Race, crime, and republican strength: minority politics in the post-civil rights era.
This investigation assesses the relationships between racial threat and partisan dominance in state legislatures with tests of interactive hypotheses. The findings show that historically contingent expectations derived from racial threat theory, Republican law and order campaign appeals, and fundamentalist strength account for Republican strength in the legislatures. Two-way fixed-effects estimates based on pooled time-series analyses of 799 state-years in the post-civil rights era show that the percentage of Republicans in the state legislatures grew after increases in African American presence and the violent crime rates. The combined effects of a growth in African American and fundamentalist populations also account for increased Republican seats in these bodies. Statements by Republican campaign officials on how they deliberately used mass resentments against minorities to gain votes provide evidence about the intervening links between minority threat, the menace posed by high violent crime rates, and increased Republican strength in the state legislatures.
Jacobs
David
D
Department of Sociology, Ohio State University, 300 Bricker, 190 N. Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA. jacobs.184@osu.edu
Tope
Daniel
D
D001741:Black or African American / Q000266:history*; D002961:Civil Rights / Q000266:history*; D003415:Crime / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D014481:United States