A scholarly gulf has tended to divide historians, political scientists, and social movement theorists on how people develop and act on their preferences. Rational choice scholars assumed that people—regardless of the time and place in which they live—try to achieve certain goals, like maximizing their personal wealth or power. In contrast, comparative historical scholars have emphasized historical context in explaining people’s behavior. Recently, a common emphasis on how institutions—such as unions or governments—influence people’s preferences in particular situations has emerged, promising to narrow the divide between the two intellectual camps. In Preferences and Situations, editors Ira Katnelson and Barry Weingast seek to expand that common ground by bringing together an esteemed group of contributors to address the ways in which institutions, in their wider historical setting, induce people to behave in certain ways and steer the course of history.

The contributors examine a diverse group of topics to assess the role that institutions play in shaping people’s preferences and decision-making. For example, Margaret Levi studies two labor unions to determine how organizational preferences are established. She discusses how the individual preferences of leaders crystallize and become cemented into an institutional culture through formal rules and informal communication. To explore how preferences alter with time, David Brady, John Ferejohn, and Jeremy Pope examine why civil rights legislation that failed to garner sufficient support in previous decades came to pass Congress in 1964. Ira Katznelson reaches back to the 13th century to discuss how the institutional development of Parliament after the signing of the Magna Carta led King Edward I to reframe the view of the British crown toward Jews and expel them in 1290.

The essays in this book focus on preference formation and change, revealing a great deal of overlap between two schools of thought that were previously considered mutually exclusive. Though the scholarly debate over the merits of historical versus rational choice institutionalism will surely rage on, Preferences and Situations reveals how each field can be enriched by the other.

IRA KATZNELSON is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University.

BARRY R. WEINGAST is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard Bensel,  David W. Brady,  Charles M. Cameron, Jon Elster, John A. Ferejohn, Peter A. Hall,  James Johnson, Margaret Levi, James Mahoney,  Jeremy C. Pope.

American society today is hardly recognizable from what it was a century ago. Integrated schools, an information economy, and independently successful women are just a few of the remarkable changes that have occurred over just a few generations. Still, the country today is influenced by many of the same factors that revolutionized life in the late nineteenth century—immigration, globalization, technology, and shifting social norms—and is plagued by many of the same problems—economic, social, and racial inequality. One Nation Divisible, a sweeping history of twentieth-century American life by Michael B. Katz and Mark J. Stern, weaves together information from the latest census with a century’s worth of data to show how trends in American life have changed while inequality and diversity have endured.

One Nation Divisible examines all aspects of work, family, and social life to paint a broad picture of the American experience over the long arc of the twentieth century. Katz and Stern track the transformations of the U.S. workforce, from the farm to the factory to the office tower. Technological advances at the beginning and end of the twentieth century altered the demand for work, causing large population movements between regions. These labor market shifts fed both the explosive growth of cities at the dawn of the industrial age and the sprawling suburbanization of today. One Nation Divisible also discusses how the norms of growing up and growing old have shifted. Whereas the typical life course once involved early marriage and living with large, extended families, Americans today commonly take years before marrying or settling on a career path, and often live in non-traditional households. Katz and Stern examine the growing influence of government on trends in American life, showing how new laws have contributed to more diverse neighborhoods and schools, and increased opportunities for minorities, women, and the elderly. One Nation Divisible also explores the abiding economic paradox in American life: while many individuals are able to climb the financial ladder, inequality of income and wealth remains pervasive throughout society.

The last hundred years have been marked by incredible transformations in American society. Great advances in civil rights have been tempered significantly by rising economic inequality. One Nation Divisible provides a compelling new analysis of the issues that continue to divide this country and the powerful role of government in both mitigating and exacerbating them.

MICHAEL B. KATZ is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and research associate at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

MARK J. STERN is professor of social welfare and history in the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania.

A Volume in the RSF Census Series

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2009 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

Winner of the 2009 Mirra Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society

The United States is an immigrant nation—nowhere is the truth of this statement more evident than in its major cities. Immigrants and their children comprise nearly three-fifths of New York City’s population and even more of Miami and Los Angeles. But the United States is also a nation with entrenched racial divisions that are being complicated by the arrival of newcomers. While immigrant parents may often fear that their children will “disappear” into American mainstream society, leaving behind their ethnic ties, many experts fear that they won’t—evolving instead into a permanent unassimilated and underemployed underclass. Inheriting the City confronts these fears with evidence, reporting the results of a major study examining the social, cultural, political, and economic lives of today’s second generation in metropolitan New York, and showing how they fare relative to their first-generation parents and native-stock counterparts.

