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This paper explores the implications of constructivism for the growing literature that investigates the relationship between ethnic diversity and economic growth. Accepting that ethnic identities are multidimensional and situation-dependent has three principal consequences for studies in this area: it raises concerns about how a country?s ethnic diversity is measured; it introduces the possibility that a country?s diversity may be endogenous to its growth rate; and it suggests the need to be on the lookout for variables that affect both a country?s fractionalization and its economic performance. The paper identifies these potential pitfalls and assesses the extent to which they undermine existing estimates of the effects of diversity on growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper revisits some old propositions of pluralist theories and the Columbia school about the impact of ‘cross-pressure’ on political attitudes and behavior that, following some discouraging test results, largely vanished from scholarly works since the early seventies. Cross-pressure means that some individuals, like socially conservative trade union members in the United States, are pulled in opposite partisan directions because of their different characteristics. In their most generalized form the relevant hypothesis suggests that the more conflicting are the ways the various attributes of citizens pull them towards one party or another, the more disengaged they become, reducing cognitive and affective involvement with politics as well as participation. The paper scrutinizes the micro-logic of the proposition, points out that cross-pressure on citizens may be one of the mechanisms underlying the freezing effect of cleavages postulated by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), develops a greatly improved measure of cross-pressure, and subjects the hypothesis to a far more comprehensive test than those attempted before. The empirical analysis finds some support for the hypothesis using worldwide cross-sectional data on various forms of political participation from the World Values Study. However, not all forms of participation are affected to the same extent, and there are also signs of some significant cross-national variations. The cross-national differences can, however, be linked to survey sample and political system characteristics in ways that are consistent with the original hypothesis. Interestingly, it is the conflicting electoral influence of different value orientations that seems to be the truly consequential source of cross-pressure, and not the conflicting influence of two or more socio-demographic characteristics on party preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Will Kymlicka has famously applied luck egalitarianism to the problems posed by cultural pluralism. Kymlicka argues that cultures should be understood as an important human resource, a kind of Rawlsian primary good. He therefore claims that individual access to culture should be subject to luck egalitarian principles of distributive justice. In this paper I argue that Kymlicka’s theory of ‘luck multiculturalism’ is unable to justify a significant category of cultural rights that Kymlicka and other multicultural theorists wish to defend: cultural exemptions from generally applicable laws. Cultural exemptions usually fall under what Kymlicka calls ‘polyethnic rights’ - rights intended to provide multicultural justice for minority immigrant groups in liberal democratic societies. I believe the failure of luck multiculturalism to justify some rights of this type is not evidence that the rights themselves are unjustified, but rather is evidence that luck egalitarianism (in all its ‘currency’ guises) is an inadequate approach to questions of cultural justice. I therefore propose an alternative approach to questions of cultural exemptions, one that relies on a Rawlsian view of justice and fair equality of opportunity. My claim will be that justice permits exemptions from generally applicable laws in many cases of cultural disadvantage, and that justice requires exemptions when such cases involve the principle of fair equality of opportunity. Section one provides a very brief description of luck egalitarianism and the debate between the resource and welfare conceptions. Section two outlines Kymlicka’s theory of luck multiculturalism. Section three presents the ‘expensive tastes’ critique of Kymlicka’s theory, which I argue is insurmountable from within the confines of either resource or welfare egalitarianism. Section four provides an alternative picture of justice, one that does not hinge on the luck egalitarian distinction between chance and choice. Section five argues that justice at least permits cultural exemptions from generally applicable laws. Section six goes on to argue that justice requires cultural exemptions when the Rawlsian principle of fair equality of opportunity is at stake. The final section of the paper examines potential objections to my approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how Rawls used Hume's idea of the "circumstances of justice." The broader purpose of the paper is to understand the relationship of "justice as fairness" with the tradition of justice as a mutual protection pact. The argument is that Hume's theory was already a significant departure from the dominant, Glaucon-to-Hobbes version of this tradition. What Rawls took from Hume was an anti-individualist understanding of social practices. Rawls deviated from Hume in identifying genuine and deep moral disagreement as one of the crucial circumstances of justice. Understanding Rawls's relationship with Hume clears up Sandel's puzzles about how Rawls set up the original position, reveals how old was Rawls's concern with what he later called "reasonable pluralism," and shows how little Rawls's theory has to do with the dominant version of the mutual protection tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to build on the burgeoning literature on social diversity theory (Hero 1998) by making a conceptual and a methodological distinction between social diversity’s direct and indirect influence on policy outcomes. I argue that social diversity influences outcomes directly through inter-minority resource competition and indirectly through majority/minority competition that influences political processes. I develop a set of hypotheses and test social diversity’s direct and indirect effects on Latino and African-American access to elite public universities in 45 states using a set of pooled cross sectional time series models. The findings indicate that high numbers of Asian-Americans and Latinos have a negative effect on African-American access. The findings also find that social diversity, interacted with a number of political variables (political competition, political culture) affect minority enrollment levels. