Description: Contested Transformation constitutes the first comprehensive study of racial and ethnic minorities holding elective office in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Building on data from the Gender and Multicultural Leadership (GMCL) National Database and Survey, it provides a baseline portrait of Black, Latino, Asian American, and American Indian elected officials - the women and men holding public office at national, state, and local levels of government. Analysis reveals commonalities and differences across race and gender groups on their backgrounds, paths to public office, leadership roles, and policy positions. Challenging mainstream political science theories in their applicability to elected officials of color, the book offers new understandings of the experiences of those holding public office today. Gains in political leadership and influence by people of color are transforming the American political landscape, but they have occurred within a contested political context, one where struggles for racial and gender equality continue.
Brief description: Pei-te Lien is a professor of Political Science and holds an affiliated professorship with the Department of Asian American Studies and that of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her primary research interest is the political participation and representation of Asian and other non-white Americans, her recent work examines the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, and nativity in political behavior.
Review Quotes: 'As political contestation around hierarchy and inclusion - whether of race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, or something else - heats up in the United States and elsewhere, citizens and scholars urgently need reliable information. They especially need information that is embedded in a strong, clear, empirically-grounded analysis. Along comes Contested Transformation, just in time. The study of minority groups' constricted yet expanding political leadership would be valuable at any time, but at present it commands our attention as few other topics can do.' Jennifer L. Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, Harvard University