Ethnic minority voters in the UK 2015 general election: A breakthrough for the Conservative party?

It was widely reported that the 2015 UK general election represented a breakthrough election for the Conservative party among ethnic minority voters – specifically that their vote share among minorities increased, and overtook that of Labour for the first time among some groups. I show that analysis using more representative data yields markedly different results. Looking at (i) party preference from 2010 to 2015, and (ii) reported vote shares from a nationally representative probability survey, I show that the Conservatives increased their support among Hindus - but the Labour party gained in support elsewhere. This is due to movement away from the Liberal Democrats, 2010 minority supporters of the Liberal Democrats moved to supporting Labour rather than the Conservatives in 2015 at a ratio of 2:1. There is also considerable individual-level volatility in party support among ethnic minorities, which is masked by a high level of stability at the aggregate level.     

Party Strategies and the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minorities: The 2010 British General Election

The 2010 election proved critical for ethnic minority representation in Britain. The number of minority Members of Parliament reached an unprecedented high. Furthermore, the virtual monopoly of the Labour party on minority parliamentary representation ended. In explaining this development, this article moves away from the traditional discussion of disadvantages facing minority candidates and turns to the role of the political parties. It argues that a new commitment to increased minority representation exists and shows, on the basis of new data, that in the 2010 election both Labour and Conservatives employed a variety of strategies for increasing ethnic minority representation. The strategy to select more minority candidates in ‘white’ seats was not only a key to increasing the numbers of minority parliamentarians but also signals a departure from the traditional pattern of ethnic minority politicians being elected by ethnic minorities.     

Understanding the effects of religious attendance on political participation among ethnic minorities of different religions

In the United States, active church membership among ethnic and racial minorities has been linked to higher political participation. In Europe, the influence of religious attendance on political mobilisation of ethnic minorities has so far been little explored, despite the heated public debate about the public role of religion and particularly Islam. This study uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to theorise the relationship between religious attendance and political participation of ethnic minorities in a European context and extend existing theories to non‐Christian minority religions. The article shows that despite a significantly different context in which religion's place in political life is more contentious, regular religious attendance increases political participation rates of ethnic minorities. Some possible explanatory mechanisms are tested and an important distinction is introduced between those mechanisms that mediate, and those that moderate the impact of religion. The study finds that British minority churches and places of worships vary in how willing and effective they are in politically motivating their worshippers, and concludes that this relates to the political salience of certain religions within the United Kingdom context.     

Representative Bureaucracy,Organizational Integrity,and Citizen Coproduction: Does an Increase in Police Ethnic Representativeness Reduce Crime?

In 1999, the U.K. government set force‐specific 10‐year targets for recruiting new police officers from ethnic minorities. Using these targets as instrumental variables, this study finds that this policy mandating an increase in the share of ethnic minority officers in a given force is associated with a decrease in the number of crimes in the area under the force's jurisdiction during the 10‐year period. It is argued that greater representativeness and diversity within a public organization improves organizational integrity, which influences bureaucrats’ attitudes and behaviors toward minority citizens. In the context of policing, diversity can mitigate the institutionalized practice of officers acting on implicit assumptions about minorities being inherently more unlawful than whites: Police representativeness is associated with a decrease in the overrepresentation of black individuals among those subject to “stop and search.” Such a change may make minority citizens more willing to cooperate in the coproduction of public values, facilitating the attainment of organizational goals.     

Neighbourhood Ethnic Diversity and Orientations Toward Muslims in Britain: The Role of Intergroup Contact

A persistent theme in the British and international debates about immigration and diversity is the controversial claim that living in diverse areas has negative consequences for intergroup attitudes and community relations. In the present paper we test this claim by investigating the impact of neighbourhood diversity and self‐reported intergroup contact on orientations (outgroup attitudes and social distance) toward one religious outgroup: Muslims. Respondents were both White British majority (N=867) and non‐Muslim ethnic minority (N=567) residents of neighbourhoods in England which varied in their proportion of ethnic minority residents. We tested both direct and indirect (via intergroup contact) effects of diversity on outgroup orientations toward Muslims. Results show that individuals living in more ethnically diverse areas—regardless of whether they are White British members of the majority or non‐Muslim members of ethnic minorities—have more positive contact with Muslims, with positive consequences for intergroup relations with Muslims.     

