Privilegios de la República de Naturaleza Procesal

Beyond explanations grounded in country of origin, Latino political behavior studies and, more generally, voting studies have tried to explain why Latino turnout does not fit the socioeconomic model by looking at the effects of contextual variables like election-specific party or Latino organizations, political mobilization and the demographic makeup of their electoral district

22 _{Elite political refugees fleeing the establishment of a regime that would persecute them or has taken over their} property is a different case, which constitute a very small number of immigrants compared to the massive movement experienced in the last few decades. These immigrants, evidently, view the host country as a temporary refuge, they are highly politicized and possess well-formed and more stable political attitudes (as individuals who come from a much politicized family in the US, see Scholzman, Verba and Nie, 2012). Most of the interest in politics of these migrants (e.g. Cuban and Chinese/Taiwanese elites in the aftermath of the Revolution) is tied to their home country

29 (minority-majority) or concentration.

Scholars have looked into the types of communities Latinos live in (minority-majority or minority-minority district) because in theory, communities within ethnic enclaves may develop group solidarity, consciousness and social capital that may help to overcome the obstacles of organization, and thereby enhance turnout levels (Uhlaner 1989; Leighley 2001; Bridges, 1997; Erie, 1990). However, empirical studies focusing on concentration have yielded contradictory results in different states and counties. For example, while Leighley (2001) has shown that there is a positive correlation between Latino concentration and turnout in minority-majority districts in Texas, De la Garza et al. (2001/2002) found the opposite relation in a longitudinal study of Houston (1992-1998) with individual level data concerning local, national and congressional elections. In a prior study, de la Garza et al (1993) had also found that concentration led to lower levels of turnout in Los Angeles, Miami and Houston. This suggests that the effect of concentration on overall turnout are likely contingent on the situation of the particular state and county (Leighley, 2001; Barreto, Segura & Woods, 2004, de la Garza et al., 2002) and may be due, as I argue in this paper, to the fact that concentration works to elicit participatory behavior only under certain institutional conditions.

Another factor that has been considered relevant in eroding political participation of Latinos at the local level is discrimination, or the existence of negative racial and ethnic stereotypes. The prevalence of negative stereotypes is sometimes linked to the actual existence of immigrant populations that prefer to remain distanced from the political system, “keeping to themselves,” particularly during periods of aggravated racial profiling, when casual detentions may lead to deportations of illegal immigrants, or to serious harassment of legal ones by law enforcers. In contexts where anti- immigration legislation is passed at the local level, even native-born citizens

may be arrested for giving a ride to an undocumented relative, or detained until their immigration status is verified. Citizens who experience discrimination may feel they do not have a legitimate place in the national community and may decide to voluntarily marginalize themselves by abstaining from voting (Schildrkraut 2011 cites preliminary evidence that supports this). However, hostile attitudes towards minority groups may also have the opposite effect: it has been documented that the passing of certain anti-immigration laws--such as California’s Proposition 187 (passed in 1994 and voided in 1998), HR-4437 in 2006 and the draconian laws recently passed in Arizona and Alabama—triggered higher levels of participation, as immigrants from similar backgrounds mobilized to protest against these laws. Consequently, discrimination does not seem capable, on its own, to explain the Latino participation puzzle.

A final factor that has become an increasingly popular candidate to explain the Latino puzzle is the mobilization of Latinos by national parties during presidential elections. In 2002 Leighley found that only 15% of Latinos, compared to 45% of whites, were asked to engage in campaign activity. More generally, Wrinkle et al. (1996), Shaw et al. (2000), and de la Garza et al. (2002b) have shown that mobilization is a major predictor of voter turnout, even after controlling for socioeconomic status (De la Garza, 2004, p.101). Field experiments have dominated this type of study and they present impressive results regarding the responsiveness of Latinos to door-to-door non-partisan Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns in some counties in California23. For example, in Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-

Out-the-Vote Campaigns, Michelson and Garcia Bedolla, (2012) teamed up with multiple Latino

23 _{“These experiments indicate that door to door canvassing is the most powerful method of turning out voters, that} phone calls from volunteer phone banks can also significantly increase turnout, and that mailers (without the inclusion of social pressure messages) and other indirect methods tend to be ineffective. Experiments also suggest that the quality of a canvassing or phone banking campaign --the sincerity and commitment of those who make the contact with voters-- is crucial to its success Green and Gerber 2008; Michaelson, Garcia Bedolla and Green 2009;

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NGO’s through the James Irvine Foundation’s California Votes Initiative (CVI), a multiyear effort to increase voting rates among infrequent voters, particularly those in low-income and ethno racial communities in California’s San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, as well as targeted areas in southern California, including parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.