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does ethnic diversity affect social trust? The Conflict and the Contact hypotheses represent the main competing views. This paper argues that the "true" answer to the question is contingent upon the social unit under study. More specifically, we argue that the former hypothesis is favored by a focus on social units where intergroup contacts can be avoided, whereas the latter hypothesis is supported by a focus on social units where intergroup contacts are unavoidable and supported by higher authorities. Studies that fail to acknowledge this fact by neglecting to take both types of social units into account risk biasing their results. Departing from this argument, the paper presents simultaneous estimates of diversity-effects in social units where people can avoid intergroup contacts (countries and neighborhoods) and social units where intergroup contacts cannot be avoided (workplaces). The results, which are based on the first round of the European Social Survey, covering 30000 individuals from 22 countries, show support for the Conflict hypothesis when the social unit under study is countries and neighborhoods and support for the Contact hypothesis when the social unit is workplaces. We also show that failure to take the latter positive effect into account leads to that the negative country diversity effect is underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars disagree over the consequences of ethnic diversity for social trust. In part, this disagreement can be traced to the fact that scholars have focused on different contexts. Whereas some focus at effects of cross-country differences in ethnic diversity others focus on effects of within-country differences in the ethnic composition of neighborhoods. The latter studies also tend to focus on very different kinds of neighborhoods, such as cities, census tracts, zip-code areas and other contexts that vary in size between countries. Further contributing to the complexities involved, the origin of ethnic divide - historically anchored differences or more recent migration based divides - may make a difference. The main contribution of this paper is that it provides a study that simultaneously explores the effects of migration based ethnic diversity at the country level and the neighborhood level using similarly defined neighborhoods from several countries. These differences in design make it difficult to draw more general conclusions from the research. The main contribution of this paper is that it provides a study that simultaneously explores the effects of ethnic diversity at the country level and the neighborhood level using similarly defined neighborhoods from several countries. Using the 1999 CIVED data set, which contains 60 000 young respondents from 3200 neighborhoods (school classes) from 22 countries we find that that ethnic diversity has a moderate negative effect on social trust at the country level. In contrast, ethnic diversity at the school class level does not affect social trust negatively in most countries. However, the effect varies between countries and is significant (mostly negative) in a few. Taking this variation into account is crucial in order to capture the real effect at the country level. Thus, the context matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern secularism, as theorized by prominent liberal philosophers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, prescribes that the state should treat all religions equally on condition that they and their adherents relinquish their theocratic aspirations and recognize the political sovereignty and superiority of man-made law. Convinced that the secular bargain undermines the moral virtue of society and its members, a small, fragmented, but nevertheless conspicuous number of Islamists in Europe prefers to observe Islamic law in all walks of life, private and public. Alarmed by Islamists and informed by Orientalist readings of Islam, an increasingly vehement and vociferous contingent of Islamophobes avers that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy and urges European governments to treat neither Islam nor Muslims equally, but rather suspiciously as real or potential threats to the wellbeing of European societies. In contrast, advocates of Euro-Islam insist that Islam can be reformed, like Christianity, to meet the requirements of modern secularism. This paper contends that elements of all three of these vying positions have found their way into policymaking targeting Muslims in several European lands. The resulting inconsistency and contradiction - what I call policy "messiness" - corroborate the process of "mutual fragilization" theorized by Charles Taylor in which actors facing radical value pluralism develop solicitude regarding their own principles as well as greater tolerance for ambivalence. The latter, in particular, creates what Homi Bhabha terms a "third space" from which actors confronting cultural pluralism can freely and constructively explore cross-fertilizations and hybrid combinations with the potential to yield yet unimagined approaches and solutions to the problems of "super-diversity." Just such creative hybridity does the paper identify among a younger generation of European Muslims whom many observers dub "post-Islamists." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about cultural diversity and urban governance is presented which is prepared for presentation at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association from September 3-6, 2009 in Toronto, Ontario. The paper discusses topics including bridging the political, social and economic space between very separate and unequally resourced populations, and urban social and economic diversity.

A conference paper about welfare state and immigrant integration is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the rise in international migration, data on multiculturalism, the adoption of multiculturalism in the school curriculum, and redistribution of wealth.

