Native bias: OVERCOMING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST IMMIGRANTS
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior) (2022)
with Donghyun Danny Choi and Nicholas Sambanis, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior) (2022)
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This book argues that inter-group conflict between natives and immigrants can be decreased through shared social norms that define a common ingroup identity. Anti-immigrant bias is a form of ethnic conflict driven mainly by cultural differences. These differences create "social distance" between natives and immigrants, leading to bias and discrimination. The usual prescription to reduce bias via reducing social distance has been to change the expression of ascriptive differences that categorize immigrants as an outgroup relative to the native ingroup: immigrants will often change their names, their customs, their language, and even their religion. This process, often pursued by policies of coercive assimilation of immigrant populations, changes group boundaries to forge a degree of homogeneity that is thought to be required to reduce intergroup conflict. This book argues that it is not necessary for immigrants to change their appearance, their religion, or their language in an attempt to "pass" as members of the majority. Rather, bias and discrimination toward immigrants can be reduced if immigrants and natives share social norms that define a common ingroup identity as citizens.
The key here is that norms must be shared — not that the burden must necessarily be on immigrants to adopt to local norms that they find repressive. Although norm-sharing will often take place through a process of assimilation of minority groups into majority populations, it could also occur via a gradual, two-way process of mutual acculturation over time. In the short term, one strategy to overcome sources of bias and discrimination is to resolve uncertainty about the depth of ideational differences that divide natives and immigrants. This book shows that, when natives observe immigrant behavior that suggests that the two groups share valued civic norms, this reduces discrimination by de-emphasizing the native-immigrant divide and forging a common ingroup identity that includes both natives and immigrants. Different shared identities can be defined by different norms; and the more salient is that identity to each individual’s self-concept, the more discrimination toward immigrants will be reduced. This conclusion speaks to an ongoing debate about the limits of multiculturalism in Europe. Our book suggests that multiculturalism is possible, but that it also has its limits. It is possible to reduce discrimination due to differences in ascriptive traits, but this requires sharing norms and ideas, which would eliminate the symbolic threat generated by ascriptive differences. [Order here] * Winner of the 2023 Best Book Award from the Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association. Endorsements “Native Bias offers a compelling and hopeful analysis of the challenges facing countries grappling with increasing cultural diversity. Focusing on the integration of Muslims in Germany, a series of clever experiments reveals what it takes for majorities to stop discriminating against minorities. Indispensable reading for anyone interested in immigrant integration and multicultural politics!” — Rafaela M. Dancygier, author of Dilemmas of Inclusion: Muslims in European Politics “This excellent book addresses one of the most important issues of our time: how to overcome the discrimination of immigrants and, ultimately, how to secure their successful integration into new societies. This is a major contribution not only to the study of immigrant discrimination and integration, but also to intergroup relations more broadly." — Peter Thisted Dinesen, University of Copenhagen “Setting a new standard for theoretically guided fieldwork, Native Biaspresents an array of elegant experiments staged in dozens of cities and involving thousands of bystanders. These unobtrusive studies of discrimination do more than simply document the fact that natives look down on immigrants; they illuminate the conditions under which anti-immigrant discrimination diminishes, underscoring in particular the importance of challenging stereotypes that portray immigrants as hostile or indifferent to the values of the native majority.” — Donald P. Green, Columbia University “Based on an impressive battery of original field experiments and surveys, this work holds a powerful message: bias and discrimination against Muslim immigrants are widespread and persistent in Europe. Native Bias shows that these shortcomings can be overcome by shared civic norms and identities.” — Christian Joppke, University of Bern “This is a terrific book—one of the best I’ve read in a long time. Polished, theoretically sophisticated, and logically structured, it brings to bear new evidence and approaches on a critical contemporary topic.” — Daniel N. Posner, University of California, Los Angeles |
CREATING PARTISANS: THE ORGANIZATIONAL ROOTS OF NEW PARTIES IN LATIN AMERICA [Forthcoming at Cambridge University Press]
The frequent emergence of new parties is a feature of democracies almost everywhere. While most of these new parties remain ephemeral, some manage to establish stable ties with voters and win substantial electoral support over repeated elections. This divergence raises the question why some new parties are able to take root in society, establish stable ties with voters, and successfully compete in elections over time, while others fail to do so.
This question is critical for understanding the quality and stability of democratic representation in transitioning regimes, yet little studied in the literature, which tends to focus on the stability of party identification and de-alignment away from traditional parties. This project attempts to fill this gap. It explores different paths that new parties take to build mass support, i.e. to secure electoral support and build partisan attachments in the electorate, in the context of the recent wave of party formation in Latin America.
With the decline of unions, which played a central role in the historic founding of mass parties, much of the recent literature has concentrated on parties’ direct appeals to voters and explained variation in success to secure support in terms of the type of direct appeals, e.g. through programmatic class vs. ethnic or charismatic appeals. In this study, I consider different types of direct appeals and also explore organizationally mediated strategies, i.e. appeals that engage voters through societal organizations. I find that organizationally mediated strategies can secure electoral support very effectively and yield durable voter ties by socializing organization members into identifying with the party. Even though the mediating role that civil society organizations can play has been largely overlooked with the decline of labor unions, new types of organizations—such as indigenous organizations, peasant unions, and informal sector unions—play immensely important roles in democratic societies today. While the existing scholarship has examined the formation of these organizations and their role in politicizing ethnic or class cleavages, little attention has been paid to the various ways in which different forms of party-organization linkages might influence vote choice and the emergence of partisanship.