How does Intergroup Contact Generate Ethnic Tolerance? The Contact Hypothesis in a Scandinavian Context

As European majority members are often hostile toward ethnic minorities, it is important to identify sources that reduce opposition to immigrants. First, focusing on Denmark, this article examines whether intergroup contact influences attitudes toward ethnic minority rights (henceforth: ‘ethnic tolerance’). Second, this study tests whether the contact‐tolerance relationship is mediated by self‐disclosure and symbolic threat. Furthermore, contact is measured as workplace contact in order to reduce self‐selection biases. The empirical tests are performed on a Danish high‐quality national probability sample from 2009 (N = 1,929). Analysis shows that intergroup contact generates ethnic tolerance because workplace contact weakens threat perceptions and stimulates disclosure of personal information. Generally, these results suggest that regular intergroup contact can improve ethnic relations in contemporary democracies.     

Two-tier Pluralism in ‘Colour-blind’ France

France lags behind most other Western countries in its degree of ethnic representation, despite the longstanding presence of non-Western minorities in the country. French politicians and the public usually justify this situation by arguing that there are no such things as ethnic minorities in France, and therefore no particular ‘ethnic minority’ interests. Consequently, there is no need to be concerned about ethnic representation; class representation is enough. More recently, attention has centred on the presence of Islam. This frame biases political attention to religious issues related to ethnic minorities, leaving aside major problems such as racial discrimination. In contrast, this article argues that France is very similar to America when it comes to ethnic politics, particularly when analysing the political orientations of non-Western minorities. Without a proper voice to articulate their claims, ethnic minorities see their interests neglected in favour of other issues.     

Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Representation in Europe: Conceptual Challenges and Theoretical Approaches

This article introduces the symposium on the representation of immigrant-origin and ethnic minorities in Europe. It argues for the importance of research on this topic, noting the large, established populations of immigrant-origin citizens and their descendants across Western European countries and these minorities’ underrepresentation in elected bodies. Current research gaps concern both empirical knowledge and the theoretical conceptualisation of immigrant and ethnic minority political involvement. The article argues that existing research on representation needs to be extended to suit the cases of immigrants and ethnic minorities. It ends by providing a brief overview of each contribution to the symposium.     

Can hybrid regimes foster constituencies? Ethnic minorities in Georgian elections, 1992–2012

Do ethnic minorities in postcommunist regimes vote in systematic ways? This paper examines ethnic minority voting in Georgian elections from 1992 to 2012, examining the causes for ethnic minorities' high electoral turnout and ruling party support. Although some argue that electoral fraud is the explanatory cause, other interests, such as experience of poverty and party electoral strategy, help explain minority electoral behaviour. This paper uses statistical methods to examine electoral fraud, as well as OLS regression to investigate the role of socio-economic factors such as urban density or poverty on ethnic minority voting behaviour. The paper also draws from in-country field research to investigate the party strategies and programs in ethnic minority areas during the 2008 parliamentary election.     

Coalition and Minority Government in Wales: Lessons for the United Kingdom?

Post‐devolution Wales has had experience of a variety of different types of government and a variety of different parties in government; single party rule with one party gaining an overall majority of the seats (Labour, 2003–05), minority administrations (Labour, 1999–2000, 2005–07) and coalitions between Labour and the Liberal Democrats (2000–03) and Labour and Plaid Cymru (2007 to date). This article explores the experiences of both minority and coalition government in Wales, focusing most notably on the convoluted process of coalition formation in 2007, before proceeding to draw lessons for the United Kingdom coalition government based upon developments in Wales.     

