Constructivist theories of political incorporation

Introduction

Scholars approach political incorporation from a kaleidoscopic range of foci: individuals or groups (Ramírez and Fraga, 2008), attitudes and beliefs or opportunity structures (Koopmans et al., 2005; Segura, 2013), outcomes or processes (Jones-Correa, 2013), mechanisms of inclusion or exclusion (Shefter, 1986), host society policies (Waldinger and Tseng, 1992), feedback loops or incorporative trajectories (Chandra, 2012; De Souza Briggs, 2013; Jones-Correa, 2013; Van Der Veen and Laitin, 2012). Based upon their theoretical assumptions, scholars typically place one or another of these variables at the center of their analyses. The meaning of political incorporation, therefore, often varies depending on what the scholar wants it to mean and how she or he conceptualizes it in the specific context in which the topic is broached. As a result, the literature on political incorporation tends to lack thematic consistency or precision.

In recent years, several scholars have attempted to refine analyses of political incorporation (Hochschild et al., 2013; Hochschild and Mollenkopf, 2009). These scholars define political incorporation as “methods or tactics used, by individuals or groups, to make claims about the allocation of material or symbolic public goods” (Jones-Correa, 2013: 177). While this definition helps clarify the studied content of political incorporation, it does not quite capture the shifting loci of political incorporation: from marginalized racial minorities in urban cities to multi-ethnic immigrant communities in the suburbs (or “ethnoburbs”). Scholarship has therefore refined theories of political incorporation, but it has not resituated the locus of its analyses. And, consequently, it has not yet identified novel agents who are increasingly facilitating immigrant political incorporation — ethnopolitical entrepreneurs.

In what follows, I will attempt to expand upon existing political incorporation scholarship by borrowing and applying a framework from constructivist ethnic politics theory. This application has the plasticity necessary to evaluate the processes by which newcomers and other co-ethnic community members become incorporated politically, particularly as this process relates to ethnic bloc voting. In terms of constructivist ethnic politics, I will be applying Van der Veen and Laitin’s (2012) agent-based theory, for it bears directly on electoral politics. In their assessment, political leaders’ capacity to win and stay in power stems from demographic distribution and ethnic representation. That is, how agents construct group membership has direct electoral ramifications; these constructions determine, in part, the voting tendencies of their constituencies. Political agents employ ethnicities through three distinct mechanisms: (1) attribute replacement, (2) change in salience, and (3) attribute recombination (279). These mechanisms determine a political leader’s success (or failure). But, in addition, these mechanisms also influence the voting behaviors and mobilization of constituencies. As such, ethnic construction helps understand the processes through which political incorporation takes place in contexts wherein ethnic constituencies comprise a significant share of the voting bloc. While I do not assume that success in mobilizing an ethnic bloc to vote exhausts the experience of political incorporation, it does play an important role in political incorporation, one that reflects how newcomers make sustained claims and reallocate city resources.

As a case study, I have relied upon the understudied Armenian community of Glendale, California. Glendale houses a substantial Armenian population (according to census data, approximately 40% of the 200,000+ residents). The Armenian community is internally diverse, regionally and generationally. In addition, they have not lived in the city for a long time, with the most substantial waves occurring after the mid-1970s. Because of their relative novelty and intra-ethnic diversity, the Armenian ethnic identity is relatively fluid. The competing strings of attributes used to define Armenian group membership manifest this fluidity. Despite the fluidity, Armenian demographic concentration has created considerable political distribution of benefits. Armenian political entrepreneurs have seized the opportunity and currently occupy over 70% of all electoral seats. Their success, however, rests on efforts to mobilize and incorporate politically the internally diverse Armenian population. Successful entrepreneurs combine and model a set of attributes that resonates among the largest group of prospective voters. And these processes of activating the “right” combination of attributes, I argue, reflect the extent to which groups become electorally incorporated. As such, the ways in which various agents have constructed Armenian ethnic identity dovetail closely with the community’s political incorporation. The data collected in the third section of this discussion present the work of several agents actively constructing Armenian ethnic identity and how these constructions affect political incorporation.

