Political Topographies of the African State
by Catherine Boone

Political Topographies shows that central rulers’ powers, 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 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 (Academy Scholar, 1990-92) is associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus, 1569-1999
by Timothy Snyder

Moving from the sixteenth century to the present, and using a wide array of multi-lingual sources, The Reconstruction of Nations shows how multiple versions of national identity evolved and competed with each other in what are now Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Snyder contends that the triumph of modern ethnic nationalism in this part of Eastern Europe is very recent. Federalism and communal toleration were considered viable national ideas from the 16th through 20th centuries—only the atrocities of the Second World War buried such traditional alternatives. Snyder’s original explanations for these atrocities include the first scholarly account of the Ukrainian-Polish ethnic cleansings of the 1940s. Snyder concludes with an analysis of the peaceful resolution of national tensions in the region since 1989. Winner of the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the best publication in European international history since 1895.

Tim Snyder (Academy Scholar 1998-2000) is assistant professor of history at Yale University.

Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History by Richard Turits

This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. Turits reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime’s mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation’s large independent peasantry. Most of the existing literature casts the Trujillo dictatorship as the paradigm of despotic rule through coercion and terror alone. This book elucidates instead the hidden foundations of the regime, portraying everyday life and economy in the Dominican countryside and the exchanges between state and society under Trujillo. Winner of the American Historical Association’s John Edwin Fagg Prize for the best publication in Latin American history.

Richard Turits, (Academy Scholar 1996-1997 and 1999-2000) is associate professor of history, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.