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John Kincaid, the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government, will meet with officials of the government of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Barcelona on April 22 to advise them on an Action Plan for Foreign Affairs being developed by Catalonia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
“Catalonia is a legally recognized autonomous community within Spain, a country that has many characteristics of federalism. An autonomous community is somewhat like a U.S. state because it possesses some autonomous powers of self-government that are recognized by the national government,” says Kincaid, an expert on the foreign affairs activities of the constituent governments of federal countries. He teaches Lafayette courses on state and local government and politics, U.S. politics and government, and U.S. federalism.
“Catalonia is interested in projecting its national identity onto the global stage. It also wants to attract more foreign investment and tourists, export goods and services, and establish links with its Catalan diaspora,” he adds.
Kincaid recently wrote an introduction to a Catalan translation of The Federalist.
“Catalonia, like the Basque Country, is an historic national community within Spain with its own language, Catalan,” he says. “It first achieved independence in 989, but by 1714, it was absorbed into a centralized Spanish state. Under General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, from 1936-75, Catalonia’s language, culture, and nationalism were suppressed by the national government. Since the establishment of a democratic constitution in Spain in 1978, Catalonia has negotiated increased autonomy to govern itself and has revived its culture and language.”
Last November, Kincaid traveled to Iraq to serve as an adviser at a conference of Iraqi academics and government officials convened to establish an Iraq Center for Federal Studies.
He serves as senior editor of the Global Dialogue on Federalism, a joint program of the international Forum of Federations and International Association of Centers for Federal Studies. One product of the Global Dialogue is a series of books on comparative federalism. The most recent is a book entitled Foreign Relations in Federal Countries, published two months ago. Kincaid wrote the preface for this book and also contributed a section on bibliographic resources.