Applying constructivist ethnic politics to political incorporation

Background ¹

In the 1950s, the migration of Iranian Armenian students to Los Angeles and then, ultimately, Glendale, resulted in further migration of other students and families. Iran began to send thousands of students (several Iranian Armenian) to the US, and Glendale became an educational option because, in part, Iranian Armenians had already settled there. After years boycotting Iranian oil, the US began reengaging once the Shah had been restored in 1953. The resumption of oil revenue and aid to Iran bolstered its failing economy in the 1950s and beyond (Bozorgmehr and Sabbagh, 1988). The prerevolution years brought to Los Angeles and Glendale a heightened number of students from Iran. Iran’s economic upturn triggered increased migration to the US even before the passage of the Hart–Celler Act in 1965. With more wealth, the desire for higher education also increased. Iran’s lack of space in universities, the difficulty of its entrance exams, and its population’s inability to operate imported machinery culminated in a massive influx of students abroad—from 18,000 in 1963 to 227,497 in 1997 (Bozorgmehr and Sabbagh, 1988: 10). Because of the existing Iranian Armenian families in Glendale and educational opportunities nearby, Glendale became an attractive option for several Iranian Armenian students in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Because of their economic resources, Iranians and Iranian Armenians were distinct newcomers. Unlike earlier immigrants to the US, Iranian Armenians brought with them considerable intellectual and material resources. According to Katouzian (1981), Iranian oil revenues steadily increased from $4.4 billion to $17.1 billion in the mid-1970s alone. Quite a few of the first Iranian Armenians settling in Glendale had benefited economically from these new revenue flows. As a result, early Iranian Armenians in Glendale, especially those who had left Iran before the Shah’s demise, were able to afford homes in relatively affluent neighborhoods rather than settling in more densely concentrated urban centers. Glendale provided an attractive alternative to these student visitors as well as their relatives and peers. Similar to the Chinese in Monterey Park or Cubans in Florida who had “leapfrogged” into suburban neighborhoods, many of the early Iranian Armenians had the resources to settle in wealthier areas. And they were not alone. Although less economically privileged, several Armenians from Iraq also began moving to Glendale in the 1970s, particularly once an Armenian church opened in 1975 (Fittante, 2017a).

As more Armenians began to move into Glendale, and as places like Encino and Hollywood began to experience more crime, Glendale emerged as an attractive destination for Armenians from various locations. They relocated on account of several upheavals taking place in their native countries, such as the Lebanese Civil War, Iranian Revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic crash of the Republic of Armenia, and other global events. While post-Genocide Armenians had established several communities throughout the US before Los Angeles, Glendale has become one of the most densely concentrated and visible Armenian diasporic settlements in history (Fittante, 2018).

Methods

Between mid-2016 to 2017, I lived in Glendale, where I undertook extensive participant observation and conducted over 100 in-depth interviews. For this article, I have pulled from those interviewed who had been involved with organizing and running Armenian American political campaigns in Glendale. More specifically, the data reflect the experiences of Armenian elected officials, Armenian organizational leaders, and Armenian American media personnel, such as journalists and television producers. Among those interviewed, I asked about participants’ migration histories, involvement with Armenian organizations, and Glendale city politics (such as campaign strategies, outreach efforts, policy advocacy, successes and challenges, community–city dynamics, and many others). While the interviews were largely open-ended, the questions I asked all sought to gain a better understanding of how diverse community members joined efforts in order to mobilize the community through voter registration and the election of co-ethnic city officials. I also asked about the genesis and evolution of ethnic politics in Glendale. By coding identity information, participants’ confidentiality was maintained. In addition to interviews, I networked in the community and undertook extensive participant observations. For example, I volunteered on the campaigns of local Armenian American political entrepreneurs and attended Glendale Town Hall meetings. These experiences brought me into contact with various members of the Armenian community: its businesspeople, politicians, commissioners, civil servants, educators, ethnic organizations and media, and many others. Through these experiences, I was able to meet, and set up interviews with, diverse members of the community as well as observe/participate in many community events.

