University of Utah
Official-English and the States: Influences on Declaring English the Official Language in the
United States
Author(s): Deborah J. Schildkraut
Source: Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Jun., 2001), pp. 445-457
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the University of Utah
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RESEARCHNOTE
Official-English and the States:
Influences on Declaring English
_ the Official Language
-- in the United States
DEBORAHJ. SCHILDKRAUT,OBERLIN
COLLEGE
In thisstudy,I seekto answerthequestionof whysomestateschooseto
declareEnglishthe officialstatelanguagewhileothersdo not. Usingan
eventhistorymodel,I showthatboththeproportion
of a state'spopulationthatis foreign-borandwhetherthestateallowsfordirectinitiatives
states
interactto influencethe adoptionof languagelaws. Specifically,
with many immigrantsand no initiativeshave almostno chanceof
declaringEnglishthe officiallanguagewhilea similarstatewith direct
forethnicpolitics,direct
initiativesis morelikelyto do so. Implications
andthe futureof languagepolicyarediscussed.
democracy,
Languageconflicts have come and gone throughoutAmericanhistory,but
languagehas neverbeen as salientan issue in the United Statesfor as long a time
as in the past 20 years.To date, 26 stateshave declaredEnglishtheir officiallanguage. Of these 26 declarations,21 have been since 1980. Most have been made
throughstatutesor amendmentsto state constitutionsthough some were passed
by voter initiatives. At least twelve of the remaining 24 states have at least
debated making English official during the past decade, leaving-at mosttwelve states that have not publicly considered official-Englishlegislation in
recenthistory.Manycities, counties, and towns have also passedvarioustypes of
languagepolicies, including ordinancesthat regulatethe languagesof signs in
stores. On public opinion surveys,largemajoritiesconsistentlysupport the idea
NOTE: I wish to thank LarryBartels,GregoryHuber,SanfordGordon,JeffreyLewis,and Paul Bern
for their comments and technical assistance.I would also like to thank four anonymous
reviewersfor their suggestions.
PoliticalResearchQuarterly,Vol. 54, No. 2 (une 2001) pp. 445-457
445
PoliticalResearch
Ouarterlv
of makingEnglishthe officiallanguageand providinggovernmentservices,such
as election materials,only in English.
This flurryof legislativeactivityand the overwhelmingsupport it receives
among the public have spawned a varietyof researchprojectsaimed at understanding why people support restrictivelanguage policies and what prompts
some states to adopt them. The purpose of this articleis to add to this research
agendaby using an event historymodel to examinewhy some stateshave chosen
to make Englishthe officiallanguagewhile othershave not. In particular,I build
upon the work of RaymondTatalovich(1995), which examinesthe adoption of
languagelegislationat the state level, in two ways. First, I incorporateas many
states as possible into the analysis, including those that have not seen any
statewide official-Englishactivity,like Delaware and Connecticut, along with
those thathave seen more languageconflict,like Californiaand Arizona.Second,
my analysisfocuses on the powerfulrelationshipbetween two state-levelcharacteristicsin shapingpolicymakingin this area,a relationshipTatalovichdescribes
but does not test empiricallyThis relationshipis the interplaybetween the proportionof the state'spopulationthatis foreign-bornand whetheror not the state
allows for directinitiatives.
The main conclusion from this study is that the percentageof a state'spopulation that is foreign-bornaffectswhether it will adopt an official-Englishlaw.
The natureof this effect, however,is differentin states that allow for direct initiativesin the policymakingprocess than in those that do not. States that allow
for directinitiativesand have a high proportionof immigrantssee pushes for languagelaws, while statesthat do not allow for directinitiativesand have high proportions of foreign-bornresidents experience resistanceto such policies. Conversely, states that lack initiatives and have low proportions of foreign-born
residentsare more likely to declareEnglishthe officiallanguagethan states with
directinitiativesand few immigrants.
HYPOTHESES
Five hypotheses, all of which appear at some point in Tatalovich'sstudy,
either explicitlyor implicitly,are tested simultaneouslyin this analysis.The first
hypothesisis that the partisanmake-upof state governmentswill affectwhether
English becomes the official language. Analyses of public opinion data have
shown thatpartisandivisionson languageand immigrationpolicies arecommon,
though the influence of such divisions on attitudesis somewhaterratic(see, for
example,Citrin,Reingold,and Green 1990; Citrinet al. 1997; Hood and Morris
1997; Frendreisand Tatalovich1997). In the statesthatTatalovichstudies,Democraticpoliticianstended to oppose official-Englishproposalswhile Republicans
were more divided, leading Tatalovichto conclude that "anideologicalcleavage
underliesthe debate about officialEnglish"(1995: 241). This hypothesis,therefore, maintainsthat states with Democraticgovernmentswill be less likely to
446
andthe States
Official-English
adopt official-Englishlegislationthan will states with Republicangovernments.
