  Nucleon structure and the origin and nature of the nuclear force are
investigated in the context of a QCD-based effective field theory and the
path-integral method of hadronization. We start from a microscopic model of
quarks and diquarks where the gluons have been integrated out. In particular,
we use the chiral Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model to describe quark dynamics and
assume that the nucleon can be conceived as a quark-diquark relativistic bound
state. The hadronization method is then used to rewrite the problem in terms of
the physical meson and nucleon degrees of freedom. Next, by employing a loop
and derivative expansion of the resulting quark/diquark determinants, we arrive
at an effective chiral meson-nucleon Lagrangian. Nucleon properties such as
mass, coupling constants, electromagnetic radii, anomalous magnetic moments,
and form factors are derived using a theory of at most two free parameters.
