ETHNICITY AND NONELECTORAL POLITICAL-PARTICIPATION

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