In 2001 Republican Latino candidate for mayor Orlando Sanchez won 73% of the heavily Democratic Latino vote in Houston while in Miami, Cuban Democrat Manny Diaz won 70% of the staunch Republican Latino vote. In 2003, Green Party candidate for mayor Matt Gonzalez captured 66% of the Latino vote in San Francisco while in Colorado Springs a majority of Latinos voted for Republican Lionel Rivera. These elections renew the debate over Latino vote preference, and call into question whether Latinos follow partisan cues or ethnic cues when casting a ballot. I argue that while party is still an important predictor of vote choice, for Latinos with a high degree of shared ethnicity, party ties are less significant than ethnic attachment. Using a unique survey fielded by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute in 2002, I model crossover vote preference for Latino candidates in California and New York using probit and ordered probit regression. While strong partisans were significantly less likely to crossover and vote for the ethnic candidate of the opposing party, Latino voters who scored high on ethnic attachment were significantly more likely to ditch their party for the Latino candidate. By incorporating more flexible measures of ethnicity (as opposed to a dichotomous measure), this paper finds that, in addition to SES and party, ethnicity can be an important predictor of candidate preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To deepen the experience of belonging to time is to open the door to extend one’s commitment to political pluralism. And vice versa. The paper proceeds by discussing two films, The Maltese Falcon and Waking Life. It further draws sustenance from Proust and Bergson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to show applying William J. Wilson?s proposition in The Declining Significance of Race (1978) to Japanese context that the basis of minority inequality has been changing in contemporary Japan from ?ethnicity? to ?class.? The development of a capitalist social stratification system, combined with the legal/institutional reformations of the past decades, has made class more significant than ethnicity in determining the life chances of minority individuals in Japan. So much so that the general social status of minority individuals has now more to do with their socioeconomic class background than with their ethnic origin. In this respect, the persistent inequality between mainstream ?Japanese? and ?non-Japanese? minorities should be understood more as a function of class than of ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both policy-makers and scholars have turned their attention to federalism?or decentralized governance?as a means for managing struggles between central governments and subnational groups. But both the theoretical literature and the empirical track record of federations make for opposing conclusions concerning federalism?s ability to preserve peace. This paper argues that the existing literature falls short on two accounts. First, absent is a systematic comparison of peaceful and conflict-ridden cases across federal states. Second, some studies seem to suggest that there is one optimal mix of decentralization and centralization, while others acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all federal solution but leave this without further theorizing. Our argument is that the degree to which federal institutions can contribute to defusing conflict depends on how these institutions interact with the underpinnings of the societies they govern. In particular, we hypothesize how the ?peace-preserving? effect of specific federal traits?fiscal decentralization, fiscal transfers, decentralization of cultural policies, and political co-partisanship?are conditional on a society?s income level and ethnic composition. The argument is tested across 23 federal states from 1978 to 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social rights were initially understood as the rights of a pluralism of instituted associations; and transformed to the rights of distributive justice associated with the politics of access to welfare state corporatism. More recently , they have been understood as the rights of multicultural difference; and now as the rights to complexity, and rights to polycontextural effect vis a vis transnational corporations. This paper studies the emergence of social rights as an ontology of institutional facts by which actors can be induced to share standards of self-governance, and be involved in public reasoning. Emergent institutions/ unfolding normativity are understood as constituted by warranted assertions (argument) by which we participate in a promising game of institutinal facticity. How does a regime find its substance within the emergent properties of institutionalizing and path-shaping practice, rather than along a punctuated equilibrium and path dependency? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores legal pluralism in West Africa and its relationship to women?s rights as citizens. The study explains that three factors are required to protect women?s rights in democratizing states: 1) increased legitimacy of civil judicial structures; 2) increased education concerning citizen?s rights in democratic society and; 3) recognition of the political and economic character of the conflict over constitutional and ?customary? or religious law. This analysis includes a discussion of citizenship in Africa and an examination of the concepts of dual authority and dual citizenship. The following section explains the role of judicial legitimacy and constitutional literacy in protecting citizen rights. By focusing on the political nature of the discourse on protecting religious and customary norms in Mali, Nigeria and Benin, the debate is expunged from a purely cultural arena. Analyzing power and how it relates to women in plural societies is critical to better understanding of democracy and the position of women in these states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings the political philosophy of Eric Voegelin into dialogue with questions of ethnicity in general and the role of ethnicity in Basque separatism in particular. Voegelin’s thought respects the place and yet the mystery of ethnicity, and provides a holistic political framework in which to view it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Before the advent of democratic rule in South Africa, most had expected the country to experience an explosion of politicized ethnicity when minority rule was