French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with “la Grande Nation”
by Charles Cogan

Even before it led opposition to the recent war on Iraq, France was considered the most difficult of the United States’ major European allies. But, whether they like it or not, the two nations are going to have to deal with one another for a long time to come. Cogan offers practical suggestions for making negotiations more cooperative and productive—although he also emphasizes the long-term damage inflicted by the crisis over Iraq. Drawing on candid interviews with many of today’s leading players on the French, American, British, and German sides, this engaging volume will inform and stimulate both seasoned practitioners and academics as well as students of France and the negotiating process.

Charles Cogan is a senior research associate at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and an affiliate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Political Topographies shows that central rulers’ power, ambitions, and strategies of control vary across subregions of the national space, even in countries reputed to be highly centralized. Boone argues that this unevenness reflects a state-building logic that is shaped by differences in the political economy of the regions; that is, by relations of property, production, and authority that determine the political clout and economic needs of regional-level elites. Center-provincial bargaining, rather than the unilateral choices of the center, is what drives the politics of national integration and determines how institutions distribute power. Boone’s innovative analysis speaks to scholars and policy makers who want to understand geographic unevenness in the centralization and decentralization of power, in the nature of citizenship and representation, and in patterns of core-periphery integration and breakdown in many of the world’s multiethnic or regionally divided states.

Catherine Boone is associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a Harvard Academy Scholar (1990-92).

Please note that in the Winter 2004 Centerpiece (18:1) the information for Catherine Boone's book was mislabeled. The correct information is listed here. We apologize for the oversight.

Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity
by Samuel P. Huntington

In his seminal work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington argued provocatively and presciently that with the end of the cold war, “civilizations” were replacing ideologies as the new fault lines in international politics. Now Huntington turns his attention to domestic cultural rifts as he examines the impact other civilizations and their values are having on America, which was founded by British settlers who brought with them a distinct culture including the English language, Protestant values, individualism, religious commitment, and respect for law. The waves of immigrants that later came to the U.S. gradually accepted these values and assimilated into America’s Anglo-Protestant culture. More recently, however, national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of primarily Hispanic immigrants, bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the “denationalization” of American elites.

Samuel P. Huntington is Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University and chairman of the Harvard academy of International and Area Studies.