts and wars and the development of the interdisciplinary interpretation of the analysis of strategy. In conclusion, it is argued that the current stage of research into a “qualitative” change in the analysis of strategy also implies new objectives for strategy that are required for the problem of the survival of mankind.