This study examines whether the increasing ethnic diversity of the United States is changing how the normative content of American identity is defined. It relies on a wide-ranging set of norms to test the claim that an increasingly multicultural America will engender a multicreedal America. In addressing this claim, the study provides an empirical assessment of the "multiple traditions" theory and develops more accurate measures of how Americans view the content of American identity than has typically been included in public opinion research. The results confirm the multiple traditions perspective, showing that a broad range of constitutive norms define being American. A complex and contradictory set of norms exist, and it is difficult to reduce them into a single measure of "Americanism." The results further show that most Americans, regardless of their ethnic or immigrant background, share this complex view of the norms that constitute American identity, though there are signs of divergence to monitor.

This study analyzes how perceptions of discrimination against oneself and/or one's group and whether one self-identifies in national (American), national origin, or panethnic terms affect levels of political engagement among Latinos in the United States. The findings show that perceptions of discrimination against oneself are particularly damaging in that they promote both behavioral and attitudinal alienation (e.g., non-voting and lack of trust), especially among Latinos who identify primarily as American. Behavioral alienation can be mitigated, and even overcome, when perceptions of discrimination are accompanied by a panethnic or national origin self-identification. However, the attitudinal alienation created by perceptions of discrimination is not mitigated by any type of self-identification. These findings shed light on understudied factors that affect political engagement that are going to become more important to understand as the American population continues its ethnic diversification. In addition to expanding our knowledge of political engagement generally, this study also raises important questions about whether the adoption of an American selfidentification is in fact beneficial for the health of our participatory political system as a whole.

This review examines empirical research about American national identity. It focuses on the social and political causes and consequences of (a) how people define what being American means and (b) their degree of attachment to being American. It explains why scholars increasingly view American identity as a social identity and reviews arguments for why political scientists should investigate American identity as both an independent and a dependent variable. Existing research documents a high degree of consensus across demographic groups regarding how American identity is defined. It also reveals both beneficial and harmful consequences of people strongly identifying as American. Empirical inquiries of American identity are motivated by demographic trends, especially the rise in immigration-driven diversity, but they are also deeply grounded in historical and philosophical assessments of the nature of American identity, and such scholarship is also discussed throughout the review.

In this study, I seek to answer the question of why some states choose to declare English the official state language while others do not. Using an event history model, I show that both the proportion of a state's population that is foreign-born and whether the state allows for direct initiatives interact to influence the adoption of language laws. Specifically, states with many immigrants and no initiatives have almost no chance of declaring English the official language while a similar state with direct initiatives is more likely to do so. Implications for ethnic politics, direct democracy, and the future of language policy are discussed.