Negotiated Identities in North Africa

Abstract

Negotiation and Construction of National Identities. By Karim Mezran. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2007. 222 pp., $139.00 (ISBN: 978-90-04-15808-5). In Negotiation and Construction of National Identities, Karim Mezran proposes a distinctive approach to the study of national identity by examining the impact of inter-elite negotiation on nation-building and the resulting national identity. Mezran's two central arguments are that the national identity that emerges at the national movement stage is not necessarily “the product of conscious elite actions,” but it is “the outcome of elite negotiations (or lack thereof)” (pp. 1–2), and that successfully negotiated identities at the nation-building phase lead to a more stable polity later on. In Negotiation and Construction of National Identities, Mezran's goal is essentially twofold: (1) to contribute to theoretical debates on the construction of national identity by using negotiation analysis and (2) to explore how well his theoretical framework works in four empirical case studies. Employing I. William Zartman's three-step negotiation model (Zartman and Berman 1982), he seeks to explain the timing and process of inter-elite negotiation on the construction of national identities. In Mezran's framework, the national elite, as the interpreter of national history and “the custodian of society's collective memory” (p. 12), identifies the need to form a national identity or nation-building and decides to negotiate with other parties involved in the process. These elites then engage in negotiations to find a shared definition of the national identity. Finally, they negotiate the details of this agreement to implement it at certain moments. Mezran argues that, throughout this process, elite negotiations are mainly conducted through informal channels such as “emissaries, notes, dispatches, speeches, …