Since many Armenian American politicians and other public figures supported my research, I gained quite a bit of access to the community. Several of these individuals used their visibility on social media to post about and endorse my research. Given their rather large local followings, these posts raised awareness and allowed me to access a diverse sample. On account of my familiarity with Armenian language and cultural practices, I operated as a sort of quasi-insider and outsider. As a result, I ultimately engaged hundreds of community members and even developed many friendships with those whom I worked. With my Armenian Angeleno peers, I participated in many community and family events such as birthdays, engagement parties, funerals, and other holiday celebrations.

Findings: The constructivist mechanisms of political incorporation in Glendale

In the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, several Armenian activists began pondering how best to reach the growing influx of Armenian immigrants into Greater Los Angeles. In an interview, one of these early activists (and now council member), Paul Krekorian, said he wanted to figure out,

How can we put this growing Armenian population, which [is] now starting to come in at much greater numbers, how can we get them more engaged in public affairs and utilize the numbers of this community to pursue their interests?

Laitin and Van Der Veen’s adaptation of Chandra’s constructivist model helps us understand the success of Manoukian’s campaign and those that followed it. Armenian ethnic politicians had run in previous campaigns and lost consistently. This section relies upon Laitin and Van Der Veen’s three processes to document the mechanisms by which Armenians have become politically incorporated into Glendale. As described above, these mechanisms include: (1) attribute replacement, (2) change in salience, and (3) attribute recombination (Laitin and Van Der Veen, 2012: 279).

1. Attribute replacement

Attribute replacement occurs when a minority population invests in the attributes of the majority population. By acquiring these majority population attributes, minority group members will be able to “pass” (Laitin and Van Der Veen, 2012: 280). But in acquiring too many majority attributes, agents (particularly ethnopolitical entrepreneurs) run the risk of losing their social capital or reputation among co-ethnics. While Armenians may view negatively the loss of certain Armenian attributes, few condemn the acquisition of American attributes. As such, ethnopolitical entrepreneurs maintain a delicate balance between appearing sufficiently American to Americans (“passing”) and sufficiently Armenian to Armenians. As one entrepreneur confessed in a personal interview:

In my campaign, it was very important to me, and not just for electoral value but for societal value, for me to forcefully contradict that [prejudice]. So I talked about my Armenian dad who fought on Okinawa in the United States Marine Corps. And I showed my Cub Scout experience to grab the racists by the lapels, and say, ‘My name ends in –ian and I am every bit just as American as you, and if you don’t like it, you don’t understand what America is all about’. So that was actually a big part of what we tried to do in the campaign.

But these attributes need to be believable; therefore, the entrepreneur stands to benefit by embodying the attributes projected. One political entrepreneur, perhaps the only elected official of Armenian descent in Glendale who receives considerable support from both Armenians and non-Armenians, stated the following:

I was very Anglo growing up…So I was kind of like your All-American kid growing up with a weird name. You know, captain of the football team, swim team, little league…[But] I’m a true Armenian American. I think I have strong ties to Armenians, and I think I can relate to Hayastancis [Armenians from Armenia]. But I’ve got strong American roots, where I can relate to the old white Republicans. So I do play that. But that’s just me. Forget the political: I still have those two spheres of life.

Ostensibly, one might mistakenly take Armenian cohesion for granted. However, as stated, Glendale’s Armenian population attributes tremendous intra-ethnic diversity. According to Census data from 2010, fewer than 30% of Armenians in Glendale were born in the United States. The remaining majority comes from a variety of origins in the Middle East, Europe, post-Soviet countries. The geographic diversity parallels the generational differences, with those coming to Glendale at various stages of their lives. As such, for ethnopolitical entrepreneurs, constructing a sense of cohesion meant selecting which attributes to include (or which to neglect). In a personal interview, one elected official spoke of experiences he encountered:

We started going to apartment buildings, and south Glendale became a big hub for that. We registered almost 3,000 new voters. By election day, we got almost 6,000 out to vote, which almost tripled the highest performance in election prior to that in Glendale. Rafi ended up winning. He got a total of, I think, 7,200 votes. I think it was a complete shock to the community…[Armenians] voted. They got the result. So they were like: this is not like the old country. This isn’t like Lebanon where we’re duking it out with Maronites; this isn’t Iran where we just stay quiet and go about our way…it’s not Armenia, where, government is never at your door to help…So this was this sense of, ‘wow, we can actually do this.’

