Taeku Lee
Professor of Political Science and Law, and Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
Areas of Expertise:
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About Taeku
Lee's research focuses on racial/ethnic politics, public opinion, participatory politics, and social movements. His most recent scholarship includes studies of changes in patterns of partisanship in America, Asian American politics, racial categorization, and the democratic effects of deliberative participation. He currently serves on the Board of the American National Election Studies and the Council of the American Political Science Association; he is also co-Principal Investigator of the National Asian American Survey. He has served in various leadership, advisory, and consultative capacities for the academy, policy think tanks, advocacy groups, community-based organizations, and multi-national institutions.
Contributions
How Democrats and Republicans Can Draw Uncommitted Minorities into Politics
Key Findings Brief,
In the News
Taeku Lee quoted by Emily Badger, "A Census Question That Could Change How Power Is Divided in America" The New York Times, July 31, 2018.
Taeku Lee's research on , "Beijing Wants Taiwanese to Identify as Chinese. But How Do Taiwanese Really Feel?," The Washington Post, June 4, 2018.
Taeku Lee quoted on changing party demographics by Farai Chideya, "Vietnamese-Americans Are No Longer a Lock for the Republican Party" FiveThirtyEight, October 18, 2016.
Taeku Lee's research on influence of minority voters discussed by , "Influence of Asian American and Pacific Islander Voters Grows," UCR Today, October 5, 2016.
Taeku Lee quoted on Asian-American voters by Ed Kilgore, "Probably No Giant Tilt to GOP Among Asian-Americans" Washington Monthly, November 10, 2014.
Publications
"Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure (of Political Parties) to Engage the Electorate" (with ) (Princeton University Press, 2011).
Offers the first encompassing account of how race and immigrant status affect the relationship that ordinary individuals have, or fail to have, with the American party system. Our analysis not only explains the high levels of ambivalence and uncertainty that shape the partisan views of so many Americans but also offers incentives and strategies for political parties and other interested observers to re-engage the electorate.
Accountability through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action (edited with ) (World Bank Press, 2011).
Introduces a broader concept of "accountability" as a critical resource to improving both democracy and development. Challenges technocratic approaches to accountability and argues the value of bottom-up demands for accountability.
"Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and their Political Identities" (with ) (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2011).
Asks why Asian Americans – one of the nation’s fastest-growing, most diverse, and socioeconomically privileged racial groups – have seemingly been left out of the U.S. political system; shows that the motivations for and impediments to political participation are as diverse as the Asian American population itself.
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Post-Racial and Pan-Racial Politics in the Age of Obama" Daedalus 140, no. 2 (2011): 136-150.
Examines the continuing racial undertones of politics in the wake of President Obama’s 2008 election. Challenges the understanding that an electoral key to Obama’s post-racialism is the debt he owes to white independents; stresses the need to redouble efforts to understand the processes of racialization; and proposes the concept of pan-racialism to think about how individuals of a shared demographic come to engage, politically, as a group.
"Race, Immigration, and the Identity-to-Politics Link" Annual Review of Political Science 11 (2008): 457-478.
Argues that that a key to settling questions about whether and how America’s demographic changes will effect the construction of a new politics of race is a clearer specification of the identity-to-politics link.