The second hypothesisis relatedto the firstand contendsthat statesin which the
citizensaremore ideologicallyconservativeshould be more likely to declareEnglish the officiallanguagethan stateswith more liberalresidents.
The third hypothesis is based on the conventionalwisdom that economic
hardshipleads people to blame immigrantsfor their vulnerability,become more
willing to tightenborders,and rejectpolicies aimed at accommodatingthe needs
of immigrants.Thus, this hypothesis maintains that states with higher unemployment rateswill be more likely to adopt official-Englishlaws than will states
with lower rates. Tatalovichfinds that the percentageof residentsliving below
the povertyline in a legislator'shome county did not influencewhetherhe or she
voted for official-Englishlaws, nor did the povertylevel in voters'communities
make them more or less likely to vote for official-Englishinitiatives.Given these
counterintuitiveresults,it makessense to keep marketcompetitionmeasureslike
unemploymentin the model for now.
Fourth,Tatalovichfinds that states in the South, with their historicallegacy
of anti-minoritylegislation,are more likely to favorofficial-Englishlaws. Therefore, I also test whethersouthernstateshave been more likely to pass such laws.
The final hypothesis is not tested directly in Tatalovich'swork and is the
most complicatedone, incorporatingboth the demographiccompositionof each
state and the institutionaldesign of allowing for a direct initiative.Intuitively,it
makes sense to think that the percentageof a state'spopulation that is foreignborn would play a role in determiningwhether that state declaresEnglish the
officiallanguage.These policies aredesignedas a reactionto a rise in the number
of immigrantsenteringthe United Statesand, quite likely,to the racialand ethnic
backgroundof those immigrants.The rise in languageconflictsin the U.S. coincides with the rise in the proportionof immigrantscoming fromLatinAmerican
and Asian countries,which suggeststhat anti-minoritysentimentsplay a partin
this story. Thus, nativity should be a factor that influences adoption-but in
which direction?Should a high percentageof immigrantsmake states more or
less likely to adopt an official-Englishlaw? On the one hand, one might think
that native-bornresidentswould feel unsettled by a pluralityof languagesand
ethnicitiesin the public sphere, in which case a high percentageof immigrants
could lead to greaterchances for adoption.On the other hand, stateswith many
foreign-bornresidentswill have largerelectoralconstituenciesmade up of ethnic
minorities, constituenciesthat will most likely be opposed to adopting a language law. Therefore, a high percentage of immigrants could conceivably
decreasethe chancesforadoption.Tatalovichdoes not includemeasuresof nativity
1 ImmigrationfromAsia, LatinAmerica,and the Caribbeanhas come to account for over 70 percent
of all legal immigrationto the United Stateswhereasin the 50s and early60s, it accountedfor only
47 percent(U.S. INS 1999).
447
PoliticalResearchOuarterlv
in his analyses,thoughhe does performseveraltests as to whetherthe percentage
of Spanish-speakingresidentsin counties and statesmatters.In the end, he finds
few instancesin which it does and finds in one model that counties with higher
proportionsof Spanish-speakingresidentsyielded fewer votes for direct initiatives in California,Colorado,and Florida.
Citing electoral motivations, Tatalovichexplains that many politicians of
both partiesin Florida,Texas,Arizona,Colorado,and California,all states with
many immigrants,did not embraceattemptsto make Englishofficial.He writes,
"the Republicanswho held statewide offices and thus might be reluctant to
offend Hispanic voters, like Californiagovernor Deukmejian and Governor
Mechamof Arizona ... were opposed"(1995: 169-70). He also observes that
"advocatesof EnglishOnly measures[in Florida]had to resortto popularinitiative because previous attemptsin the state legislaturehad died quick political
deaths"(1995: 89). Conversely,proposalsin stateswith fewerminoritiesdid not
have such high mortalityrates.In fact,politicalleadersin stateswith fewerimmigrants, like Tennessee and Mississippi, saw language laws as innocuous, and
sponsors of official-Englishlaws in those states felt that "thepolitical impact of
their action was negligible"(Tatalovich1995: 224). In these case studies, Tatalovich lays the groundworkfor, but does not explicitly test, my fifth and final
hypothesis. In states that allow for direct initiatives,having more foreign-born
residents should increase the chances for adoption while in states that do not
allow for direct initiatives,having more foreign-bornresidentsshould decrease
those chances.The presenceof the directinitiativeoption will providethe nativeborn residentswith a mechanismto express their desire for the policy without
havingto go througha legislaturethat is being carefulnot to alienatea largebloc
of potential voters while native-bornresidents in non-initiativestates will not
have that option. At the same time, politiciansin stateswith few immigrantswill
feel that official-Englishlegislationis more of a symbolicissue and that they will
not risk offendingvoters by supportingofficial-Englishlaws.2
DATAANDMETHODS
Datawere collectedon 44 of the 50 statesfor 1981 through1998.3Of these
44, 20 have declaredEnglishthe officiallanguage,either by amendingthe state
constitution,by voterinitiative,or by an ordinarystatute.The time periodstartsat
1981 because that is the year in which Senator S. I. Hayakawa(R-CA) first
2 Citrin,
Reingold,Walters,and Green (1990) also suggest that an interplaybetween the size of a
state'simmigrantpopulationand the opportunityfor using a directinitiativedrivesadoptionof official-Englishlaws.