For Armenians, the country of Armenia has recently become a salient attribute of Armenian identity. Prior to its independence from the Soviet Union, many Armenians in the Diaspora did not consider Armenia a central dimension of their ethnic identity (Fittante, 2017b). However, subsequent to its independence, the attribute salience of Armenia has heightened considerably. This is likely especially true in Los Angeles and Glendale, as migration has overlapped with the country’s independence and efforts to gain an economic foothold. As such, in Glendale’s internally diverse population, Armenia has emerged as a salient attribute that unites Armenians from various places. And this emphasis has strong electoral implications. For example, a Los Angeles-based Armenian newspaper general editor stressed the centrality of the national cause:

[For example,] if I’m talking about Electric Yerevan, ² I’m talking about the importance of the aspirations for those residing in Armenia, but also making sure that people sitting here know why it’s significant for that [event] to prevail. Because it’s a national agenda that we’re pursuing. And our mission has always been to advance that national agenda. Otherwise, my existence as a diasporan is stupid. I’m just someone of Armenian origin living in Los Angeles…So the way we speak to everyone is that everything is based on this national ideal.

But efforts to change the saliency of specific attributes can generate backlash (and political disincorporation). In my interviews, one divisive theme that recurred related to how leaders speak about “traditional Armenian” values (or attributes). These “traditions” or secondary attributes were typically related to gender, sexuality, masculinity, and domesticity. During their campaigns, Armenian candidates have been attacked by opponents for failing to embody an ethnic identity repertoire perhaps reminiscent of values espoused by specific generational cohorts from specific countries. In these political contests, replacement “American attributes” contend with other attributes. For example, in 2010, the 43rd district’s assembly election pitted two Armenians against one another: a man and woman. In this campaign, the man used ethnic media to attack the woman on account of the fact that she was divorced and childless. He attempted to activate a series of attributes associated with what he claimed were “traditional Armenian” identity markers. The secondary attributes of unmarried (divorced) and childless were stressed to disqualify (or restrict) her categorical Armenian ethnicity. In a personal interview, the woman candidate spoke of these ethno-gendered attacks during her campaign:

Try running without being married or not having kids! Oh!…They like their boys more than they like their girls. And there was hostility toward me. If you have me and you have him, the two Armenians, there was hostility. And there was another Hayastanci [Armenian from the Republic of Armenia] woman, who would be on TV, and just say crazy things like I left my kids in an orphanage in Armenia. Or, I didn’t color my hair back then, so callers would call in and say something like, ‘Give her ten bucks so she can color her hair.’ And there was an underlying curiosity as to whether I was gay or lesbian.

As agents focus on specific attributes in order to influence electoral results and facilitate political incorporation, they can handily combine a new set of attributes to mobilize a population. As before, these agents often rely on commonsensical attributes recognizable to most individuals. However, there does not exist a consensus view of what it means to be Armenian American. As such, leaders can string together basic attributes (such as “Armenian-speaking”) with secondary attributes to reconfigure the ethnic identity repertoire. In fact, because of the novelty and multi-locality of Glendale Armenians, many in leadership roles are especially influential. These agents work with, or compete against, others who are themselves activating (or sometimes “de-activating”) categories of membership. Those who participate in processes of attribute recombination include those from ethnic organizations, ethnic media, and candidates’ teams (strategists, canvassers, fundraisers, and others). While research has already demonstrated that ethnic organizations do not inhibit political incorporation (Portes et al., 2008), my research suggests that they, in fact, expedite it. What Timothy Smith (1978) wrote of ethnic organizations in the 1970s applies to Glendale Armenians today:

Ethnic organizations coalesced out of both economic and psychic need and found meanings for personal and communal life in the cultural symbols and the religious idea that their leaders believed were marks of a shared inheritance and, hence, of a common peoplehood. Both the structure and culture of these emerging ethno-religious groups helped participants compete more advantageously with members of other groups. (1168, quoted from Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, 2009: 98)