Focused on New York but providing lessons for metropolitan areas across the country, Inheriting the City is a comprehensive analysis of how mass immigration is transforming life in America’s largest metropolitan area. The authors studied the young adult offspring of West Indian, Chinese, Dominican, South American, and Russian Jewish immigrants and compared them to blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans with native-born parents. They find that today’s second generation is generally faring better than their parents, with Chinese and Russian Jewish young adults achieving the greatest education and economic advancement, beyond their first-generation parents and even beyond their native-white peers. Every second-generation group is doing at least marginally—and, in many cases, significantly—better than natives of the same racial group across several domains of life. Economically, each second-generation group earns as much or more than its native-born comparison group, especially African Americans and Puerto Ricans, who experience the most persistent disadvantage. Inheriting the City shows the children of immigrants can often take advantage of policies and programs that were designed for native-born minorities in the wake of the civil rights era. Indeed, the ability to choose elements from both immigrant and native-born cultures has produced, the authors argue, a second-generation advantage that catalyzes both upward mobility and an evolution of mainstream American culture.

Inheriting the City leads the chorus of recent research indicating that we need not fear an immigrant underclass. Although racial discrimination and economic exclusion persist to varying degrees across all the groups studied, this absorbing book shows that the new generation is also beginning to ease the intransigence of U.S. racial categories. Adapting elements from their parents’ cultures as well as from their native-born peers, the children of immigrants are not only transforming the American city but also what it means to be American.

PHILIP KASINITZ is professor of sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Hunter College.

JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

MARY C. WATERS is M. E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

JENNIFER HOLDAWAY is a program director at the Social Science Research Council.

More than half of New Yorkers under the age of eighteen are the children of immigrants. This second generation shares with previous waves of immigrant youth the experience of attempting to reconcile their cultural heritage with American society. In Becoming New Yorkers, noted social scientists Philip Kasinitz, John Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters bring together in-depth ethnographies of some of New York’s largest immigrant populations to assess the experience of the new second generation and to explore the ways in which they are changing the fabric of American culture.

Becoming New Yorkers looks at the experience of specific immigrant groups, with regard to education, jobs, and community life. Exploring immigrant education, Nancy López shows how teachers’ low expectations of Dominican males often translate into lower graduation rates for boys than for girls. In the labor market, Dae Young Kim finds that Koreans, young and old alike, believe the second generation should use the opportunities provided by their parents’ small business success to pursue less arduous, more rewarding work than their parents. Analyzing civic life, Amy Forester profiles how the high-ranking members of a predominantly black labor union, who came of age fighting for civil rights in the 1960s, adjust to an increasingly large Caribbean membership that sees the leaders not as pioneers but as the old-guard establishment. In a revealing look at how the second-generation views itself, Sherry Ann Butterfield and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida point out that black West Indian and Russian Jewish immigrants often must choose whether to identify themselves alongside those with similar skin color or to differentiate themselves from both native blacks and whites based on their unique heritage. Like many other groups studied here, these two groups experience race as a fluid, situational category that matters in some contexts but is irrelevant in others.

As immigrants move out of gateway cities and into the rest of the country, America will increasingly look like the multicultural society vividly described in Becoming New Yorkers. This insightful work paints a vibrant picture of the experience of second generation Americans as they adjust to American society and help to shape its future.

PHILIP KASINITZ is professor of sociology at the Graduate Center and Hunter College of the City University of New York.

JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF is distinguished professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

MARY C. WATERS is Harvard College Professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Sherri-Ann P. Butterfield, Amy Foerster, Philip Kasinitz, Dae Young Kim, Karen Chai Kim, Sara S. Lee, Nancy Lopez, Vivian Louie, Victoria Malkin, Nicole P. Marwell, John H. Mollenkopf, Alex Trillo, Natasha Warikoo, Mary C. Waters, and Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida

The sweeping political and economic changes of the past decade—including the spread of democracy, pro-market policies, and economic globalization—have dramatically increased the demand in developing countries for social programs such as unemployment compensation, pensions, and income supplements for the poor. When Markets Fail examines how emerging market economies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, North Africa, and the Middle East are shaping their social policies in response to these changes.

The contributors—leading scholars of development and social policy—use detailed case studies to examine whether the emerging economies are likely to move toward European-style welfare systems, characterized by high unemployment benefits and large entitlements, or if they will opt for more austere, stripped-down welfare regimes. They find that much will depend on how well emerging economies perform economically, but that the political forces, ideological preferences, and historical backgrounds of each country will also play a decisive role. In his chapter on Central and Eastern Europe, Peter Lindert focuses on how aging populations and the fall of communism have fostered increased need for social assistance in the region. In contrast, Nancy Birdsall and Stephen Haggard highlight the positive role of democratization and Western-style social programs in promoting East Asian social policies. Zafiris Tzannatos and Iqbal Kaur argue that governments in North Africa and the Middle East must foster both human capital formation and competition in the market for social services if they are to meet the growing need for services.

