Inventive Politicians and Ethnic Ascent in American Politics

This innovative book investigates the process through which ethnic minorities penetrate into higher echelons of political power: specifically, how they succeed in getting elected to the U.S. Congress. Jiménez utilizes a ground-breaking comparative dataset of elected members of Congress organized upon the basis of national origin, and then focuses her analysis on Italian-American and Mexican-American politicians. Her book demonstrates the need to reconsider several standard ideas of how minority representation occurs and deepens our understanding of the role that political institutions play in that process.