replaced. Yet this has not come to pass, and ethnic political parties have declined in number and influence in post-apartheid South Africa. Instead, between 1994 and 1999 partisan politics developed in a multipolar direction, with some parties embracing racial mobilization and others attempting to build multi-ethnic, non-racial entities. In most instances, parties have explicitly turned away from mobilization based on purely ethnic criteria, and instead have embraced more diverse strategies. This paper explains these developments as a product of the ways that political parties have responded to the incentives established by political institutions on the one hand, and the structure of social divisions, on the other. The analysis holds implications for our understanding of the ways in which social cleavages in ethnically divided societies become politically salient, and for the lessons of institutional and constitutional engineering, particularly with respect to how proportional representation systems interact with other factors to shape politics in ethnically diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his most recent book, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed, William Connolly sets himself two missions, which I’m calling his thinking project and his pluralism project. The first: ‘to explore the critical role that technique and discipline play in thinking, ethics, and politics, and to do so in a way that accentuates the creative and compositional dimensions of thinking,’ and the second, ‘to explore the new cultural pluralism, within and across territorial states, that beckons on the horizon of contemporary possibility.’ (pp. 1-2). In her new book The Companion Species Manifesto, Donna Haraway explores two similar questions (although she lists them in reverse order): ‘1) how might an ethics and politics committed to the flourishing of significant otherness be learned from taking dog-human relations seriously; and 2) how might stories about dog-human worlds finally convince brain-damaged US Americans, and maybe other less historically challenged people, that history matters in naturecultures?’ I’m calling the first Haraway’s otherness project and the second her history project. In this paper I incite a conversation between these two texts, exploring their compatibilities and inviting each to put pressure on the other [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of deliberative democracy attempt to reconcile moral pluralism and political obligation by suggesting that citizens have a moral requirement to give reasons to each other that are impartial in nature. I argue in this paper that though such requirements have a powerful logic behind them, the resistance of moral particularism to assimilation to norms of impartial deliberation - exemplified by religion’s continued public role in democratic life - has the potential to privatize political life, undermining deliberative democracy’s broader political goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of legal pluralism in West Africa. In particular, it focuses on the conflict that exists between constitutional protections of women¡¯s rights in the newly democratizing states of Mali and Benin and the role of traditional law in the judicial structures of these states. Given that traditional law is in conflict with the constitutional rights of women, the laws governing family and inheritance must be addressed as an important aspect of democratization, particularly given the influence on the lives of women in Africa. These areas, most frequently governed by traditional norms, continue to be controversial. In Africa, and throughout the postcolonial world, civil law, or in many cases common law, exists in conjunction with religious and ¡*customary¡± legal norms. Every individual must juggle multiple identities including those based on his or her nationality, ethnicity, religion and gender. These numerous identities, in conjunction with the colonial history and imposition of European legal structures onto African societies, contribute to current difficulties in establishing legitimate judicial institutions©¤cornerstones to democracy. I do not argue that ethnic or religious pluralism make democracy unattainable, rather that in certain cases the complexities of legal pluralism challenge the rights of individuals as protected by constitutional law. In Africa, navigating the channel between constitutional law and customary law is crucial to protecting women¡¯s rights as citizens. Frequently, the divide between the pays r¨¦el and the pays l¨¦gal, particularly with reference to women¡¯s rights, is not considered an obstacle to the establishment of democracy. Protections of all citizens¡¯ constitutional rights are central to the process of democratization. This study is a preliminary analysis that considers the power dynamics involved in establishing and maintaining traditional rights. In addition, the dual citizenship of many citizens in African states serves as a challenge to protecting the constitutional rights of women, a challenge that threaten these newly forming democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This papers examines the growth of the White House staff in 1940-2001. Drawing on Neustadt’s basic bargaining framework, I argue that staff growth during this period is driven by a rise in bargaining uncertainty due to the transformation of the political system from "institutionalized" to "individual" pluralism. In response to the loss of traditional sources of bargaining expertise in Congress, the parties and the media, presidents have sought to develop their own sources of bargaining expertise within the White House. To test this theory, I develop a new measure of White House staff growth, and regress it against several measures of bargaining uncertainty. To control for nonstationary variables, the model incorporates an error correction component in which staff development is cointegrated with growth of the press corps, and each of the variables is fractionally differenced. The overall statistical results provide suppport for the basic premise regarding the causes of staff growth, and suggest that, lacking external sources of bargaining expertise, presidents have little incentive to reverse this trend toward larger, more specialized White House staffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the UEFA Champions League (2003-2012) to study the impact of diversity on group performance. Results indicate that more heterogeneous teams outperform less diverse sides; a one-standard