When Markets Fail presents some evidence that a global convergence in social policies may be taking place: as Europe slowly makes its welfare provisions less generous, the emerging market economies will be under increasing demographic and political pressure to make their social welfare systems more comprehensive. The book also examines the vital role that organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank can play in fostering effective social services in developing economies.

Economic globalization and political liberalization have produced many economic winners around the world, but these forces have created losers as well. When Markets Fail addresses the problem of how governments in developing countries have responded to the plight of those losers through social policy. The success of these policies, however, remains sharply contested, as is their role in helping to achieve meaningful poverty reduction. When Markets Fail is essential reading for anyone interested in economic liberalization and its consequences for the developing world.

ETHAN B. KAPSTEIN is with the University of Minnesota, and INSEAD, France.

BRANKO MILANOVIC is with the World Bank, Washington, D.C.

CONTRIBUTORS: Nicholas Barr,  Nancy Birdsall,  Ricardo Fuentes,  Stephan Haggard,  Iqbal Kaur,  Peter H. Lindert,  Miguel Szekely,  Zafiris Tzannatos.  

The new immigrants who have poured into the United States over the past thirty years are rapidly changing the political landscape of American cities. Like their predecessors at the turn of the century, recent immigrants have settled overwhelmingly in a few large urban areas, where they receive their first sustained experience with government in this country, including its role in policing, housing, health care, education, and the job market. Governing American Cities brings together the best research from both established and rising scholars to examine the changing demographics of America's cities, the experience of these new immigrants, and their impact on urban politics.

Building on the experiences of such large ports of entry as Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Chicago, and Washington D.C., Governing American Cities addresses important questions about the incorporation of the newest immigrants into American political life. Are the new arrivals joining existing political coalitions or forming new ones? Where competition exists among new and old ethnic and racial groups, what are its characteristics and how can it be harnessed to meet the needs of each group? How do the answers to these questions vary across cities and regions?

In one chapter, Peter Kwong uses New York's Chinatown to demonstrate how divisions within immigrant communities can cripple efforts to mobilize immigrants politically. Sociologist Guillermo Grenier uses the relationship between blacks and Latinos in Cuban-American dominated Miami to examine the nature of competition in a city largely controlled by a single ethnic group. And Matthew McKeever takes the 1997 mayoral race in Houston as an example of the importance of inter-ethnic relations in forging a successful political consensus. Other contributors compare the response of cities with different institutional set-ups; some cities have turned to the private sector to help incorporate the new arrivals, while others rely on traditional political channels.

Governing American Cities crosses geographic and disciplinary borders to provide an illuminating review of the complex political negotiations taking place between new immigrants and previous residents as cities adjust to the newest ethnic succession. A solution-oriented book, the authors use concrete case studies to help formulate suggestions and strategies, and to highlight the importance of reframing urban issues away from the zero-sum battles of the past.

MICHAEL JONES-CORREA is associate professor of government at Cornell University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Jones-Correa, Max Castro, Guillermo J. Grenier, Patrick D. Joyce, Peter Kwong, Paula D. McClain, Matthew McKeever, John Mollenkopf, David Olson, Edward J. W. Park, John S. W. Park, Timothy Ross, Raphael J. Sonenshein, and Steven C. Tauber.

This unique comparative study looks at efforts to regulate carcinogenic chemicals in several Western democracies, including the United States, and finds marked national differences in how conflicting scientific interpretations and competing political interests are resolved. Whether risk issues are referred to expert committees without public debate or debated openly in a variety of forums, patterns of interaction among experts, policy makers, and the public reflect fundamental features of each country's political culture.

"A provocative argument....Poses interesting questions for the sociology of science, especially science produced for public debate."—Contemporary Sociology

SHEILA JASANOFF is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A Volume in the the Russell Sage Foundation's Social Science Frontiers Series

In the twentieth century, the United States ended some of its most flagrant inequalities. The "rights revolution" ended statutory prohibitions against women’s suffrage and opened the doors of voting booths to African Americans. Yet a more insidious form of inequality has emerged since the 1970s—economic inequality—which appears to have stalled and, in some arenas, reversed progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy. In Inequality and American Democracy, editors Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol headline a distinguished group of political scientists in assessing whether rising economic inequality now threatens hard-won victories in the long struggle to achieve political equality in the United States.

