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We investigate the consequences of changes in marital status for political participation, treating marital status as marking points of continuity and transition in an individual's life history and marriage as a setting that fosters interaction and interdependence between marital partners. The analysis is based on panel and pseudopanel data from the 1965–82 socialization study of parents, offspring, and spouses. We find that marital transitions affect participation in four ways: (1) marital partners adjust their activity levels to become more like each other after marriage; (2) marital transitions of any type, especially marriage among younger people, tend to depress participation; (3) the overall effect of marriage, however, is powerfully mediated by the participation level of the partner; and (4) these mediation effects are greatest for political activities that involve collective efforts or draw upon the couple's joint resources.

This article calls into question the common claim that class identity does not matter for American political behaviour. Using panel-study data spanning thirty-two years and two generations, we investigate the effects of social-class identity on five participatory orientations towards government. As expected, working-class identifiers in both generations consistently display lower levels of involvement in politics than do middle-class identifiers. Significantly, however, these differences typically persist when the analysis controls for objective indicators of class and are always enhanced among those who retain the same class identity over time. Rather than sustaining a conclusion that class identification has little relevance for Americans, the results suggest that class may be particularly important in the present political context.

Attempts to explain whites' paradoxical support for principles of racial equality & intransigence on social policies aimed at rectifying racial inequities. A multivariate model is used to explore the effects of racial prejudice, beliefs about racial discrimination, stratification beliefs, & self-interest on whites' attitudes toward racial policies, based on data from the 1990 General Social Survey & the 1986 American National Election Study. Class positions were not found to be important determinants of whites' attitudes regarding race-targeted social policy. However, recognition of continuing racial discrimination, structuralist attributions of the causes of racial inequality, & group self-interest all played a significant part in determining whites' views of race-targeted policies. It is concluded that educational programs aimed at demonstrating the legacy of past & present discrimination & the effects of structured inequality can improve the prospects for successful policy interventions. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 40 References. Adapted from the source document.

Based on one of the most extensive scientific surveys of race ever conducted, this book investigates the relationship between racial perceptions and policy choices in America. The contributors-leading scholars in the fields of public opinion, race relations, and political behavior-clarify and explore images of African-Americans that white Americans hold and the complex ways that racial stereotypes shape modern political debates about such issues as affirmative action, housing, welfare, and crime.The authors make use of the largest national study of public opinion on racial issues in more than a generation-the Race and Politics Study (RPS) conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of California. The RPS employed methodological improvements made possible by Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing, a technique that enables analysts to combine the internal validity of laboratory experiments with the external validity of probability sampling. Taking full advantage of these research methods, the authors offer highly nuanced analyses of subjects ranging from the sources of racial stereotypes to the racial policy preferences of Democrats and Republicans to the reasons for resistance to affirmative action. Their findings indicate that while crude and explicit forms of racial prejudice may have declined in recent decades, racial stereotypes persist among many whites and exert a powerful influence on the ways they view certain public policies