deviation increase in cultural diversity (measured by linguistic distance) can double a team's goal differential over the course of the tournament. One threat to our conclusions is that certain teams have greater resources to search the world for talent. We address this issue by controlling for players' transfer values, quality ratings, and exploiting exogenous variation in diversity generated by differences in the non-European player quotas of national soccer leagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the exclusion of ethnic groups cause civil war? Responding to widespread skepticism as regards the role of grievances in such explanations, recent research has used measures of ethnic groups' power access to show that excluded groups are especially likely to experience conflict. However, as pointed out by the several critics, such inferences may be undermined by endogeneity since states' decision to exclude could anticipate future conflict. In this paper, we attempt to overcome this potential threat to causal inference by instrumenting for political exclusion. Focusing on post-colonial states, we exploit differences in the colonial empires' approach to the ethnicity of colonized populations. As opposed to the French relatively ethnically \color blind" approach, the British application of \selective indirect rule" made peripheral groups more, rather than less, in uential. Thanks to this mostly exogenous variation in terms of colonial strategies and group locations, we instrument for initial exclusion in post-colonial states, and use this variable as an explanation of internal conflict. Based on this identification strategy, we arrive at very clear results that confirm previous studies that explain ethno-nationalist conflict in terms of limited power access. If anything, this work has tended to underestimate the actual conflict-inducing impact of political exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects the political stability of ethnically diverse countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Does increased foreign investment increase ethnic protest? The benefits of FDI in this region are contested because African countries continually experience slow to negative economic growth. This study draws on political economy theories that propose economic competition among ethnic groups as the source of ethnic conflict and applies them to a specific macroeconomic policy. The results show no positive correlation between FDI and ethnic protest and suggest that economic competition theories should be examined with caution when applied to sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the variation in village head selection rules across Indonesia using a panel over 1997-2007. I find evidence that heterogeneity across Indonesian villages can explain variation in local level institutions. In particular, ethnically diverse Indonesian villages are more likely to have appointed village heads, whereas homogenous villages are more likely to directly elect their leaders and thus, retain political power. Moreover, using a lagged measure of ethnic diversity as an instrument provides evidence that the ethnic diversity caused the change in a village's institutions following the fall of Suharto. That ethnically diverse villages have no de jure political power of selecting their village head suggests the costs of retaining political power in ethnically fragmented villages are high. These results hold whilst controlling for urban-rural location, hitherto thought of as determining local institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing affluence and cultural pluralism generated by globalization are expected to lead to religious privatization, that is, to the demise of religion in the public sphere in general, and in electoral politics in particular. However, recent events suggest that the existential and ontological insecurity promoted by globalization may have triggered a religious resurgence in national elections. The present paper offers the first comprehensive empirical test of the two rival expectations. We further hypothesize that the emergence of these competing outcomes (demise or resurgence of the religious vote) depends on the structure of the religious economy: established churches are better positioned for a political resurgence. The analysis combines individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems with two types of country-level information: globalization indices and a measure of local religious competition. Our results suggest that globalization may be linked to stronger religious-voting patterns in national elections especially under an established church. Findings have implications for political research and for the long-running debate on the future of religion in modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the comparative data on state policies on ethnic and ethno-religious diversity in fifteen specific policy areas in thirty-five countries, including some Western, Post-Communist, and Muslim-majority states, collected through a survey of country experts. These states, compared along fifteen specific policies on ethnic and ethno-religious diversity, provide a large enough dataset to give a tentative answer to questions of Western, post-Communist, and Islamic "legacies" in the treatment of ethnic and religious diversity. The fifteen state policies that are compared across these countries and regions include ethnicity and religion in the constitution, in official identification cards and censuses, ethnic priority citizenship and immigration, official languages, ethnic territorial autonomy, ethnic minority status, affirmative action, established religion, and religious education. Since ethnic distinctions sometimes overlap with religious distinctions in many countries of the world, including in many Western, post-Communist, and Muslim-majority countries, information on state policies towards religion is also collected. Based on the date on their policies, these states are classified as having monoethnic, multiethnic, and antiethnic regimes. The results shed light on whether different countries exhibit specific patterns in their policies towards ethnic and religious diversity based on Western, Post-Communist, or Islamic legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a concept-driven method of scale construction - the lexical scale - that is viable in situations where a concept can be meaningfully operationalized according to a series of necessary-and-sufficient conditions arrayed in an ordinal scale. We