Asymmetry and Paradox: Social Policy and the U.S-Canada Bilateral Relationship.

The article focuses on the social policy and the U.S.-Canada bilateral relationship. The relationship between social policy and bilateral relations is reciprocal with social policy having important implications for bilateral relations and vice versa, asymmetrical with a much closer relationship between social policy and bilateral relations existing in Canada than in the U.S. and, in the Canadian case, paradoxical. Policy similarities between the two countries generate public concern in Canada that Canadian social policy is becoming Americanized and, in turn, generate resistance to deepening the bilateral relationship.