Although immigrants are still largely underrepresented in American politics, they are beginning to exert significant influence on political parties. Urban political coalitions are emerging across the country, particularly in large multi-ethnic cities. In 2005, the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles successfully fashioned an electoral coalition that surmounted racial, ethnic, and geographic divisions. With an award from Russell Sage, Raphael Sonenshein and Mark Drayse will study emerging ethnic coalitions in Los Angeles by looking at five elections.
Researchers disagree about how competition from immigrant workers affects the economic well-being of native workers. Neeraj Kaushal and Robert Kaestner will address this question by studying individual level-data on registered nurses in the thirty largest metropolitan regions of the United States. Because they intend to restrict their analysis to a single occupation, Kaushal and Kaestner will be able to surmount many of the empirical difficulties that have plagued this line of research in the past.
Few U.S. institutions contribute as notably to immigrant political integration as religious organizations. Many of the churches that new immigrants join preach relatively conservative political and social views, but whether immigrants unanimously adopt these conservative views or instead slowly influence the general orientation of their churches remains unclear. How do religious institutions affect the political affinities of their immigrant members, and conversely, how do immigrants affect the political orientations of the denominations they join?
Second supplemental appropriation: February 2002, $947,347
First supplemental appropriation: February 2000, $25,919
Under the direction of David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, an interdisciplinary working group of economists and political scientists will study the links between economic inequality and systematic differences in family structure, college enrollment, political participation, and civic engagement.
Voter turnout has been in decline in the United States for many decades, but the fall-off has been particularly precipitous among the poor. This disturbing trend has produced a growing gap between the political participation of rich and poor, and not surprisingly, a political system which seems increasingly skewed to the interests of the wealthier voting class. We know very little about why the poor are dropping out of the electoral system.
Research on social inequality has produced mounting evidence that disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than in other advanced countries - in fact, the very richest one percent of Americans have pulled away not only from the poor, but also from the middle class. As this disparity becomes more pronounced, scholars have sought to analyze the political implications of rising inequalities.
As disparities in income, earnings, and wealth have risen dramatically in the past 30 years, political debates about poverty and inequality have taken a new shape, resulting in public policies that led to some restructuring of government’s orientation toward the poor. Yet scant attention has been devoted to interpreting how politics influence these public policies, and vice versa. Why do some programs become more deeply entrenched while others do not? What are the repercussions of recent trends in public policy as they interact with the changing contours of social inequality?
True democracy requires that all citizens, not just the powerful or well off, be able to exert influence on the policy making process. In practice, however, the principle of one-person, one-vote may fall well short of guaranteeing equal influence. Particularly at a time of rising economic inequality, when money is ever more necessary for electoral success, there is reason to worry that the preferences of the wealthy may come increasingly to dominate the selection of policies that are enacted into law.
Supplemental Award: $35,000, June 2009