Strength in Numbers?: The Political Mobilization of Racial and Ethnic Minorities. By Jan E. Leighley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 216p. $49.50 cloth, $17.95 paper

Extract

Jan Leighley's examination of racial and ethnic minority mobilization is an important contribution toward understanding issues the American polity faces as its population becomes increasingly diverse. She points to the rapid shift in population composition in a number of states in which whites will no longer be the majority, and she considers the political implications of these changes for democratic institutions, for the groups which are part of this changing electorate and for the political science literature which has based its theoretical findings on research on Anglos. Leighley explores the mobilization of groups, how American political institutions have responded to and how they mobilize racial and ethnic groups, and she reviews several different types of literatures’ analyses of political participation and mobilization as she offers a rational choice interpretation of the subject. This is a complex book, which helps increase our understanding of the variety of issues, methodological, conceptual, and measurement based, which scholars must address in order to broaden knowledge in this area.