The scripts used by door-to door canvassers in these projects were designed by the research team based on previous experimental research on canvassing (Green and Gerber 2008; Michelson, Garcia Bedolla and Green 2009; Nickerson 2007). The CVI project also utilized local organizations in these canvassing efforts, and were quite successful in the sense that people who had the conversation were more likely to vote. Based on this study experience and their findings, Michelson and Garcia Bedolla developed a theoretical model to explain their success: the Sociocultural Cognition Model24 theorizes that the canvassing conversation changes the behavior of unlikely voters because it is “a narrative-based sociocultural interaction, which provides a set of social cues that lead the targeted individual to adopt a new cognitive schema as a ‘voter,’ which is what leads him or her to choose to vote.” In other words, the increased voter turnout is explained, in their view, as the result of a particular type of sociocultural interaction, namely, the conversation between the canvassers and the targeted voter (p. 8).

Their findings are a consistent with many urban politics scholars, sociologists, demographers and historians who before them have noted that one of the key characteristics of effective political machines in the United States was their ability to get poor, immigrant voters to the polls by having party workers essentially have similar conversations or hold rallies that

24 _{“We did not set out to "test" the impact of the cognitive schemas on voting behavior. Our initial research was} meant to determine which GOTV strategies were most effective in mobilizing a particular voting populations. [...]What was found was a bit of variation in terms of GOTV effectiveness across individuals and campaigns. [We] developed to explain the variation and provide a theoretical explanation for why such a short conversation with a canvasser would change individual voting behavior.” Michaelson and Bedolla, p.10

provided a framework through which these potential voters could interpret politics and relate it to their lives. However, I do not think their Sociocultural Cognition Model is helpful in solving the Latino low voter turnout puzzle. While their theory and findings do a phenomenal job in explaining why certain types of interventions, in very specific local institutional and political contexts25, are more likely to get people to vote, we cannot conclude that Latinos (and other similar immigrant or minority groups) have voted less in the United States for the past 50 years due simply to the absence of such interventions, that is, the absence of co-ethnic non-partisan organizations placing the larger political picture in context for these voters.

While I agree that mobilization is an important part of the story, mobilization is one of the things that happen more regularly and effectively in certain local political institutional environments. Thus, the local political structure has an indirect effect on behavior through mobilization. As Garcia Bedolla and Michelson (2012) argue, political competition increases the probability of conversations between co-ethnics where one is able to explain and put in context the political system for the other or give cues that elicit certain behavior; there are always more relevant cues in places where there are clear lines of popular division, identifiable politicians and policy outcomes. In addition, a local institutional structure also has a direct effect on political attitudes and behavior because it allows potential voters to be more likely to experience local political events and identify with the winners or losers of an election, and to experience local policies as a direct consequence of voting outcomes. Even if we accept the premise that voting

25 _{Their study took place right after the biggest political event affecting Latino national identity and their} interpretation of their place in the political system, the 2006 immigration bill HR-4437 commonly known as the Sensenbrenner Bill. This bill criminalized undocumented immigrants and their relatives, friends, neighbors, doctors and priests for driving, housing or treating them. Although this was a bill affecting all Latinos in the United States, California Latino leaders and Spanish speaking media, especially in the area the study took place, were the main organizers of the mobilizations and media campaign that followed it. Moreover, the canvassing and the CVI is a direct consequence of the environment generated in the aftermath of HR-4437. This law triggered the largest spontaneous and organized marches in the history of the United States, most of which, including the largest one of over 500,000 people, occurred in the area they conducted the study. I am not sure that the canvassing conversation

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behavior is driven primarily by mobilization, this does not answer key questions to solve the Latino low turnout puzzle: Why is it that political parties are not competing more aggressively to mobilize these voters, given the ample evidence experimental research has provided about how effective mobilization is? And if the answer is that parties don’t need to or don’t want to, the question remains as to why Latinos, or Mexican Americans, who have suffered the consequences of racial profiling and discriminatory laws, not unlike African Americans, have not been able to overcome persistent low levels of turnout as other minority groups have.

In the Annual Review of Political Science (2004), Rodolfo de la Garza concluded, after extensively reviewing the existing literature and empirical data on Latino electoral participation, that the daunting question of Latino electoral participation demands “new and perhaps unique models that will take us past the logjam we currently confront.”26 This paper attempts to contribute to that task, by offering a theoretical model that is based on local political institutional contexts and that may help unravel the enigma observed at the national level.