Scholarly Essay US partisan perceptions of Stephen Harper’s shift in foreign policy Jonathan Paquin Political Science, Universite ´ Laval, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada Abstract While Stephen Harper’s foreign policy sparked heated debates during his entire tenure as prime minister, these debates were mainly confined to Canadian foreign policy cir- cles. Little attention was paid to allies’ perceptions of these developments and, more specifically, to the perception of the United States, Canada’s main economic and security partner. How did the Bush and Obama administrations perceive these changes? Were they seen as a break from Canada’s past? Did Harper’s handling of foreign policy alter White House calculations with respect to Canada? Based on a series of semi-structured interviews conducted in Washington DC with executive officials a few months prior to the end of the Harper era in 2015, this essay shows that despite a widespread percep- tion in Washington that Canada’s foreign policy approach had changed under Harper, partisanship was the main dividing line in terms of how this approach was perceived and assessed. Keywords United States, Canada, foreign policy, Canada–USA relations, perception, partisanship, Republicans, Democrats, Stephen Harper, Conservative Party Over a period of almost ten years (2006–2015), the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper distanced itself somewhat from Canada’s inter- nationalist past, which had been the dominant approach for over sixty years. Through a series of adjustments in tone and policy, Harper brought Canada’s foreign policy more in line with Conservative values. 1 His government was critical of liberal internationalism on the grounds that it compromised Canada’s core International Journal 2018, Vol. 73(2) 282–298 ! The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0020702018783321 journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx Corresponding author: Jonathan Paquin, Universite ´ Laval – Political Science, 1030, av. des Sciences-Humaines, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck, Que ´bec City, Que ´bec, G1V 0A6, Canada. Email: jonathan.paquin@pol.ulaval.ca 1. Philippe Lagasse´, Justin Massie, and Ste´phane Roussel, ‘‘Le ne´oconservatisme en politique e´tran- ge`re et de de´fense canadiennes,’’ in Julian Castro-Rea and Fre´de´ric Boily, eds., Le fe ´de ´ralisme selon