One organization, in particular, has had especially visible political influence in Glendale: The Armenian National Committee–Western Region (ANC–WR). As a grassroots political organization, their interests dovetailed with the vision of the ethnopolitical entrepreneurs of Glendale. In fact, the entrepreneur who helped run the first ethnopolitical campaign in 1999, Rafi Manoukian, had worked for this organization for several years. He was joined and aided by key political strategist (many of whom had ANC backgrounds) and other ethnopolitical entrepreneurs to create a political incorporative pathway that would so color subsequent Armenian incorporation efforts in Glendale. While the organization itself is nonpartisan, the entrepreneurs’ desire to incorporate Armenians politically overlaps with ANC’s motivation to affect local, state, and national legislation, such that it conduces to Armenian concerns (Genocide recognition, Karabakh/Artsakh support, Azeri and Turkish pressure). This interaction, over time, has evolved. More recently, ANC launched an initiative, HyeVotes (founded in 2012), whose primary purpose is to register Armenians to vote during campaign periods in which ANC believes Armenians have a stake. While ANC did this before the creation of HyeVotes, in 2012 it launched a separate initiative. And this initiative has proven effective, in part, because of how it has recombined ethnic categories: According to its leadership, HyeVotes has registered over 25,000 new Armenian voters (from personal interview with the chairperson of ANC–WR). During my fieldwork, Armenian political entrepreneurs consistently admitted that they no longer dedicated nearly as much energy to outreach among Armenians, as that had become the domain of ANC’s subsidiary, HyeVotes. As such, over time, Armenian political organizations and entrepreneurs have formed an uneven and, at times, vaguely symbiotic relationship. For this symbiosis to achieve its stated goals, organizational actors involved have to work to activate a similar set of attribute-values for the ethnic identity repertoire of “Armenian.”

Part of their success, therefore, is remaining abreast of the changing internal demographics of the “Armenian” population and its attribute configurations. Over the last half-century, membership rules for Armenians have altered considerably. As the Armenian community itself has undergone such fundamental alterations, the organization, which spans several states throughout the US, has evolved its outreach rhetoric accordingly. Armenians from different countries brought quite distinct ethnic identity repertoires. Lebanese Armenians, Iranian Armenians, post-Soviet Armenians, Syrian Armenian, and Iraqi Armenians came with distinct secondary attributes by which they defined membership in the category “Armenian”. As such, ANC, the diaspora’s most prominent grassroots organization, has had to adapt to these expanding categories. But the expanding categories also presented an opportunity: Armenian identity in the United States (Glendale), as stated, had not yet been fixed; rather, it experienced considerable fluidity. As a result, ethnic organizational agents could add new attribute-values to the set of already operative attributes for the Armenian ethnic identity repertoire. As Armenians entered Los Angeles in greater numbers as a result of several international upheavals in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and the former Soviet Union, the preexisting, largely post-Genocide survivor Armenian generation (and its organizations) had to adapt. And they adapted by adding new attribute-values to the preexisting ethnic repertoire. As one official from ANC articulated about the preexisting identity repertoire, “The American Armenian community was not very politicized at that time [pre-1970s]; it was for self-preservation, maintaining the identity, language, etc. There wasn’t a lot of political activism.” But new influxes of Armenians forced organizations to add attribute-values, including political activism, to the existing operative repertoire. A leading figure in this organization summed up this evolution in an interview:

So we have this amalgam of different elements in our community, and this has shaped how our organization has functioned. So with the ANCA, originally, it was almost exclusively Genocide recognition, but, as the community [in Los Angeles] started to evolve, we started to evolve beyond Genocide recognition. We started seeking solution and reparation. And when Armenian became independent in 1991, it needed support from the Diaspora…One of our organizational priorities is also to help and support the development and safety of Armenia. And that’s through lobbying of foreign aid and just Armenianess about Armenia. And then when Artsakh [formerly Nagorno-Karabakh], when that war happened from 1991 to 1994, again, the same thing: There was this uprising in nationalism to join the fight – not literally, but with support. So that’s our third priority – seeking the independence and security of Artsakh. And the fourth priority has been the community mobilization, community development, community organizing. So that falls into the local realm.

