MOBILIZATION, COUNTER-MOBILIZATION AND THE POLITICS OF RACE

This article examines the relationships among several political phenom ena that have characterized American politics during the post-Second W orld War era: Republican success in presidential politics, Democratic success in controlling the House of Representatives, and the political mobilization of African-American citizens. We argue that the logic of federalism and single-member districts, combined with geographically concentrated distributions of racial and ethnic groups, has rendered a spatially complex political terrain. In some parts of that terrain, r ace does not impinge on electoral politics but in other parts, politic s revolves around race. And thus both parties' electoral fortunes are tied to coalitional constraints that, are associated with particular l ocales, producing varying consequences for congressional and president ial elections. The empirical focus of our paper is on individual voter s in presidential elections from 1952 to 1988, and in off-year congres sional elections from 1958 to 1986. We are particularly concerned with the local political environments of coalition formation, and thus we engage in a multilevel analysis of voters in counties, located within particular regions.