Samuel P. Huntington, the American political scientist who has died at 81, was relatively unknown outside public policy circles until the publication of "The Clash of Civilizations?", a 1993 essay that examined whether future conflicts would be based on divisions among cultures rather than nation-states.

By 1996, Huntington had dropped the question mark and expanded his thesis into a best-selling book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. It was among attempts by US theorists to examine the post-cold war world after the defeat of communism.

Huntington's thesis contrasted with Francis Fukuyama's similarly interrogative 1989 essay, "The End of History?", reformulated as the more affirmative The End of History and the Last Man in 1992, which argued that the west's victory represented the universal triumph of free-market democracy.