ABSTRACT
This chapter describes organizational, governmental, and political behavior among Latinos and Anglos. It examines organizational participation; problem-solving strategies for public policy issues; and partisanship and electoral behavior. The type of organization named most frequently as looking out for respondents’ concerns was national-origin-based. Fifty-three percent of Mexicans, 57 percent of Puerto Ricans, and 68 percent of Cubans named this type of organization. Puerto Rican women had a more difficult time attending meetings than did Puerto Rican men. More than four-fifths of respondents had not engaged in collective action to solve a community problem in the year before being interviewed by the Latino National Political Survey. Among the few mentioning public policy problems addressed through collective action, the most-often mentioned were social issues such as crime or drugs. Almost half of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, nearly 70 percent of Cubans and more than 70 percent of Anglos voted in the 1988 election.