The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I analyze how voters come to support new parties. More specifically, I compare the electoral support and partisanship that develop in response to different party mobilization strategies. I show that organizationally mediated appeals can help parties obtain electoral support more effectively than most types of direct appeals. Furthermore, I present evidence that mediated appeals also yield durable voter-party ties by socializing organization members and people in their social networks into identifying with the party itself. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theory, I contend that societal organizations, which serve as highly salient, immediate reference groups to their members, provide social spaces in which socialization into new parties can occur, if the organization repeatedly expresses its support for a party.
In a second step, I then explore why parties choose these different mobilization strategies in the first place by focusing on the intra-elite dynamics during parties’ founding moments, the period before the party contests its first major election. Two features of the founding moments—one internal to the new party, the other one external to it—are key: (1) the cohesion of the coalition of party leaders and organizational allies and (2) the credibility of other attractive parties in the party system. These factors shape early-on whether a party-organization tie becomes institutionalized by adopting routinized rules and mechanisms that govern how candidates will be selected and factional disagreements will be settled. Whether party-organization ties become institutionalized, in turn, establishes whether a new party can rely on organizationally mediated strategies or is restricted to employing direct appeals only. Furthermore, I argue that the institutionalization of a linkage can provide the basis for different types of organizationally mediated strategies and resulting party structures, depending on the internal structure of the organizational allies.
This theory is tested in the context of the recent wave of party formation in Latin America. My book project compares three major new parties, Bolivia’s MAS, Ecuador’s Alianza PAIS, and Mexico’s MORENA, with each other and with other new parties. Using a multi-method research strategy based on 24 months of fieldwork in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico, this project combines insights from a series of experiments and a natural experiment with over 230 in-depth interviews with representatives of parties and organizations, analyses of surveys, census data, election returns, archival materials, and ethnographic work within local organizations.
This question is critical for understanding the quality and stability of democratic representation in transitioning regimes, yet little studied in the literature, which tends to focus on the stability of party identification and de-alignment away from traditional parties. This project attempts to fill this gap. It explores different paths that new parties take to build mass support, i.e. to secure electoral support and build partisan attachments in the electorate, in the context of the recent wave of party formation in Latin America.
With the decline of unions, which played a central role in the historic founding of mass parties, much of the recent literature has concentrated on parties’ direct appeals to voters and explained variation in success to secure support in terms of the type of direct appeals, e.g. through programmatic class vs. ethnic or charismatic appeals. In this study, I consider different types of direct appeals and also explore organizationally mediated strategies, i.e. appeals that engage voters through societal organizations. I find that organizationally mediated strategies can secure electoral support very effectively and yield durable voter ties by socializing organization members into identifying with the party. Even though the mediating role that civil society organizations can play has been largely overlooked with the decline of labor unions, new types of organizations—such as indigenous organizations, peasant unions, and informal sector unions—play immensely important roles in democratic societies today. While the existing scholarship has examined the formation of these organizations and their role in politicizing ethnic or class cleavages, little attention has been paid to the various ways in which different forms of party-organization linkages might influence vote choice and the emergence of partisanship.
The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I analyze how voters come to support new parties. More specifically, I compare the electoral support and partisanship that develop in response to different party mobilization strategies. I show that organizationally mediated appeals can help parties obtain electoral support more effectively than most types of direct appeals. Furthermore, I present evidence that mediated appeals also yield durable voter-party ties by socializing organization members and people in their social networks into identifying with the party itself. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theory, I contend that societal organizations, which serve as highly salient, immediate reference groups to their members, provide social spaces in which socialization into new parties can occur, if the organization repeatedly expresses its support for a party.
In a second step, I then explore why parties choose these different mobilization strategies in the first place by focusing on the intra-elite dynamics during parties’ founding moments, the period before the party contests its first major election. Two features of the founding moments—one internal to the new party, the other one external to it—are key: (1) the cohesion of the coalition of party leaders and organizational allies and (2) the credibility of other attractive parties in the party system. These factors shape early-on whether a party-organization tie becomes institutionalized by adopting routinized rules and mechanisms that govern how candidates will be selected and factional disagreements will be settled. Whether party-organization ties become institutionalized, in turn, establishes whether a new party can rely on organizationally mediated strategies or is restricted to employing direct appeals only. Furthermore, I argue that the institutionalization of a linkage can provide the basis for different types of organizationally mediated strategies and resulting party structures, depending on the internal structure of the organizational allies.
This theory is tested in the context of the recent wave of party formation in Latin America. My book project compares three major new parties, Bolivia’s MAS, Ecuador’s Alianza PAIS, and Mexico’s MORENA, with each other and with other new parties. Using a multi-method research strategy based on 24 months of fieldwork in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico, this project combines insights from a series of experiments and a natural experiment with over 230 in-depth interviews with representatives of parties and organizations, analyses of surveys, census data, election returns, archival materials, and ethnographic work within local organizations.