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A major and ongoing development in American politics is its increasingly multi-ethnic
social composition. The Latino population, in particular, is growing rapidly, while the black and
the white populations are growing more slowly. In several states, most notably the nation’s
largest, California, there are currently “majority-minority” populations, with Latinos as the
fastest growing minority group, and increasingly the largest. These trends are well recognized,
but they and related issues and implications are highly complex and evolving, and certainly have
not been studied adequately.
What might the changes toward an increasingly “multi-ethnic society” mean for political
relationships between minority/civil rights groups, and for the future of American politics and its
ostensible political pluralism more broadly? What are the likely bases for cooperation and
conflict between minority groups? What “do they want,” i.e., what are their policy concerns and
preferred policy outcomes? Despite much popular discussion and considerable speculation about
multi-ethnic, multi-racial politics and the asserted need to “move beyond a ‘black/white’
paradigm” rather few research efforts have considered this set of issues directly (for one such
effort, however, see Clarke, Hero and Sidney, 2005; also see McClain, 1993 ; McClain and
Karnig, 1990; Meier and Stewart, 1991; Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, 1984; Kim 1999). How,
then, might we begin to sort out and make sense of these theoretical and substantive questions?
The present research begins to systematically examine several facets of one major
dimension of inter-group political relationships, focusing on minority advocacy or “interest”
groups, to consider the common-ground and/or differences between several of these groups. Its
focus is on minority inter-group relations and policy at the national (federal) level, an important
extension in that most work has centered on urban politics.
Convention