Suchergebnisse

A question that has puzzled students of ethnic politics can be stated as follows: in the face of increasing assimilation why do ethnics continue to vote as ethnics with about the same frequency as in earlier decades? On the basis of his New Haven study, Robert Dahl observes that "… in spite of growing assimilation, ethnic factors continued to make themselves felt with astonishing tenacity." Nevertheless, he asserts, "the strength of ethnic ties as a factor in local politics surely must recede." Dahl sets up a "three-stage" model to describe how political assimilation will follow a more general social assimilation. However, one of his co-researchers, Raymond Wolfinger, demonstrates in a recent article in this Review that ethnic voting patterns persist into the second and third generations, and that "at least in New Haven, all the social changes of the 1940's and 1950's do not seem to have reduced the political importance of national origins." The same observation can be made of religious-ethnic identities, for as Wolfinger notes, citing data from the Elmira study, social mobility in no way diminishes the religious factor as a determinant of voting behavior; in fact, in the case of upper and middle class Catholics and Protestants, religion seems to assume a heightened importance as a voting determinant. Wolfinger marshals evidence to support the arresting proposition that, melting pot or not, ethnic voting may be with us for a long time to come, a finding which craves explanation.Part of the reason for the persistence of ethnic voting may rest in the political system itself. Rather than being a purely dependent variable, the political system, i.e., party, precinct workers, candidates, elections, patronage, etc., continues to rely upon ethnic strategies such as those extended to accommodate the claims of newly-arrived ethnic middle-class leadership; as a mediator and mobilizer of minority symbols and interests, the political system must be taken into account.

Protracted conflicts over the status and demands of ethnic and religious groups have caused more instability and loss of human life than any other type of local, regional, and international conflict since the end of World War II. Yet we still have accumulated little in the way of accepted knowledge about the ethnic landscape of the world. In part this is due to empirical reliance on the limited data in the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project, whose selection biases are well known. In this article we tackle the construction of a list of 'socially relevant' ethnic groups meeting newly justified criteria in a dataset we call AMAR (A for All). We find that one of the principal difficulties in constructing the list is determining the appropriate level of aggregation for groups. To address this issue, we enumerate subgroups of the commonly recognized groups meeting our criteria so that scholars can use the subgroup list as one reference in the construction of the list of ethnic groups most appropriate for their study. Our conclusion outlines future work on the data using this expanded dataset on ethnic groups. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

Models of minority ethnic identity and White identity development are described, along with examples of ways in which the models can be used as heuristics for helping students to think about their own and others' ethnicity. Ethnic or racial identity formation depends on a process of exploration that includes questioning preexisting ethnic attitudes and searching into the past and present experiences of one's group and its relations with other groups. This process leads ideally to the development of a secure, positive sense of one's identity as a member of an ethnic or racial group, together with an acceptance of other groups. By exploring their own and others' ethnic identity, students can gain insight into the implications of ethnicity in a diverse society.

Qualitative theories of ethnic violence and rebellion have traditionally argued the importance of broad long-term processes that escalate ethnic tensions. Alternatively, quantitative scholarship has focused more narrowly on the question of onset. In this dissertation, I break with this tradition and quantitatively examine the structural factors associated with the escalation of ethnic tensions, including, but not limited to, the onset of ethnic rebellion. I build upon and refine elements of a power and legitimacy school of scholarship to shed light on three critical points of escalation in ethno-political power relations. First, the politicization of ethnic boundaries is more likely in states with limited resources and lower levels of ethnic diversity or abundant resources and higher levels of ethnic diversity. Second, in those states where ethnic boundaries have already been politicized, state sanctioned ethnic exclusion is more likely when resources are scarce and ethnic diversity is higher or resources are abundant and ethnic diversity is lower. Third, in those states where state sanctioned ethnic exclusion is practiced, ethnic rebellion is more likely when the size of the excluded population increases but the ethnic diversity of the excluded population remains lower. Importantly, even when the excluded population is very large, ethnic rebellions become less likely as the ethnic diversity of the excluded population increases. I test these hypotheses using the Ethnic Power Relations (EPR) Dataset, which includes the world's independent states from 1946 through 2005. Aside from the substantive contributions regarding the escalation of ethnic tensions, as a whole, the dissertation argues for, and demonstrates, the importance of quantitatively engaging with the entirety of qualitative theoretical perspectives, rather than just limiting quantitative inquiry to the onset of ethnic violence.