offer several examples of how lexical scales might be applied to key social science concepts, with a focus on "electoral democracy," for which we provide a new dataset extending back to 1800. We proceed to contrast the lexical scale with the Mokken scale and conclude with an evaluation of the overall strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past studies of public opinion toward immigration policy usually examine immigration policies within a short time period (Citrin, Green, Muste, C. Wong 1997) or fail to examine attitudes toward immigration policy within a broader multi-ethnic and multi-racial context (de la Garza, Falcon, F. Garcia and J. Garcia 1993). In this paper we will contribute to this literature by analyzing Los Angeles residents' attitudes toward immigration policies within the context of the changing racial and ethnic diversity of the population over the past two decades. Specifically we will examine the attitudes of Latino, African-American, Asian-American, and Anglo-American respondents and their feelings regarding whether the number of immigrants in this country should be increased or decreased, and whether English should be the official language of the United States. Using Los Angeles County Social Surveys (LACSS) for the years 1992, 1994- 2002, we will identify respondents' preferences toward specific immigration policies by race and ethnicity of respondents. Among racial and ethnic groups, we will explore whether other demographic, social, and political predictors of respondents' attitudes towards immigration policies are consistent or vary between the 1990s and the 2000s. We find that attitudes among all racial and ethnic groups vary greatly over the years, and we conclude that the predictors that shape public opinion toward immigration are changing and complex. With immigration continually influx examining a broad range of multi-ethnic and multi-racial attitudinal responses to these changes over time has never been as critical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the relation between social cohesion and ethnic and cultural diversity has been hotly debated in political science and in society in general. The general assumption in this literature is that (increasing) ethnic diversity is detrimental for the development of social cohesion, as it inhibits the creation of social capital. Generalized trust is believed to prosper most abundantly in homogenous settings. There is indeed some empirical evidence, suggesting that ethnic diversity reduces trust levels within society. If this is the case, this is indeed a reason for concern as we know that societies with high levels of social capital and generalized can function in a more effective manner than societies where this is not the case.In this paper, we do not wish to go into this empirical discussion. Rather, we want to take a step back and study the concepts of social capital and social cohesion in a more theoretically informed manner. Despite the fact that 'social cohesion' is a key term in a lot of current research, the concept is seldom defined. Our analysis of the concept of social cohesion builds on the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Already in 1893, Durkheim argued that various forms of society will develop their distinct concepts of cohesion and trust. While pre-modern societies were based on mechanic forms of solidarity, modern societies require organic solidarity, Durkheim argued. The theoretically relevant question is now whether we can take Durkheim's argument a step further by considering what kind of solidarity is essential for the cohesion of contemporary, 'post-modern', or at least ethnically diverse societies? In these societies one can no longer assume that a normative consensus is present and offers a building stone for social cohesion. The question we would like to explore is what kind of functional equivalence for a normative consensus is available in such a diverse setting? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the research that finds a negative relation between racial or ethnic diversity and social cohesion is either based on observations of one country or uses just one attitudinal aspect of social cohesion. In this article, we expand earlier research on this relationship by combining attitudinal measurements from the European Social Survey (2002) with OECD data on migration patterns to include 20 European countries. Thus more detailed measurements of both social cohesion (including generalized trust and ethnocentrism) and diversity (including type and rise of diversity over time as well as the legal status of immigrants) are utilized in multilevel models. At the individual level, most of the familiar relations between individual characteristics and trust and ethnocentrism were confirmed. At the country level, on the other hand, and contrary to findings with US census tracts or neighborhoods, hardly any indicators for migration or diversity proved to be significantly related to social cohesion. Our paper contributes to theoretical insights on the development of generalized trust and other civic attitudes and suggests that the pessimistic conclusion about ethnic diversity's negative effects on social capital might have been drawn too early. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It appears that much intra-state violence occurs, and recurs, between the state and the same internal opposition group(s) (typically defined by their ethnicity, religious affiliation, or cultural attributes). Yes, most studies of intra-state war approach the topic using either civil war, nation-state, or ethnopolitical groups as the unit of analysis. This paper explores the relevance of enduring rivalries as both a unit of analysis and a theoretical construct for the study of intrastate violence focusing specifically on the region of Southeast Asia. By analyzing rivalries, rather than viewing each outbreak of violence as a separate event, we begin to recognize the history and dynamics of intra-state violence. Findings suggest that intrastate rivalry analysis can help to improve our exploration into the various factors contributing to conflict outbreaks within states, as well as how they ebb and flow, and eventually get resolved. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the consequences of transition pacts on democratic consolidation in Spain. Background on democratization literature that feature transition pacts; Evolution of pact making in the country; Role of ideological pluralism in the process of pact making in Spain.

