According to the editors of Racial and Ethnic Politics in California, “Little can be said about politics and policy in California without an overt reference to demography” (p. 11). These two excellent new volumes illustrate the truth of this statement through innovative, comprehensive, and thought-provoking analyses of California's ethnic diversity, partisan makeup, and political climate. Varying in topic and methodological approach, both collections continually underscore the importance of the centrality of demography, and demographic complexity, to Californian politics and society. In dealing with such complexity, both develop a number of more specific themes. Chief among them are California's rapidly growing population and increasing racial and ethnic diversity, segregation at the neighborhood and district level despite that diversity, friction between the rise of Latino political power and the decline of African-American political power, and tensions between a majority-minority population and a still mostly white electorate.

In their treatment of California politics and policy, the volumes explore important political science concepts that offer lessons well beyond the California case, including symbolic racism, political incorporation, symbolic versus strategic voting, coalition building, and legal standards for discriminatory intent versus discriminatory effect. Thus, while perhaps most relevant (and probably essential) for a class on California politics, the books would also prove valuable for courses in racial and ethnic politics, urban politics and policy, and state politics more generally.

As evidenced by the vertically bifurcated state on the cover, The New Political Geography of California argues that the east–west divide is replacing the traditional north–south split as the politically salient cleavage in the state. As Frederick Douzet and Kenneth P. Miller demonstrate in “California's East–West Divide,” immigration and migration patterns, along with the ideological rightward drift of the Republican Party, have combined to form a solidly Democratic shoreline. In effect, Democrats have secured the coast. Consequently, Douzet and Miller assert, “the Republican presence has receded in the coastal region, leaving only a remnant in Ventura, Orange, and San Diego Counties, and the outer fringes of Los Angeles. Republican strength has moved east” (p. 36). This claim is convincingly backed up by careful and cogently presented research gleaned from the statewide database. By combining party registration analysis with county breakdowns of race, education, and income, the authors paint a nuanced picture of demographic trends in the state and their political implications (would that this painting were in color; here and elsewhere in the volume a color printing would make the maps easier to interpret).

The Douzet and Miller piece also makes an important distinction, expanded on in other sections, especially “Residential Segregation and Political Balkanization” (Douzet): although the state is becoming increasingly diverse overall, due in part to white flight, many regions are marked by striking levels of partisan and ethnic homogeneity. Put simply: “Increased diversity of California's population does not translate into an increased diversity of all its regions or neighborhoods” (p. 50). As Bruce Cain, Iris Hui, and Karin MacDonald demonstrate in “Sorting versus Self-Sorting,” much of this homogenization is so intractable that it produces safe seats for state lawmakers, despite hypothetical efforts to draw more competitive districts. Cain, Hui, and MacDonald experiment with more than 30 potential district maps for the congressional delegation and the state assembly. When plans are drawn to accord with federal law on issues of minority voting rights, equal population, and continuity, approximately 20%–25% are competitive. Indeed, even relaxing other considerations to make competitive seats the primary objective results in meaningful competition in fewer than half of the seats. This experiment is incredibly valuable considering the frequency with which scholars and pundits blame party polarization and safe seats on redistricting.

Continuing the focus on redistricting and ethnicity, J. Morgan Kousser considers the legal and political dynamics of interpreting the 1965 Voting Rights Act's prohibition of minority dilution. “On average,” he notes, “Latinos and African-Americans must control at least pluralities of the relevant electorates in districts that they seek to represent” (p. 260); otherwise, they only rarely get a black or Latino representative (as we will see later, the same is not true for Asian Americans). They key word here is electorates—although the Latino population has been rising steadily, because of age and citizenship status their share of the citizen voting age population (CVAP) lags behind, a theme considered often in both volumes. Kousser concludes that whether simple population or CVAP is used as the measure, “bright line” legal standards are ill-quipped to address fluid political dynamics, and argues instead for a more flexible approach to promote political opportunity for minority communities.

A key strength of this volume is the application of general lessons to particular regions through in-depth treatments of Los Angles, Oakland, San Diego, and the Central Valley. Douzet's excellent chapter on Oakland is a fascinating case study of migration patterns after World War II, and of tensions among blacks, Asians, and Latinos as a once “black city” became multiracial. Similarly, Raphael J. Sonenshein and Mark H. Drayse's analysis of Los Angeles mayoral politics and the rise and fall of the Bradley coalition highlights the role of immigration, increasing Latino influence, and the potential for cross-racial and ethnic coalitions.

As with any compilation of this nature there is some repetition, but on the whole the chapters in this compendium complement one another quite well. They reference one another when relevant, but most chapters easily stand alone. One theme that is raised early on but could use further elaboration concerns potential lessons of the California case for other countries. The introduction speaks of parallels to immigration trends in European countries, but this subject receives little explicit coverage elsewhere in the volume.

