The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Identity Politics in Twenty-First Century America

Assessing the limits of pluralism, this book examines different types of political inclusion and exclusion and their distinctive dimensions and dynamics. Why are particular social groups excluded from equal participation in political processes? How do these groups become more fully included as equal participants? Often, the critical issue is not whether a group is included but how it is included. Collectively, these essays elucidate a wide range of inclusion or exclusion: voting participation, representation in legislative assemblies, representation of group interests in processes of policy formation and implementation, and participation in discursive processes of policy framing.

Covering broad territory—from African Americans to Asian Americans, the transgendered to the disabled, and Latinos to Native Americans—this volume examines in depth the give and take between how policies shape political configuration and how politics shape policy. At a more fundamental level, Ericson and his contributors raise some traditional and some not-so-traditional issues about the nature of democratic politics in settings with a multitude of group identities.

David F. Ericson is a professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University. His current research focuses on the centrality of slavery to the American experience.

1. Introduction (David F. Ericson) Part I: Politics of Inclusion 2. Minimal Political Inclusion of Minorities at Risk: The Case of the Americas, 1870-2000 (Victor Asal) 3. Race, Nativity, and the Political Participation of Asian and Other Americans (Pei-te Lien) 4. The Home Styles of California Latino Representatives: Policy, Constituency, and Symbolic Representation (Sally Friedman and Shannon Scotece) 5. Puerto Rican Politics in New York City During the 1960s: Structural Ideation, Contingency, and Power (José E. Cruz) 6. Inclusion, Exclusion, and Citizenship (Kathleen Sullivan and Patricia Strach) Part II: Politics of Exclusion 7. The Micro-Politics of Immigration: Local Government Policies of Inclusion and Exclusion (Nadia Rubaii-Barrett) 8. Outside the Binary: Transgendered Politics on a Global Stage (Jenna Basiliere) 9. Politics and the Disabled Body: Diverse Thoughts about Human Diversity (William Roth) 10. The Conservative Attack on Affirmative Action: Toward a Legal Genealogy of Color Blindness (Julie Novkov)