In the middle of the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain tried to provide an explanation--both theoretical and practical--of how cooperation between citizens of diverse religious and philosophical commitments might be possible. Practical political cooperation, he thought, is possible on the basis of an analogical relation between the religious and philosophical doctrines in question. In this article, I analyze Maritain's approach to the problem of cooperation in pluralistic societies and apply it (as does Maritain himself) to the field of education. I argue that the problems that would result from the application of Maritain's theory show that the analogical relation between doctrines cannot be pushed as far as he seems to think it can. Maritain's approach, then, does not provide an adequate solution to the problem of pluralism, especially in a society as pluralistic as the contemporary United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I propose a new version of political proceduralism, a ?normatively thin proceduralism,? designed to deal with the challenges to social integration posed by the moral pluralism of modern liberal societies and communities. I illustrate my proposal’s empirical purchase with examples from Muslim immigrant communities and their relationship to state and society in France, Germany, and England today. My version of proceduralism follows from a distinction between ?thick? and ?thin? forms of normativity, or distinctions among degrees or amounts of normative content: people who share thin norms share less normative content than people who share thick ones. By ?bracketing? thick differences and concentrating on thin sharings, my proposal can motivate participation in political community by generating ?correct? results; by accommodating a system of majoritarian rule; by emphasizing participants? interests over their identities, and then urging compromise among competing interests; by employing techniques such as ?balancing? the interests of individual members with those of the group, or ?bracketing? differences, or reducing normative complexity; by providing its own grounding, in this way ‘solving? the problem of the lack of ultimate or exterior foundations for political community today; and by pursuing a modus vivendi in the sense of mutual accommodation rather than agreement on substantive matters. But it cannot accommodate fanatic or absolutist groups, and persons unable to identify their needs and articulate their aspirations except in thick terms. It can, however, bring into a proceduralist social order members of the community now disinclined to participate in it. In the case of immigrants, it can discourage or at least mitigate fundamentalism in a variety of ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalism can be a conict-prevention mechanism, but some political scientists and economists have also endorsed certain features of the system as being likely to establish proper market incentives for economic growth. Most developing countries have ignored economists' recommendations for proper design of federal and decentralized institutions, particularly with respect to hardening of the budget constraint and the enforcement of an open, common market. The first logic of perverse fiscal federalism is secession deterrence: for many governments, preventing ethnic conict seems to require fiscally deleterious institutions. In ethnoregionally diverse federations such as India, South Africa, and Indonesia, the common market is often not enforced, and tax decentralization falls far short of the recommendations of orthodox economists and international lending institutions. The second logic of perverse fiscal federalism is found in developing federations without ethnonational minorities: in many of these states, personalist electoral institutions preserve excessive expenditure decentralization with a soft budget constraint. Examples in this category have included Brazil and Argentina. While ethnic diversity has helped to preserve or to create relatively robust forms of fiscal federalism in Western democracies such as Switzerland, Canada, and Spain, it has had the contrary effect in developing countries. The political logics of federalism in the developing world will likely continue to stymie efforts to reform federal institutions along orthodox lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing ethnic diversity and whether or not it impacts on trust are highly debated topics. Numerous studies report a negative relationship between diversity and trust, particularly in the US. A growing body of follow-up studies examined the extent to which these findings can be transferred to Europe, but the results remain inconclusive. Moving beyond the discussion of the mere existence or absence of diversity effects on trust, this study is concerned with the moderation of this relationship: It addresses the neglected role of subnational integration policies influencing diversity's impact on trust. Empirical tests not only indicate that integration policies moderate the relationship, but also suggest that the influence of policies varies substantively according to the specific policy aspect under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political theory of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism falls into two categories: democratic sovereigntism and global constitutionalism. Democratic sovereigntism focuses on sovereign territorial political spaces, and they are conceived as pre-conditions for democratic freedom, political self-determination and cultural pluralism. Global constitutionalism explores cosmopolitan democratization and constitutionalization.

The presence of temporally heterogeneous effects is prevalent in longitudinal (panel) analysis in the social sciences. The effects of predictors on outcomes of interest may vary across time, often following complex patterns. Though unit heterogeneity is more commonly addressed in quantitative studies using longitudinal data, a growing body of literature has begun to directly model the presence of time-varying effects using methods such as time fixed-effects, time inter- actions, unstructured time models, structural break models, and dynamic linear models. This study considers an alternative approach that allows researchers to answer questions regarding (1) temporally heterogeneous effects and (2) how these effects are clustered over time. Using the debate surrounding the presence of a resource curse (Ross 2012) as an example, we apply a Bayesian mixture modeling (BMM) framework to address time-varying effects of oil wealth on democratic governance. Results indicate that the BMM approach provides evidence for the presence of a resource curse for the periods 1960-1987 and 1995-2003, with null effects in the 1987-1990 period and positive effects in the 1991-1994 era. The advantage to the BMM frame- work, we argue, is the lack of ad hoc temporal modeling which can often lead to high model dependence; instead by using a data-based approach to temporal clustering, we flexibly allow for hypotheses of theoretical interest to be tested against the data rather than be assumed by the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking into proper account the geographic distribution of ethnic groups and the operation of electoral systems reveals that the impact of ethnic diversity and electoral systems on the number of parties has been badly underestimated. Contrary to earlier findings, ethnic diversity spurs party proliferation in countries with both majoritarian and proportional electoral systems, though the effect is stronger in the latter. The insights gained here provide a theoretically derived measure of ethnic diversity useful for estimating its effect on specifically political phenomena and an improved holistic measure of the impact of electoral systems. More crucially, the results indicate that electoral system designers have greater capacity to structure electoral outcomes with hopeful implications for efforts to promote interethnic peace through institutional design. The results rely on multivariate models created using a new database with election results from 1990 through 2011 in 65 free democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the response of the military to constitutional changes of leadership in Africa. It discusses the significance of ethnic dynamics in motivating military officers to depose leaders. An overview of diversity in Africa, which presents an increase likelihood for executive power to rotate between different identities, is given. A mixed-methods framework is employed to evaluate the dangers posed by changes in the ethnic identity of leadership to the stability of the region.