Inequality and American Democracy addresses disparities at all levels of the political and policy-making process. Kay Lehman Scholzman, Benjamin Page, Sidney Verba, and Morris Fiorina demonstrate that political participation is highly unequal and strongly related to social class. They show that while economic inequality and the decreasing reliance on volunteers in political campaigns serve to diminish their voice, middle class and working Americans lag behind the rich even in protest activity, long considered the political weapon of the disadvantaged. Larry Bartels, Hugh Heclo, Rodney Hero, and Lawrence Jacobs marshal evidence that the U.S. political system may be disproportionately responsive to the opinions of wealthy constituents and business. They argue that the rapid growth of interest groups and the increasingly strict party-line voting in Congress imperils efforts at enacting policies that are responsive to the preferences of broad publics and to their interests in legislation that extends economic and social opportunity. Jacob Hacker, Suzanne Mettler, and Dianne Pinderhughes demonstrate the feedbacks of government policy on political participation and inequality. In short supply today are inclusive public policies like the G.I. Bill, Social Security legislation, the War on Poverty, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that changed the American political climate, mobilized interest groups, and altered the prospect for initiatives to stem inequality in the last fifty years.

Inequality and American Democracy tackles the complex relationships between economic, social, and political inequality with authoritative insight, showcases a new generation of critical studies of American democracy, and highlights an issue of growing concern for the future of our democratic society.

LAWRENCE R. JACOBS is Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.

THEDA SKOCPOL is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology and director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Larry M. Bartels, Morris P. Fiorina, Jacob S. Hacker, Hugh Heclo, Rodney E. Hero, Suzanne Mettler, Benjamin I. Page, Dianne Pinderhughes, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba.

How are we, as members of a society, informed of conditions that affect our social welfare? How does the government register the impact of its actions on its citizens? The turbulent 1930s saw the emergence of sample survey research as an increasingly valuable technique of social inquiry. Perhaps no one championed this nascent discipline as vigorously as Herbert Hyman, one of those pioneering investigators whose talents were so closely associated with the rapid growth of survey research that their professional careers and reputations became virtually indistinguishable from the field itself.

Hyman’s personal account is a remarkable contribution to the history and sociology of social research. His experiences with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Office of War Information, the U.S. Bombing Surveys of Germany and Japan, the National Opinion Research Center, and the Bureau of Applied Social Research are all documented with fascinating insight into the critical events and prominent individuals that shaped the field of survey research between the late 1930s and the late 1950s.

The late HERBERT H. HYMAN retired from Wesleyan University in 1983 as Professor of Sociology Emeritus.

HUBERT O'GORMAN was, until his untimely death, professor of sociology at the same university.

ELEANOR SINGER is senior research scholar at the Center for the Social Sciences at Columbia University.

Winner of the 2000 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

The historic rise in international migration over the past thirty years has brought a tide of new immigrants to the United States from Asia, South America, and other parts of the globe. Their arrival has reverberated throughout American society, prompting an outpouring of scholarship on the causes and consequences of the new migrations. The Handbook of International Migration gathers the best of this scholarship in one volume to present a comprehensive overview of the state of immigration research in this country, bringing coherence and fresh insight to this fast growing field.

The contributors to The Handbook of International Migration—a virtual who's who of immigration scholars—draw upon the best social science theory and demographic research to examine the effects and implications of immigration in the United States. The dramatic shift in the national background of today's immigrants away from primarily European roots has led many researchers to rethink traditional theories of assimilation,and has called into question the usefulness of making historical comparisons between today's immigrants and those of previous generations.

Part I of the Handbook examines current theories of international migration, including the forces that motivate people to migrate, often at great financial and personal cost. Part II focuses on how immigrants are changed after their arrival, addressing such issues as adaptation, assimilation, pluralism, and socioeconomic mobility. Finally, Part III looks at the social, economic, and political effects of the surge of new immigrants on American society. Here the Handbook explores how the complex politics of immigration have become intertwined with economic perceptions and realities, racial and ethnic divisions,and international relations.

A landmark compendium of richly nuanced investigations, The Handbook of International Migration will be the major reference work on recent immigration to this country and will enhance the development of a truly interdisciplinary field of international migration studies.

CHARLES HIRSCHMAN is professor of sociology at the University of Washington.

PHILIP KASINITZ is professor of sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

JOSH DEWIND is program director of the Social Science Research Council and professor of anthropology at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

CONTRIBUTORS: Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, Josh DeWind, Richard Alba, Susan B. Carter, Thomas J. Espenshade, Reynolds Farley, Walter C. Farrell Jr., Nancy Foner, Rachel M. Friedberg, Herbert J. Gans, Gary Gerstle, Nina Glick Schiller, Chandra Guinn, John Higham, Gregory A. Huber, Jennifer Hunt, James H. Johnson Jr., David E. López, Douglas S. Massey, John Hull Mollenkopf, Victor Nee, Joel Perlmann, Patricia R. Pessar, David Plotke, Alejandro Portes, Rebeca Raijman, Nestor Rodriguez, Rubén G. Rumbaut, George J. Sánchez, Richard Sutch, Marta Tienda, Roger Waldinger, Min Zhou, and Aristide R. Zolberg.