The third edition of Racial and Ethnic Politics in California is a first-rate and much needed update to the 1998 version. As an understanding of the political behavior of its diverse population becomes ever more essential to an appreciation of every aspect of California governance, this volume serves as a scholarly yet accessible handbook on how race and ethnicity shape voting, campaign donations, political leadership, and policymaking.

Wendy K. Tam Cho's section on Asian American campaign contributions exemplifies the rigor and insightfulness of the volume as a whole. Noting the surprising dearth of research on Asian American giving, Tam Cho's remarkably thorough analysis of Federal Election Commission records convincingly illustrates that Asians tend to give symbolically rather than strategically. (One small critique of the methodological discussion: It would have been helpful to see more discussion of the limitations of using surnames to gauge ethnicity.) On balance, less than a quarter of the funds received by Asian American candidates from Asian American donors are from within their district—an indicator that the contributors are seeking something beyond material benefit (at least not as constituents). It should be noted, of course, that this depends on how one defines “constituency,” for supporting even an out-of-district candidate may still be, in part, motivated by policy preference. But Tam Cho further unearths a significant amount of giving to “hopeless” Asian candidates based on apparent ethnic solidarity. Moreover, she critiques the concept of pan-ethnic identity, showing that contributions to Asian office seekers were largely from donors from the same ethnicity as the candidate. She also points out that Asian Americans do not typically seek office in areas with a high concentration of Asian American residents—a distinct difference from black and Latino candidates, and an important consideration when discussing race, ethnicity, and representation.

Continuing the exploration of participation and representation, Ricardo Ramirez and Luis Fraga offer an excellent survey of the current status and future outlook of Latinos in California. In a way, these scholars face the opposite challenge from Tam Cho's. There is considerably more public discussion and political science research on Latinos, and their task is to parse through the scholarship and headlines and makes sense of apparent contradiction between the supposed “Dawn of Latino Political Power” (p. 61, referencing a headline in California Journal 24 [January 1993]), and the reality that almost half of eligible Latinos are not registered to vote (p. 88). Like Tam Cho's, their piece is both meticulous and straightforward, and it includes a nice discussion of policy responsiveness and political incorporation. While scholars familiar with Hanna Pitkin's work on descriptive versus substantive representation (e.g., see The Concept of Representation, 1972) may take issue with the use of descriptive to cover electoral, representational, and policy-based representation (rather than demographic characteristics), the treatment is illuminating and serves as an excellent conceptual framework for the data not only in the Ramirez and Fraga piece but also in the volume as a whole.

It is inevitable, given the topic of the book, that some facts will be out of date almost as soon as they are committed to print—demographic statistics, for example, are changing faster than we can analyze them. The authors deserve considerable credit for timely analyses using current data sets (or in such cases as the census, as current as possible). That said, there are a few instances where stylistic changes could have helped preserve the volume's shelf life and assisted the flow between sections. For example, slightly dated statements such as “the current speaker of the California state assembly is Fabian Nunez” (p. 62) became particularly noticeable when the next essay makes reference to “the ascent of Karen Bass, an African-American woman, to Assembly speaker in 2008” (p. 96).

Melina Abdullah and Regina Freer bring the literary and pedagogical theory of womanism to bear on the political incorporation of blacks in California. While offering interesting insights on the role of a leader in a community movement, and on the history of black politics in Oakland and Los Angeles, the chapter could more precisely have defined womanist theory. For example, what differentiates a “community connected” leader from “more traditional trajectories that embrace personal ambition, nepotism and endorsements” (p. 114) beyond self-designation? More specifically, is Karen Bass an activist (womanist or otherwise) and not a “typical” politician merely because she claims the moniker? Or is there something tangible about her policy goals or leadership that earns her this title? If the latter, the authors could have presented this evidence more concretely. That said, I appreciated the explicit treatment of the role of women of color, and the attempt to apply womanist theory in a political context.

Three essays, “Labor, Minorities and Voter Initiatives” (Kenneth C. Burt), “Initiatives as Catalysts for Racial Politics and Demographic Change” (Terry Christensen and Larry N. Gerston), and “Demographic Change and the Politics of Education in California” (Belinda L. Reyes), consider the combustible intersections of racial politics and imitative politics in a state where whites are no longer a majority of the population but are still the dominant force in the electorate. The Christensen and Gerson essay, in particular, does a nice job taking us beyond the traditional trifecta of Propositions 187, 209, and 227 by giving some historical context with earlier measures, such as an initiative designating English the official state language (Proposition 63) from 1986. Given the recent frequency with which voters (including those in California) have rejected marriage equality for gays and lesbians through plebiscites, the issue of minority rights being subject to approval at the ballot box is timely indeed.

On the whole, these volumes are rich, engaging, and illuminating. Scholars of California politics should consider them required reading, but scholars of state politics, racial and ethnic politics, and urban politics more generally would also find them of interest.