Fit for feminism? Examining policy capacity for Canada’s feminist foreign policy

Figures & data

Table 1. Wu et al. policy capacity matrix.

Levels of resources and capabilities	Skills and Competences
	Analytical	Operational	Political
Individual	Individual analytical	Individual operational	Individual political
Organizational	Organizational analytical	Organizational operational	Organizational political
Systemic	Systemic analytical	Systemic operational	Systemic political

Table 2. Systemic capacity for FFP.

Systemic political	Systemic organizational	Systemic analytical
Limited understanding of the popular support for FFP commitments	Divergent ministerial and government department mandates across FFP pillars	Underfunded academic institutions and professional training programs and high government reliance on private sector analytics
Divergent electoral promises across domestic and foreign policy positions	Existing GBA+ offers helpful policy foundation for FFP but existing implementation gaps suggest likely capacity gaps.	Underfunded and politically intimidated civil society organizations

Table 3. Organizational capacity for FFP.

Organizational-political	Organizational-operational	Organizational-analytical
Consultative processes exist but require more accountability, inclusivity, and accessibility directly tied to FFP recommendations	Institutions require updated decision-making and cross-divisional coordination processes to shift from realist to feminist ethics	Investments in organizational strategic positioning, agile and adaptive planning, learning, and evidence-based analytics is long overdue

Table 4. Individual capacity for FFP.

Individual-political capacity	Individual-operational capacity	Individual-analytical capacity
Frequent cabinet shuffles and delineated ministerial mandates limit ministerial but support prime ministers’ area of intervention	Incompletely implemented government mergers lead to unclear bureaucratic mandates and stronger elected officials’ oversight	Prolonged and systemic underfunding erodes institutional actors’ (across government, academia, and civil society organizations) analytical capacity
	Breaches of code of conduct within GAC and sexual assault and violence within Canada’s military further erode these dimensions.

Table 5. 9 dimensions of FFP policy capacity.

Individual analytical	Individual operational	Individual political
Prolonged and systemic underfunding erodes institutional actors’ (across government, academia, and civil society organizations) analytical capacity Breaches of code of conduct within GAC and sexual assault and violence within Canada’s military further erode these dimensions	Incompletely implemented government mergers lead to unclear bureaucratic mandates and stronger elected officials’ oversight Breaches of code of conduct within GAC and sexual assault and violence within Canada’s military further erode these dimensions	Frequent cabinet shuffles and delineated ministerial mandates limit ministerial but support prime ministers’ area of intervention
Organizational analytical	Organizational operational	Organizational political
Investments in organizational strategic positioning, agile and adaptive planning, learning, and evidence-based analytics is long overdue	Institutions require updated decision-making and cross-divisional coordination processes to shift from realist to feminist ethics	Consultative processes exist but require more accountability, inclusivity, and accessibility directly tied to FFP recommendations
Systemic analytical	Systemic operational	Systemic political
Reputable and stable, but fairly narrow, think-tank landscape	Divergent ministerial and government department mandates across FFP pillars	Limited understanding of the popular support for FFP commitments
Underfunded academic institutions and professional training programs	Existing GBA+ offers helpful policy foundation for FFP but existing implementation gaps suggest likely capacity gaps	Divergent electoral promises across domestic and foreign policy positions