Within cities and suburbs: Racial residential concentration and the spatial distribution of employment opportunities across sub‐metropolitan areas

This article examines and compares the spatial distributions of new jobs and people across sub‐metropolitan areas for Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The jobs data come from the Multi‐City Study of Urban Inequality and the data on people come from the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The results indicate that less‐educated people, public assistance recipients, and especially poor females with children mostly reside in areas heavily populated by minorities where the availability of less‐skilled jobs is quite low, while the availability of these jobs relative to less‐educated people in suburban areas heavily populated by whites is high. Large fractions of the less‐skilled jobs in these metropolitan areas are not accessible by public transit. Furthermore, there is significant variation within both central cities and suburbs in the ethnic composition of residents and in less‐skilled job availability. The ability of various minority groups to gain employment in each area depends heavily on the ethnic composition of the particular area. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations

Equal treatment is a key feature of modern bureaucracy. However, several studies have shown that public organizations discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities to different degrees. Which organizational features explain differences in discrimination is largely unknown. This article proposes that organizational performance relates to an organization's likelihood of engaging in employment discrimination and argues that poor‐performing organizations tend to be less open to new ideas and that decision makers in such organizations are more prone to stereotyping behavior. The study combines a field experiment in which applications were sent to real job vacancies in 71 Danish public schools with administrative data on the schools. Bayesian analyses show that minority applicants generally faced discrimination but that they experienced a higher callback rate from better‐performing schools than from poorer‐performing schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Does domestic politics limit the influence of external actors on ethnic politics?

Conclusion Domestic politics is naturally important in ethnic policies. However, in spite of their potency, domestic political factors are not always the most decisive. International organizations have influenced the Latvian and Estonian governments, and at times the Slovak and Romanian governments. However, the ability of different organizational strategies to overcome domestic opposition and thus bring about their desired policy varies widely. In most cases, actors need to use conditionality and aim it at the appropriate decision makers. In spite of their widespread use, efforts that rely solely on persuasion and diplomacy tend only to work when the domestic opposition is initially quite low or when ethnic minorities themselves have some bargaining power in the government. The key policy implication is that domestic factors do not make failure, or success for that matter, a foregone conclusion. For example, ethnic minority representation within the government coalition is not in itself a guarantee of passage of the policy preferences of the minorities. Conversely, the presence of authoritarian-style leadership does not automatically mean a rejection ethnic minority accommodation either, if organizations present their suggestions so that such leaders view it as being in their greater interests to maintain power. Conditionality that targets incentives to fit goals of the leadership can work. External actors are thus not justified in backing off from action based purely on a domestic analysis.     

Why might constructed nationalist and ethnic ideologies come into confrontation with each other?

The paper develops a model for examining ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia, using Indonesia as an illustrative case. Ethnic conflict is explained as arising not out of the facts of ethno-cultural pluralism, but rather out of the disentwining of the three visions of the nation: as civic community, as ethno-cultural community and as multicultural community.This disentwining occurs particularly in the context of pressures for democratization. Three aspects of politics are identified as promoting the disentwining so as to engender the weakening of the civic nationalist vision, and thence the confrontation between a majoritarian ethno-cultural nationalism and a minority-focused multicultural nationalism. First, the spread of ideas related to democracy generates the spread of liberal forms of the three nationalist visions, alongside the authoritarian forms, and puts the spotlight on the divergences between these visions. Ideas of democracy are then highjacked by ethnic majorities claiming majority rights, and by ethnic minorities claiming minority rights. Second, the patrimonial basis for politics in much of Southeast Asia means that ethnic majorities and minorities alike perceive democratization as the search for responsive patrons, rather than as the search for civic equality. Third, civic nationalism is further weakened by the erosion of faith in the social justice promises of state elites. While these features of politics promote ethnic tensions, they also generate countervailing factors that ensure the political disunity of ethnic minorities, and thereby inhibit the extent of ethnic conflict.     

Growing disparities in an urban food desert: Downtown Albany longitudinal food environment studies

