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Paper

The Revolution Against Affirmative Action in California: Politics, Economics, and Proposition 209 Alvarez, R. Michael Butterfield, Tara L. Uploaded 04-14-1998 Keywords discrete choice endogeneity generalized extreme value affirmative action race and politics California politics Abstract We consider two possible explanations --- economic anxiety and racial division --- for the appeal of Proposition 209 to California voters during the 1996 election. To test these hypotheses, we analyze voter exit poll data from teh 1996 California election. We utiliize a two--stage logit model to allow for the endogeneity of candidate endorsements. We find support for the second of our two hypotheses, which leads us to conclude that racial division fueled by a fear of arbitrary exclusion prompted voter support for Proposition 209.

2

Paper

Uncertainty and Ambivalence in the Ecology of Race Alvarez, R. Michael Brehm, John Uploaded 08-22-1996 Keywords racial policy affirmative action ecological inference heteroskedastic ordered logit value conflict uncertainty ambivalence equivocation Abstract Since Myrdal (1944), scholars have regarded American attitudes towards racial policy as a conflict between values, groups, and interests. Although Myrdal viewed the conflict as a state internal to individuals, it begins as aggregate conflict. This mix of ecologies---individual and aggregate---carries forth to the present. This paper takes the question of different ecologies for racial politics seriously, developing tools to compare conflict at individual and aggregate level. We demonstrate that individual racial policy choices stems principally from racial resentment, and that the variability of that choice indicates a state of uncertainty, not ambivalence or equivocation. We further demonstrate that racial resentment does not surface as a predictor of aggregate racial policy choice, even though individual choices about racial policies appear to be more strongly influenced by the level of political informedness.