J. L. Polinard

Representative Bureaucracy and Distributional Equity: Addressing the Hard Question

Research on representative bureaucracy has failed to deal with whether or not representative bureaucracies produce minority gains at the expense of nonminorities. Using a pooled time-series analysis of 350 school districts over six years, this study examines the relationship between representative bureaucracy and organizational outputs for minorities and nonminorities. Far from finding that representative bureaucracy produces minority gains at the expense of nonminorities, this study finds both minority and nonminority students perform better in the presence of a representative bureaucracy. This finding suggests an alternative hypothesis to guide research: that representative bureaucracies are more effective than their nonrepresentative counterparts.

Divided or Together? Conflict and Cooperation between African Americans and Latinos

This article examines the political relationships between Latinos and African Americans in 194 multiracial school districts. The empirical results indicate that at times the relationship between Latinos and African Americans is competitive and at times it is complimentary. When scarcity is a factor, such as in administrative and teaching positions, gains by one group often result in losses by another. When the focus changes to policy questions where scarcity is not a factor (e.g., student performance), both groups gain at the same time.

Ethnicity and Nonelectoral Political Participation

Research on political behavior has generally ignored nonelectoralforms ofparticipation and has given scant attention to ethnic minorities. Part of the reason for these gaps in the literature has to do with the paucity of data. Taking advantage of the availability of data from the Latino National Political Survey, this work looks at whether nonelectoral participation by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans can be explained on the basis of culture, socioeconomic status, mobilization, or some combination of the three. Although mobilization appears to offer the strongest explanation, variables representing all three approaches have some utility. Furthermore, it appears that the factors affecting Cuban nonelectoral participation are notably different than for other Latinos.

Zen and the Art of Policy Analysis: A Response to Nielsen and Wolf

Nielsen and Wolf lodge several criticisms of Meier, Wrinkle, and Polinard (1999). Although most of the criticisms deal with tangential issues rather than our core argument, their criticisms are flawed by misguided estimation strategies, erroneous results, and an inattention to existing theory and scholarship. Our reanalysis of their work demonstrates these problems and presents even stronger evidence for our initial conclusion-that both minority and Anglo students perform better in schools with more minority teachers.

Attitudes of Mexican Americans Toward Irregular Mexican Immigration.

This inquiry focuses on the attitudes of Mexican Americans toward issues relating to current U.S. immigration policy. This study is an expansion of research begun last year (Miller, Polinard and Wrinkle: 1984). In the previous study the geographical focus was on Hidalgo County, situated on the Texas-Mexico broder. This study offers us the additional dimension of geography as a variable influencing attitudes.

Politics, Bureaucracy, and Agricultural Policy An Alternative View of Political Control

This study is a quantitative time-series analysis of politics and agricultural policy in the United States from 1950 to 1990. Agricultural policy is an area that generally does not fit the assumptions of the principal-agent model but rather relies on cooperative relationships between politicians and bureaucrats. Congress is the most active political institution, and bureaucracy has substantial expertise. The result is a mix of political controls and bureaucratic discretion that shapes major agricultural programs. The impact of these agricultural programs, especially those relevant to agricultural research, is assessed on several indicators of the farm sectors economic health.

Equity Versus Excellence in Organizations : A Substantively Weighted Least Squares Analysis

All public organizations face conflicting goals that in theory require trade-offs. Using data from school systems, this article argues that good organizations may be able to attain more than one goal simultaneously. The research uses a substantively weighted analytical technique 1 to determine how organizations concerned with equity also meet demands for effectiveness. The best organizations do this through a more efficient translation of inputs into outputs.

Ethnic concerns and Latino party identification

Abstract The accelerated growth of the Latino population in the United States has made Latinos a coveted addition to each major political partys base. In this paper we examine the influence of ethnic concerns on the party identification of Latinos in the U.S. In contrast to previous studies, we account for Latinos’ perceptions of the political parties’ concern for their ethnic interests, allowing such interests to be self-defined. In a multinomial logit analysis of pooled data from three surveys of Latinos taken in 1999, 2004, and 2006, we find such perceptions do affect Latino partisanship, along with variables such as nativity and country of origin or ancestry. We also find a tendency toward independence among Latinos. Finally, we find movement toward the Democratic Party in 2004, once ethnic concerns are taken into account. One implication of the findings is that the party that can best persuade Latinos of their concern for their interests is the party most likely to gain their loyalties; indeed, the parties must earn those loyalties.

Representation and policy: Appointments of Mexican Americans to boards and commissions

Abstract This article examines the relationship between change from at large to district systems in city council elections and the appointment of Mexican Americans to municipal boards and commissions. Our study found that form of governmental structure, i. e., at large or district, is not as important as (1) Mexican American percentage of the city council and (2) percentage of the city which is Mexican American. At the same time, form of government obviously is an intervening variable, producing more Mexican Americans on the city council. Structural reform of cities by means of VRA litigation has helped produce more Mexican American candidacies and more Mexican American winners and thus more Mexican American appointments to important boards and commissions.