This paper presents findings from our longitudinal study of food environments in two exemplary, contrasting urban neighborhoods in Downtown Albany, New York. The “minority neighborhood” (74% racial/ethnic minority population) is a “food desert” by the United States Department of Agriculture's definition, whereas the adjacent “mixed neighborhood” (33% minority population) is not. The long‐term trend analysis (1970–2018) of the macro‐level food environment found that although the minority neighborhood lost all supermarkets and remains supermarket‐less since the late 1990s, the mixed neighborhood was able to retain several supermarkets and since 2008, it gained a new supermarket every 3–5 years. The medium‐term trend analysis (2003–2015) of the micro‐level food environment revealed a more complex picture of changing food environments. The total number of food stores in the minority neighborhood increased in much greater rates than the mixed neighborhood in the 12‐year period, and accordingly, the standardized availability measures for “any” fresh fruits and fresh vegetables increased significantly in the minority neighborhood. The standardized availability measure for adequate (five or more) varieties of nutritionally desirable fresh fruits and vegetables, however, did not increase in the minority neighborhood. Because the mixed neighborhood saw steady increases in such measures, disparities between the two neighborhoods grew incrementally and reached the highest point (rate ratio of over 5.0) in 2015. In this paper, there are also sections to provide historical and contextual background of our food environment research, as well as discussion on intervention ideas to address the disparities in fresh produce availability focusing on ethnic markets.     

The Changing Impact of Electoral Structure on Black Representation in the South, 1970–1996

For many years voting rights litigation has focused on eliminationof at-large elections and the creation of ``majority-minority''districts – election districts where a majority of the electorateare racial/ethnic minorities. Numerous studies have analyzed theimpact of district elections on minority representation,particularly the election of blacks in the South. Most of thesestudies have focused on a single time period, comparing the ratioof black representatives to black population across cities withdifferent electoral schemes. The present study combines data fromsix different data sets to produce a panel of data covering fivedistinct time periods over a 26 year span. Cross-sectionalestimates of the effect of district elections in each time periodare compared to determine how the efficacy of district electionshas changed over time. To control for possible selection bias,inter-temporal models of the impact of changes in electionstructure on changes in representation are also estimated.     

Do we need special,collective rights for immigrants and refugees in Western Europe?

Ethicists and political philosophers like Will Kymlicka and Charles Taylor have sensitized us to the need for recognizing the specific identity of minority groups. Once we stress the importance of group identities, the question arises how to protect those identities. Taylor and Kymlicka seek the answer to this question in granting special, collective rights to minority groups. In their analysis, Taylor and Kymlicka seem to have some specific, ‘historically settled’ minority groups in mind: the native Indian peoples of North America, and the French‐speaking community in Quebec, respectively. In my article, I want to examine whether this plea for special rights can be transferred to the Western European and, more specific, Dutch context. In this context, ‘minorities’ are not historically settled communities, but rather ethnic minorities, migrant workers and refugees, who have settled here only recently. Is it possible to maintain here, too, that special, collective rights are the best way to protect their identity? I shall answer this question in the negative. In the Western European setting, cultural pluralism may be best guaranteed by sticking to quite ordinary individual human rights. If these rights are implemented fully and effectively, we do not need special rights.     

Cracks in the Opposition: Immigration as a Wedge Issue for the Reagan Coalition

The absence of a core means that a majority coalition can never choose a policy that will keep it safe from minority appeals to its pivotal members. In two dimensions, strategic minorities will always be able to offer pivotal voters attractive policy concessions. We argue that this instability of multidimensional politics explains why minorities raise wedge issues and how wedge issues result in partisan realignment in legislative politics. Applying agenda‐constrained ideal point estimation techniques to immigration debates, we show that the Reagan coalition—pro‐business and social conservatives—has been vulnerable on the wedge issue of immigration and that parties have switched their positions on immigration over the last three decades. We use the uncovered set as the best‐fit theoretical solution concept in this legislative environment, to capture the limits of majority rule coalitional possibilities and policy change in the two‐dimensional absence of a core.     

Engineering inclusion: Assessing the effects of pro-minority representation policies

In democracies, a constant tension exists between the stability and integrity of the community as a whole, and the desire to ensure minorities a voice in politics. Reserved seats and reduced thresholds are two common means by which ethnic minorities gain legislative seats, though little or no empirical work exists testing their efficacy in this regard. Combining multivariate analysis with in-depth case studies, this article shows that both reserved seats and lower thresholds increase minority representation, though reserved seats accomplish that goal more consistently. Reduced thresholds tend to increase the share of votes and seats won by ethnoregional parties but reserved seats do not. Additionally, Mauritius' unusual best-loser system aids both minorities and ethnoregional parties.