Suchergebnisse

Despite the voluminous literature on participation, when it comes to the participatory behavior of racial and ethnic minorities and lower-income groups, many questions remain unanswered. The author tests the extent to which four theoretical models—socioeconomic status, psychological orientations, social context, and mobilization resource—explain the participation of whites, African-Americans, and Latinos in local political and community activities. Based on a sample of inner-city New York respondents, the author finds that existing theories differentially explain participation across both ethnic group and participatory activity. More generally, the findings indicate that more attention needs to be focused on how the broader social and institutional environment shapes the behaviors and attitudes that ultimately foster political engagement.

Marschall reviews 'Reinventing Public Education' by Paul T. Hill, Lawrence C. Pierce and James W. Guthrie.

This study applies insights from principal‐agent models to examine whether and how the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Sections 203 and 4(f)(4), affect Latino representation. Using panel data from 1984–2012, we estimate two‐stage models that consider the likelihood and extent of Latino board representation for a sample of 1,661 school districts. In addition, we examine how policy design as well as federal oversight and enforcement shape implementation and compliance with the language assistance provisions. Our findings not only provide the first systemic evidence that the language assistance provisions have a direct effect on Latino representation, but also link the efficacy of the language assistance provisions to the duration and consistency of coverage and the presence of federal elections observers. Overall, our study underscores the continued need for federal government involvement in protecting the voting rights of underrepresented groups, in this case, language minority citizens.

AbstractSeveral recent studies have investigated the relationship between direct democracy and public policy outcomes, with mixed findings. These inconsistencies may stem, in part, from researchers' failure to recognize that direct democracy institutions are distributed nonrandomly across the American states. That is, certain factors may lead a state to adopt the initiative process and influence other policy choices. We revisit the question of how the initiative influences state fiscal policy using panel data from 1960-2000 and a full-information maximum likelihood estimator that explicitly accounts for the endogeneity of the initiative. Our findings suggest that failure to endogenize the initiative in empirical analyses leads to substantially biased estimates of its effects. In particular, we find that once factors that predict whether a state has adopted the initiative are controlled, the initiative has a positive effect on state revenue generation and spending.