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Race is often identified as uniquely defining and influencing electoral processes in the United States. However, little empirical research has investigated the consequences of racial diversity for levels of voter turnout or for the nature of mobilizing institutions. On the basis of historical analyses of U.S. politics, we hypothesize that greater racial diversity is associated with lower levels of voter mobilization, weaker mobilizing institutions, and higher barriers to voter participation. Cross-sectional models for the 1950s, the 1980s, and the 1990s are tested with ordinary least squares regression techniques, using states as the unit of analysis. We find that racial diversity is a potent negative predictor of turnout levels, in each time period and in non-Southern, as well as Southern, states and that it has an especially strong relationship in presidential elections. Racial diversity is also associated nationwide with weak state and national mobilizing forces, and more difficult voter registration requirements.

By Alan Rosenthal. Washington, DC, Congressional Quarterly Press, 1997. 369 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $24.95. Textbook authors must strive for the goals of accessibility, comprehensiveness, and currency. At the same [...]

Explores the prospects for issue-voting in contemporary congressional elections in the United States. Attitudinal and behavioral changes to midterm congressional elections; Existence and accuracy of constituents' perceptions of their own representative's positions in five issue domains and on a generalized liberal-conservative dimension; Comparison of representatives' voting with constituents' personal policy preferences.

The research reported here examines the neighborhood distribution of park and library services in Houston. The analysis reveals that inequalities in distribution on the basis of race and wealth are dispersed rather than cumulative. The distribution of park acreage and facilities is equal while the location pattern is skewed in the direction of low income neighborhoods. The distribution of library resources favors upper income neighbor hoods, while the spatial distribution of branch libraries advantages black and other low income areas. Distributional decisions are made on the basis of bureaucratic rules and appear to be little affected by explicit racial and socioeconomic criteria. However, these rules may have distributional consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers an exploration of criminals' and noncriminals' percepitions of crime in an urban milieu. Specifically, we examine perceptions of the incidence of crime within the city, of variations in police protection, and of variations in the likely difficulty of committing crimes in different parts of the city. The analysis examines the distinctiveness of, and interrelationships among, these variables controlling for the racial status and criminal-noncriminal status of the respondents. Additionally, perceptions of the difficulty of committing crimes in different parts of the city are related to generalized perceptions of the city for our racial subgroups of criminals. The results provide evidence on the distinctiveness of criminals in such terms, on some factors influencing strategic criminal decision-making, and on ways in which criminal behavior shares common elements with other social behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecological analysis of crime rates has been a traditionally important approach to analyzing the causes of crime. Over the years, this approach has profited from the use of increasingly sophisticated data analysis techniques. A recent article in this journal on intracity crime rates offered such an analytic refinement-with the discovery of similar curvilinear relationships between both personal and property crime and customary socioeconomic predictors. Such a finding for both types of crime is quite different from the results indicated in previous research. The present article reexamines comparable data on urban crime, adding further statistical and theory-based refinements to the analysis. The results here show distinctive relationships for property and personal crime. This paper serves, then, to integrate careful empirical analysis into available criminogenic theory and into the conventional wisdom of ecological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses several continuing difficulties in cross-national research which arise because of the particular interaction of existing theory, available data, and standard measurement practices. Certainly, one must agree that significant advancements have been made in all these areas in recent years. Despite the fact that available cross-national data have improved dramatically in recent years, a major lacuna still exists. Explicitly political variables and unambiguous measures of many crucial concepts are still quite limited. What are available as "political" variables in the best compilations are usually figures on governmental expenditures, legislative composition, voting results, political violence measures, and so on. In short, recent publications have made considerable progress in providing counts of readily countable institutional characteristics or mass behaviors. Some have argued that the reason for the abundance of such ungainly conceptual baggage is the low level of theory development in political science, as a science per se. That is, theoreticians have not disciplined themselves to generate concise concepts which refer exclusively to unidimensional phenomena. Certainly, tighter theory construction would eliminate some of the difficulties resulting from such concepts.