But, as stated, these efforts to recombine ethnic identity can engender resistance. In interviews with those involved on several campaigns, there existed a real consciousness of Armenians’ premigration experience categories of ethnicity. One person interviewed with extensive canvassing experience admitted that, on the campaign trail, the canvassers define the category of “Armenian” as “one community,” but those with whom they speak sometimes stress internal differences. In one anecdote, a volunteer recounted:

This one woman said, ‘I watch all these television programs where they are talking about politics. Why is that Parskahye [Iranian Armenian] woman call in and ask these questions about when do we vote, how do we vote.’ And she goes off on this tangent about Armenian women in Iran never had to work; therefore they aren’t educated and don’t know how to vote or how to do anything. Therefore, we should only canvass with Parskahyes because they are dumb…I said to her, ‘What difference does it make? At the end of the day, we’ve all been through a struggle – whatever country we come from. We’ve all survived. And now we’re here as one community. If you can’t think of us as one community, it’s your fault!’

Conclusion

Various agents have relied on the construction of ethnic identity to facilitate (or inhibit) Glendale Armenians’ political incorporation. Traditional accounts of political entrepreneurship do not account for the shifting loci of political incorporation—particularly, from marginalized racial minorities in urban centers to prosperous immigrants in ethnic suburbs. In addition, the scholarship often understands ethnicity in rather essentialist and static terms. As this case study demonstrates, immigrants may view negatively the loss of certain “ethnic” attributes, but few condemn the acquisition of American attributes. This reflects the dynamic interaction that takes place between political leaders and community members in the fluid processes of political incorporation. Chandra and others have introduced a model that unpacks the complexity of contemporary political agents’ uses of ethnicity in various campaigns. There is no single approach. Agents, whether conscious or not, are consistently negotiating ethnic identity, particularly when there exists considerable fluidity in the existing identity repertoire. When fluidity obtains, the main mechanisms by which ethnicity changes include: (1) attribute replacement, (2) change in saliency, and (3) attribute recombination. As the examples given earlier demonstrate, all of these processes are at work simultaneously through various agents. This model, I contend, is compellingly applied to political incorporation theory, particularly as it relates ethnic bloc voting.

While this study has attempted to enhance scholarship on constructivist ethnic politics as well immigrant political incorporation, it is only a single case study. Nonetheless, Armenian Angeleno migration and settlement trajectories resemble those of many other groups, such as the Chinese in Monterey Park, Koreans in Orange County, Vietnamese in Westminster, Filipinos in Daly City, and many others. In these communities, internally diverse co-ethnic voters and community leaders have mobilized and voted into office their own ethnopolitical entrepreneurs. Future scholarship should test the generalizability of the theory posited here.

While Glendale’s Armenian community shares many commonalities with several other newcomer communities (particularly in “ethnoburbs”), they also attribute quite a few distinctions: For example, Armenians represent an ethnodiaspora, one for whom the centrality and persistence of memories relating to genocide inform a significant part of their collective identities. This centrality strengthens their claims for public memorials as well as their efforts to commemorate these tragedies publically and politically. In addition, the at least symbolic role of religion and the internal perception of the group as a distinct religious minority most likely enable Armenian Americans to collectivize around an ethnic identity despite their internal differences. These factors have facilitated the settlement of Armenians into Glendale and influenced ethnopolitical entrepreneurs’ capacity to mobilize the community. Future scholarship should unpack how internal varieties affect (or do not) community leaders’ ability to mobilize and incorporate newcomers in distinct ethnic suburban (and other) spaces.

In addition, this analysis has focused, largely, on the campaign strategies of novel agents in Glendale. To be sure, these strategies have resulted in the registration and voting of Armenian newcomers in rather striking numbers. I believe future scholarship on ethnic bloc voting will also profit from this constructivist ethnic political incorporation theory. But, at the same time, political incorporation does not end at the ballot box. It involves many other experiences that go beyond voter registration. As such, future scholarship should build on this article’s framework to enrich relevant scholarship that goes beyond the electoral sphere (Keeter et al., 2002; Sloam, 2013; Van Deth, 2014) and assess other aspects of political incorporation (Bloemraad, 2006; Calvo et al., 2017; Jones-Correa, 2005; Lewis and Ramakrishnan, 2007; Marrow, 2009).