Introduction to the Symposium: Diversity and Democracy

This issue of PRQ includes five articles addressing questions about minority status and democratic politics. Minorities identified by race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation fit uncomfortably into many liberal (pluralist) theories of democracy. Such theories tend to view "majority" and "minority" in terms of rival interests or parties that build fluid coalitions. A "majority" may exist as a momentary equilibrium outcome that includes many disparate minorities-an equilibrium that may be different over various policies at a fixed point in time, or an outcome that might shift rapidly across time in response to trends in mass opinion or elections. Minorities are quite different, however, when defined by constitutive features of "otherness" such as race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. In this definition, minority status is not just determined by membership in instrumental policy alliances or by group size but by histories of intimidation, institutionalized segregation, racism, fear, social distance, physical violence, and enduring discrimination. In this domain, majority and minority status are far more enduring and complicated structures for American democratic theory. The presence of enduring minorities' throughout American history and their influence over the nation's political culture has been well documented (e.g., Rogers Smith's Civic Ideals [1997]). To understand their future role in American democracy, however, requires examining their role in majoritarian institutions in the face of rapid demographic change by asking how current and future electoral majorities interact with enduring minority groups, by assessing how current and future racial and ethnic minorities interact with each other, and by assessing the internal cohesiveness of these groups in light of rapidly changing demographics. The articles that follow were not solicited with the goal of producing a volume dedicated to these common themes. These articles all resulted from the standard submission and review process, but these articles are collected together here because each of them examines critical questions about minority groups in contemporary American democracy. Implicitly or explicitly, mass politics in America has long been defined by minority groups. Explicitly, this is seen in the regular conflicts over policies such as desegregation, affirmative action, immigration, same-sex marriage, and local land-use and education policy. Implicitly, animus toward racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation minorities is often used as a subtle but recurring rallying point to build majority electoral coalitions at the national level. Increased diversity, however, may change these dynamics. Demographic trends predict sustained growth of the nonwhite (particularly Latino) U.S. population. The mass base of each major American political party is, to varying degrees, a cross-racial and cross-ethnic coalition, and the incentives that many people have to participate are conditioned by racial and ethnic identity (Leighley 2001). The mass base of the national Democratic Party is a coalition that includes majorities of African American, Latino/Hispanic, and GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered) voters. Sensing the political dynamics of demographic changes, several prominent Republicans have been vocal about the long-term electoral danger of remaining a party with a predominantly white voter and candidate base. California's anti-(illegal) immigrant Proposition 187 of 1994 (which proposed allowing only legal residents and citizens access to many public services) demonstrated the complexity of traditional antiminority politics in the context of growing diversity. A Republican governor featured the popular measure in his successful reelection campaign. Opponents of Proposition 187 subsequently used it to mobilize Latino voters, and Latino participation in elections increased after 1994 (Pantoja, Ramirez, and Segura 2001). Although many other forces undoubtedly are also behind the flagging fortunes of California's Republican Party, Proposition 187 illustrates the dangers of "blowback" in an era of increasing ethnic diversity for a party with a history of building support with policies that (implicitly) target minorities (Mendelberg 2001). …