Chapter 5

The American Political Landscape

This is an interesting chapter, and very different from the chapters preceding and immediately following. It is a description of American society today and an explanation of how various important social forces affect American politics and government. The chapter’s opening material on FAIR and Proposition 187 vis-à-vis the issue of immigration is a good illustration.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the chapters that follow on public opinion, interest groups, voting, elections, and parties. But it could easily serve as an introduction to the entire text. In fact, some professors may wish to use this chapter first, as an overview of the current state of American society, and as such it would be a very useful way of adding context to the chapters on the nature of democracy and the Constitution, and especially to the federalism and constitutional law chapters.

There is one central theme in the chapter and that is unity in diversity. American society is an incredibly diverse one, probably the most diverse of all the industrial democracies. That diversity is grounded in our geographic hugeness, in our attractiveness to various immigrant groups (which of course includes all Americans except the Native Americans), in the presence of traditional demographic differences of class, age, gender, religious, and educational lines, and in the continuing distinctiveness of large ethnic groups such as Americans of African, Asian, and Hispanic descent. Sexual orientation has also become a political force in American society.

Despite this diversity, there is an equally notable national unity and identity, a feeling of national pride and belonging that seemingly overwhelms regional, ethnic, religious, age, gender, and class distinctions. America may not be completely a melting pot, but it is at least a salad bowl in which all the distinctive parts share a common interest and pride in being part of the best salad on earth.

The authors are very careful in this chapter to stick to their task. The unity and identity parts of the theme are not overblown and never become syrupy. The real differences that exist especially across ethnic lines and the growing problems of income and wealth distribution are clearly noted and their impacts analyzed. Their task is to place into subjective context the objective data that exist on who Americans are, how they live, and how their differences and similarities affect politics and government.

I. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Define ethnocentrism.

2. Define political socialization and demographics.

3. Distinguish between reinforcing cleavages and cross-cutting cleavages.

4. Assess the impact on the development of American democracy of geographic isolation and a large land area.

5. Evaluate sectional differences in the United States. Include the sunbelt/frost belt idea.

6. Examine the effect of state and local identity on politics.

7. Identify and describe the four kinds of places in which Americans live.

8. Examine the impact on American politics of race and ethnicity.

9. Outline the agenda of the women's movement in American politics and the current gender issues and the impact of “sexual orientation” as well.

10. Examine the significance of the FAIR ad in Iowa and Proposition 187 in

California.

11. Explain how family structure impacts upon the American political landscape.

12. Identify ways in which religion can be important in American politics.

13. Evaluate the impact of religious diversity and of the clustering of religious population groups on politics.

14. Describe income and wealth distribution in the United States.

15. Analyze how aside from race, income may be the single most important factor in explaining views on issues, partisanship, and ideology.

16. Explain what is meant by the post‑industrial American society.

17. Analyze the reasons why social class appears not to have as strong an impact in explaining political behavior in the U.S. as it does in other countries.

18. Describe the political agenda of older Americans.

19. Analyze generational and life cycle effects in politics.

20. Examine the relationship between differing educational levels and political behavior.

21. Discuss reasons for the remarkable national unity and identity that exists in a land of such demographic diversity.

22. Distinguish between the melting pot and salad bowl analogies.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY

The United States is certainly not the only country to have a population of great ethnic diversity. However, it is unusual in the fact that despite the existence of conflicts, so far the diversity in the United States has not been the source of deep cleavages that threaten to fracture society and polity. (That is, such a threat has not existed since the Civil War.) In fact, public officials of every stripe, at least publicly, glory in the diversity and both political parties make some effort to capture the major ethnic voting blocs, although with varying degrees of success.

Most of the other democracies in the world have had much more homogeneous populations, and their governments have not had to deal with ethnic conflict. The examples of most of Western Europe and Japan are most notable. When diversity has grown in some of these countries, governments have had great difficulties in dealing with the social conflict between the dominant group and small but growing minorities. Again the examples of Western Europe--the presence of Asians and West Indians in Britain, North African Arabs in France, "guest workers" from southern Europe and Turkey in Germany--come to mind. Each of these countries has had official policies of tolerance but has had occasional outbreaks of violent group conflict. Nationalist parties dedicated to the cause of limiting immigration have attracted portions of the vote, especially in France and Germany.

Other countries in Europe have not been as ethnically homogeneous and have had serious problems, at times threatening territorial unity. Belgium is split between French‑speaking Walloons and the Dutch‑speaking Flemish. Spain has an active, sometimes violent, separatist movement in the Basque‑speaking areas of the north, and a more peaceful but still serious movement in Catalonia (the regional government of which placed advertisements in U.S. media during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics calling Catalonia "a separate country in Spain").

In Eastern Europe--which is only recently, and still not totally, democratic--a lid was placed on ethnic conflict by the old authoritarian communist governments. But with the collapse of the old order, the conflicts have surfaced and have become in some areas very hot. Czechoslovakia voted peacefully to split into two separate countries, one Czech, the other Slovak. Of course, the recent examples of the break‑up of the old Soviet Union and Yugoslavia show the extreme cases of ethnic conflict, resulting in violent confrontations and fragmentation. The tragedy which befell Kosovo in 1999 speaks for itself.

In fact, only a few other democratic countries can point to both ethnic diversity and reasonably well‑functioning polities. Australia and Switzerland readily come to mind, and to lesser degrees Brazil (only recently democratic) and Canada (certainly democratic and with major success in handling its diversity in all cases except one—Quebec). The lecture can conclude with those qualities that seem to be common to the democratic countries that have handled racial and ethnic diversity well. A culture of tolerance and a system of government allowing substantial de‑centralization in policy‑making and administration are the two most obvious qualities. Other qualities are present in some, but not all, of the countries that have had some success.

B. THE 2000 CENSUS

The final results of the 2000 Census can form the basis of a lecture that draws on the social and economic statistics to show the changes in population characteristics from 1990. Themes that could be developed include:

**the aging of America: the increased median age; the large percentage of the population in the older age cohorts;

**the growth in minority population: this has several aspects, one of which is the increase in African Americans, rising to 13 percent of the total population; the black percentage of the young population (age cohorts of under 30 years) is even higher;

**the growth in Hispanic population, due both to immigration from Mexico and other parts of Latin America and natural population increase of the existing Hispanic population;

**the increase in immigration rates generally over the past decade and the patterns in countries of origin (now a much larger percentage from Latin America, and substantial increases in the percentages from Asia and Africa);

**patterns in the geographic distribution of population: one aspect being the relative decline of central cities and the growth of suburbs and exurbs (on the fringe of metro areas), and the decline of rural areas not in commuting proximity to metro areas;

**the growth of the sun belt and the relative decline of the frost belt (but it should be noted that these patterns are generalizations and hide the facts that some northern areas, such as New Hampshire and Maine, are growing and growth in the sun belt is largely in Florida, Texas, and the metro areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia).

The major purpose of covering some of the population changes is to show their impact on politics and government. For example, the aging of the population has major impact on social security and health care; the decline of the central cities and rural areas means the need for economic development efforts (as well as programs in crime control, anti‑poverty, health care, etc.); the growth of suburbs and the sun belt means major infrastructure needs (new public buildings, schools, roads, water and sewer systems, etc.); the increase in minority populations has major effects on educational systems; and so on. In the electoral arena, changing populations mean changes in voting power and representation. There is certainly no shortage of topics to cover.