Overcoming Resource Competition Among Co-Ethnics: Elites, Endorsements, and Multiracial Support for Urban Distributive Policies

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241239969
• Author: Eddie Lucero,Ricardo Robles
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(3) 669–682

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241239969

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Overcoming Resource Competition

Among Co-Ethnics: Elites, Endorsements,

and Multiracial Support for Urban

Distributive Policies

Eddie Lucero

1

and Ricardo Robles

2



Abstract

When can we expect multiple racial groups to f‌ind common ground in the face of potentially unequal distributive urban

policies? While we understand a great deal about the role of elites in inter-ethnic coalition building, we know less about

the conditions under which cooperative behavior among their co-ethnic voters is more likely. Research has found that

multiracial coalitions are critical to the political incorporation of racial/ethnic minority group interests at the local level

but conf‌lict between minority groups persists due to both real and perceived competition for resources. In this paper, we

argue that elite co-ethnic endorsements can increase co-ethnic voters’support for urban distributive policies that

disproportionately benef‌it outgroups over one’s own ingroup. We test our theory using a survey experiment from a

representative sample of more than 1800 Los Angeles County voters. We f‌ind that respondents are less likely to support

policy proposals that exclusively target benef‌its toward ethnic outgroups compared to when their eth nic ingroup

exclusively benef‌its from an identical proposal. But we also f‌ind that the presence of co-ethnic endorsements can increase

support for proposals that benef‌it an ethnic outgroup. We f‌ind this effect among Black, Latino, and Asian Americans in

our sample.

Keywords

urban politics, American politics, race and ethnicity, behavior

Introduction

At the start of McKinley Elementary’s 1994–95 school

year in Compton C.A., one-quarter of students did not

show up for class. Latino organizers had asked parents to

keep their children out of class to protest what Latino

community leaders perceived as the primarily African

American school administration’s inattention to the lin-

guistic barriers Latino children faced in their educational

instruction (Straus, 2009). One organizer went as far as to

compare Compton Unif‌ied School District to school

districts in 1950s Mississippi which refused outright to

educate Black children. What followed was a protracted

and heated debate among community leaders regarding

the role of Latinos in Compton’s governing institutions.

This scenario was not unique to Compton. Throughout the

1980s and 90s, many cities went through a period of

demographic transformation with the arrival of new La-

tino and Asian American ethnic groups. As these new

groups began to make their own demands for political

representation and power, questions arose as to whether

ethnic elites would be able to overcome both real and

perceived competition for limited resources among their

co-ethnics in order to maintain old alliances and/or build

new ones.

Intergroup conf‌lict between urban ethnic groups and

the threat it presents to multiracial coalitions in cities

matters because scholars and political activists have long

argued that multiracial coalitions are key to the incor-

poration of ethnic minorities’interests in city politics.

1

Colorado State University-Pueblo, Pueblo, CO, USA

2

PhD Candidate, University of California, Merced, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ricardo Robles, Department of Political Science, University of California,

5200 Lake Rd, Merced, CA 95343, USA.

Email: rrobles8@ucmerced.edu