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Stephen Clarkson, CM, FRSC (born 1937) is one of Canada’s preeminent political scientists and a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto.

His current work focuses primarily on two areas: the evolution of North America as a continental state, reinstitutionalized by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and two decades of neo-conservatism; and the impact of globalization and trade liberalization on the Canadian state. His recent publications on these themes include Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism and the Canadian State, published in 2002; and Global Governance and the Semi-peripheral State: The WTO and NAFTA as Canada's External Constitution in Governing under Stress: Middle Powers and the Challenge of Globalization".

Clarkson has taught and written on Canadian foreign policy and federal party politics. Following an unsuccessful campaign as Liberal candidate for the mayoralty of Toronto in 1969, Clarkson was active in the Liberal Party for six years. After Pierre Trudeau’s retirement from active politics in 1984, Clarkson spent a decade co-authoring the epic, Trudeau and Our Times, with his wife Christina McCall, which won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

His knowledge and experience in Canadian politics led to the commissioning of a history of federal election campaigns in Canada from 1974 onward. These essays were the basis of his 2005 book, The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics. Clarkson is renowned for his teaching, receiving many teaching awards in his tenure at the University of Toronto. He is a great encourager of “the engaged” life, taking his students on extra-curricular field studies to Washington, D.C. and Mexico, and urging them to resist the world around them if they feel so inclined. Clarkson is a frequent commentator of Canadian politics, in both English and French. A lover of languages, he is also proficient in Spanish, German, Russian and Italian.

Clarkson holds a B.A. from the University of Toronto, an M.A. from the University of Oxford, and a D. de Rech. from the University of Paris. He is a Senior Fellow at Massey College, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Ontario and, in 2004, was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.[1] In 2010, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.

Clarkson's first wife was then broadcaster and future Governor General of Canada Adrienne Clarkson with whom he has two daughters. His second wife was the late political writer Christina McCall, with whom he has a daughter.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Stephen Clarkson", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0