The article presents a summary of experiences of selected minority groups in Ireland. It discusses the results of a series of information interviews with advocates of social justice in the country. It examines the impact of multiculturalism and the claims of difference and diversity on Ireland's economic and political health.

Studies of gender gaps in political socialization have not examined variations across contexts. Conventional wisdom holds that rural America is the seat of tradition, the last bastion of traditional gender roles. We should expect, then, where there are gender differences in political socialization, girls in rural areas and small towns would be more disadvantaged than their peers in the suburbs and in urban areas. This study demonstrates that all else equal, girls have higher levels of political knowledge in non-metro areas than in metropolitan areas. I examine three main hypotheses. First, a growing body of literature suggests that ethnic diversity depresses many aspects of civic engagement and social capital. The findings indicate that young people in the ethnically diverse rural communities are less knowledgeable than their counterparts in homogeneous communities. However, girls in the ethnically diverse communities are just as knowledgeable as boys, but in the homogeneous towns, girls score significantly lower on the test of knowledge. Further, drawing on the distinction between role models and ideological inclinations as precursors to political attitudes, I find that although mothers' occupations are unrelated to knowledge, girls' concern for equality is significantly related to knowledge. Girls who believe we should be more concerned about equality are substantially more knowledgeable than their counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which examines the political ontology of race through the works of scholars Tommie Shelby, Hannah Arendt, and Mark Warren. Topics discussed include an assessment of the biological and social ontologies of race, the political conditions of conflict, plurality and power, and the advantages and disadvantages of different race ideas. Also provided is information regarding eliminativism and conservationism, the counterparts of racial ontologies.

An essay is presented on research studies regarding the political incorporation for Irish and Taiwanese American immigrants. Topics discussed include evidences to the validity of the conventional pluralist framework, the assumptions of immigrant incorporation in liberal perspective, and the importance of race and racialization in group history. Also provided is information regarding the role of political parties and ethnic homeland politics in mediation and incorporation process, respectively.

In a February 6, 2007 special election to fill the vacated first district seat for the Orange County Board of Supervisors, two Vietnamese-American candidates surprised local political observers by passing the pre-election front-runners and sharing, almost equally, just under half of the total votes cast, guaranteeing the seating of a Vietnamese-American as an Orange County Supervisor. Anecdotal reports claim their success was due to extensive, successful mobilization efforts among Vietnamese-Americans, resulting in election of a coethnic supervisor and, hence, greater political incorporation. A year later the victor, then the incumbent, faced only Vietnamese-American opponents (two) to win reelection. We use registration and vote history data and elite interviews to assess whether mobilization of the Vietnamese-American community occurred. Because the February 2007 election was a special election, mobilization and turnout can be studied independent of the confounding effects of other contests. We find evidence for ethnically-specific mobilization in 2007 and for continuation in 2008 when ethnic solidarity rather than ethnic victory was at stake. However, the evidence suggests that there is little carryover to another contest with no ethnic resonance. Elite interviews demonstrate that the mobilization was elite-led. Surprisingly, we find no evidence that the presumed mechanism -- differential encouragement of absentee ballots -- actually mattered. This work provides evidence for the existence and processes of elite mobilization of a newly incorporated group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ability of value pluralism to maintain a commitment to human rights. The universality of the foundation that the pluralism provides for human rights is described. The claim of the parameters set with the pluralism that human rights simultaneously hold the potential to re-cast different elements of contemporary human rights context is highlighted.

The article focuses on liberalism, multiculturalism, and critical theories of social identities. Topics discussed include, identity politics, distribution of economic power in contemporary capitalist societies, and inequalities in society. Also discussed are multicultural justice, cultural pluralism, and social inequalities.

France and Great-Britain have mostly been defined by social scientists as well as by policy makers as opposite « models of integration ». Looking at the recent upsurge of controversies around specific claims made by religious minorities (mostly carried out by Muslims and Sikhs), this proposal invite to compare the French and British traditions of integration by looking at their convergent practices in terms of accommodation or denial of recognition of the religious needs of these minorities. Based on a research conducted in the framework of a comparative team of researchers funded by French institutions (Mire/Drees), it compares the processes by which religion is starting to be ethnicized and/or racialized in Britain and France. The role of law in the regulation of European religious diversity will in particular be emphasised to explain the modes of convergence of the two traditions, as in both contexts, not to mention the European level, the legal arena has become the place where religious issues are mostly debatted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]