Inventive politicians and ethnic ascent from a micro approach: Italian Americans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. congress
Item
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Title
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Inventive politicians and ethnic ascent from a micro approach: Italian Americans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. congress
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:2a73e136225e:10608
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identifier
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10870
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Creator
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Jimenez, Miriam,
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Contributor
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Frances Fox Piven | John H. Mollenkopf
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political science | American studies | Congress | immigrants | Italian Americans | Mexican Americans | Microhistory | Political incorporation
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Abstract
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This research is about the access of outsiders to mainstream political institutions and it examines the process through which ethnic politicians reach congressional positions. This is a long-term study about ethnic candidates, their electoral experiences, and the political environments that influence their success. Using an original conceptual framework, it focuses on the cases of Italian Americans and Mexican Americans through the 20th century and up to the present time, covering two electoral periods --one centered on parties and the other shaped by national regulations. From this detailed study, a larger conclusion emerges: while some inventive candidates have influenced the political mobilization of their co-ethnics directly, the electoral changes that allow the accommodation and legitimization of an ethnic group as electoral player do not depend solely on the performance of ethnic collectivities.;This study challenges traditional conceptions of political incorporation and those approaches that rely on the socioeconomic mobility of groups as a means to explain and understand the political ascent of ethnic minorities. It proposes, instead, a micro approach that synthesizes various elements of political science theories and benefits from the insights of microhistory, a perspective that historians have used for over three decades in the area of cultural analysis. The micro analysis of the political ascent of immigrants applied to this research offers a means to uncover different layers of power and key dimensions of the reality that political actors experienced directly, which makes it then possible to evaluate these politicians' roles, impact, and shortcomings more clearly and precisely.;Empirically, this research uncovers the wide repertoire of electoral strategies that ethnic candidates have used throughout one century. It also fills a lacuna in the data of ethnic political incorporation by constructing the first available comparative dataset of elected members of Congress organized upon the basis of national origin. Conceptually, it both challenges and deepens the comprehension of what the process of incorporation of outsiders means and involves.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Political Science
