role of districts compared to at-large electoral systems, as well as the political
incorporation of minorities through mobilization and involvement in the governing
coalition (Browning et al. 1984; Welch 1990; Sass and Mehay 1995; Leal et al. 2004;
Meier et al. 2003). More recently, urban politics researchers have taken on the dominant
literature on local organizations—the study of social capital (Putnam 2000; for a recent
example on social capital in local communities, see Hill and Matsubayashi 2005). Some
urban politics studies critique the lack of emphasis in this literature on the “contentious”
side of urban politics (Fuchs et al. 2001). Yet there is little research considering the role
of racial and ethnic organizations across a broad segment of cities. Quantitative analysis
of the representation of racial and ethnic groups in cities is largely limited to electoral
representation. Studies of social capital often focus on the individual as the unit of
analysis, rather than the organizations.
Furthermore, much of urban politics research in the U.S., including a large portion
of the research on racial and ethnic politics in cities, focuses on a handful of large cities
such as New York and Los Angeles. A search of titles and abstracts in Urban Affairs
Review from January 1995 to July 2006 reveals a total of 69 articles on New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta; out of four randomly selected cities with 150,000 to
300,000 residents—Spokane, Salinas, Mobile, and Fort Wayne—only Mobile is
mentioned, in one article. Although mid-sized cities are often overlooked in urban
politics research, this sector of cities is clearly urban, and these cities are more dispersed
among various U.S. regions than the larger metropolises, which cluster on the coasts.
Drawing on an original data set of 30 mid-sized U.S. cities, I evaluate the extent
of organized representation and elected representation of racial and ethnic groups in these
cities as well as the effect of organized representation on elected representation.
3
Convention