ABSTRACT
The essays in this volume explore the contemporary politics of inclusion and exclusion. Collectively, they attempt to answer two major questions. Why are particular social groups excluded from equal participation in particular political processes? How do those groups become more fully included as equal participants with other groups in those processes? The critical issue is often not whether a group is included but how it is included. Though most of the essays consider both processes of inclusion and exclusion, readers will be able to sort the essays in terms of whether they focus more on inclusion (Asal, Cruz, Friedman and Scotece, Lien, and Sullivan and Strach) or exclusion (Basiliere, Novkov, Roth, and Rubaii-Barrett). Another way of distinguishing the volume essays is whether they
focus more on how “politics determine policies” or “policies determine politics.”1 The Basiliere essay suggests a particular politics that the transgendered might pursue to create more favorable public policies, while the Friedman and Scotece essay shows how Latino members of Congress are attempting to do just that. The Rubaii-Barrett essay demonstrates how local political constellations are more or less conducive to the political inclusion of recent immigrants, while the Lien and Cruz essays detail how Asian Americans and New York Puerto Ricans, respectively, have included themselves. From the “policies determine politics” side, the Asal essay examines the factors that have led to the political incorporation of “minorities at risk” across the Americas.2 On a more micro-level, the Roth essay argues that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has produced a disability politics in the United States dominated by bureaucrats and special interests to the exclusion of the disabled themselves. The Sullivan and Strach essay chronicles how “policies determine politics” through the concept of governance, in terms of how various federal policies require private agents to do the work of government.3 The Novkov essay analyses both dynamics in explaining how race-conscious judicial decisions precipitated a “colorblind” conservative politics that is now producing a quite different set of decisions. Again, most of the essays in the volume consider both dynamics to some extent, despite their emphases on one or the other.
