Examines how ethnicity affects voting and party loyalty and looks at leadership among minority groups.

The official publication of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, this annual publication includes significant scholarly research reflecting the diverse interests of scholars from various backgrounds who use a variety of models, approaches, and methodologies. The central focus is on politics and policies that advantage or disadvantage groups because of race, ethnicity, sex, or other such factors. The research is performed in a variety of contexts and settings. This third volume includes an introductory note by the editor, Lucius J. Barker, in which he assesses the performance of the Journal in defining a "different political science" and a note by incoming editor Matthew Holden, Jr. outlining topics and agendas for future volumes. Feature articles include "Reconceptualizing Urban Violence"; "Political Science and the Black Political Experience"; "The Impact of At-Large Elections on the Representation of Black and White Women"; "State Responses to Richmond v. Croson: A Survey of Equal Opportunity Officers"; "Media in Warsaw Pact States: Explanations of Crisis Coverage"; and "Presence of Immigrants and National Front Vote: The Case of Paris (1984-1990)." The Book Review Section includes review essays on East European research, black urban politics, and the political reincorporatlon of southern blacks, and regular book reviews on minority groups and American political culture and other areas.

Despite implicating ethnicity in everything from civil war to economic failure, researchers seldom consult psychological research when addressing the most basic question: What is ethnicity? The result is a radical scholarly divide generating contradictory recommendations for solving ethnic conflict. Research into how the human brain actually works demands a revision of existing schools of thought. Hale argues ethnic identity is a cognitive uncertainty-reduction device with special capacity to exacerbate, but not cause, collective action problems. This produces a new general theory of ethnic conflict that can improve both understanding and practice. A deep study of separatism in the USSR and CIS demonstrates the theory's potential, mobilizing evidence from elite interviews, three local languages, and mass surveys. The outcome significantly reinterprets nationalism's role in CIS relations and the USSR's breakup, which turns out to have been a far more contingent event than commonly recognized.

The book analyses the study of the growing field of ethnicity and politics from a number of different angles. These include the nature of the subject itself, different theoretical approaches, ways of addressing political issues the relationship gives rise to, the impact of major global challenges and a survey of output in the field. Comprehensive text book makes great course reading. Questions of identity, particularly ethnicity, play an increasingly important role in people’s lives. They are also of growing significance in both domestic and international politics. The increased attention to these issues has been matched by the mushrooming of scholarship in the field of ethnicity and politics. The chapters in this survey of recent analytical developments examine the contribution that this literature has made within the broad area of comparative politics within the discipline of political science. They are written by experts active in the international network of scholars that has been devoted to the study of this subject. The question of what we mean when we use ethnic terminology is rigorously interrogated. And the major theoretical approaches to the study of ethnicity and politics are critically examined. Ways of addressing ethnic diversity are debated under the wide headings of accommodation and integration. The issue of ethnicity in world politics is considered through an analysis of how watersheds of the last 25 years, including the end of the Cold War, 9/11 and the global economic downturn have impacted on the study of the subject. Also analysed is the output of publications in scholarly journals that has addressed this subject area. From the Contents: Ethnicity – What are we talking about? (Jean Touron) Ethnic and national mobilization (Eric Kaufmann/Daniele Conversi) The Politics of accomodation and integration in democratic States (Brendan O’Leary/John McGarry) Global Watersheds and the Study of ethno-politics (Adrian Guelke) Who is doing what, where and how in the study of ethnicity and politics (Britt Cartrite/Dan Miodownik)

According to most social scientists, the advent of a global media village and the rise of liberal democratic government would diminish ethnic and national identity as a source of political action. Yet the contemporary world is in the midst of an explosion of identity politics and often violent ethnonationalism. This volume examines cases ranging from the well-publicized ethnonationalism of Bosnia and post-Apartheid South Africa to ethnic conflicts in Belgium and Sri Lanka. Distinguished international scholars including John Comaroff, Stanley J. Tambiah, and Ernesto Laclau argue that continued acceptance of imposed ethnic terms as the most appropriate vehicle for collective self-identification and social action legitimizes the conditions of inequality that give rise to them in the first place. This ambitious attempt to explain the inadequacies of current approaches to power and ethnicity forges more realistic alternatives to the volatile realities of social difference.

Studies the rising inequality in American society and addresses the need for a progressive, multiracial political coalition to combat that inequality.

1. Ethnic Solidarity as a Political Force: The Scope of the Inquiry -- 2. A Common Conceptual Framework -- 3. Malaysia: Native Sons and Immigrants -- 4. South Africa: Multiple Cleavages -- 5. Israelis and Palestinians: Whose Land? -- 6. Canada-Quebec: "Two Nations Warring in the Bosom of a Single State" -- 7. International Migration and Labor Diasporas -- 8. The Stakes in Ethnic Conflict -- 9. Outcomes and Prospects.