3 Five states, HI, IL, LA,MA, and NE, declaredEnglish the officialstate languagebefore 1981 and
are omitted from the analysis.Alaskais also omitted because the measureof the conservatismof
the state'scitizens is unavailable.
448
Official-Englishand the States
amendmentin Congressand is thereforeconsidered
introducedan official-English
to be the startingpoint of the currentwave of attemptsto legislatelanguageuse.
The dataareorganizedsuch thatthereis an observationfor eachstateforeachyear
in the time period.Eachstateis given a 0 for each yearthat it does not pass a languagelaw and a 1 for the yearin which it does (if at all). Once a stateadoptsa language law, it is droppedfrom the analysisfor the remainingyears. For example,
with California,the dependentvariableis coded as 0 from 1981 to 1985. Then in
1986, the yearin which CaliforniavoterspassedProposition63 to declareEnglish
the officiallanguage,Californiagets a 1. From1987 to 1998, Californiais dropped
fromthe analysis.The explanatoryvariablesincludedin the model areused to test
the five hypothesesdiscussedaboveand are coded in the followingmanner:
PartyControl:I use two variablesto capturethe partisannature of the language debate. The firstcapturesDemocraticcontrol of state politics; a state gets
a 1 for each year that its governmentis unified Democraticand a 0 otherwise.
The other measuresRepublicancontrol;a state gets a 1 for each yearthat its governmentis unified Republicanand a 0 otherwise.4
To measure how conservativethe population of each
State Conservatism:
state is, I use the mean conservatismscores developed by Eriksonet al. (1993),
which I re-codesuch that stateswith more conservativepopulationsget a higher
score than stateswith more liberalpopulations.5
This variableconsists of the unemploymentrate per year by
Unemployment:
state as reportedby the Bureauof LaborStatistics.
South:A state is given a 1 if it was in the Confederacyand a 0 otherwise.
Estimatesof the percentageof a state'spopulation that
Percentforeign-born:
is foreign-bor arenot readilyavailablefor the entiretime period.To estimatethe
figuresfor the 1980s, I use the census questionthat asked foreign-bor residents
for the year in which they entered the U.S., takingthe percent foreign-bornper
state from the 1990 census and subtractingout the people who had not yet
enteredthe U.S. by the year in question.6To get the percentforeign-bornfor the
1990s, I use the MarchCurrentPopulationSurvey (CPS), which has collected
4 "Unified"
means the upper and lower houses both have Democratic(Republican)majoritiesand the
governoris a Democrat(Republican).
5 Eriksonet al. calculatethe conservatismscore in the following manner: 122 CBS/NYTpolls from
1976-1988 are aggregated,and the authors look at responses to the question:"Howwould you
describeyour views on most politicalmatters?Generally,do you think of yourselfas liberal,moderate,or conservative?"
They computethe percentagesfor each categoryfor each state, and develop
the mean position by assigninga score of -100 to each conservative,+100 to each liberal,and 0 to
each moderateand calculatingthe conventionalmean. The mean score can then be interpretedas
the relativepercentagepoint differencebetween liberalsand conservativesin each state (Eriksonet
al. 1993: 16). I re-code this mean so that the more conservativestates are given a higher score.
6 For
example,in 1987, 1use the 1990 figureand subtractthe people who said they enteredbetween
1988 and 1990.
449
PoliticalResearchQuarterly
this informationsince 1994. I interpolatethe percent foreign-bornfor 1991 to
1993 using an averageof the surroundingyears.7The resultingmeasureof the
percentageof each state'spopulationthat is foreign-bornhas a mean of 4.5 percent, a minimumof 0.05 percent(Mississippithroughoutthe 1980s), and a maximum of 22.7 percent(New Yorkin 1998).8
DirectInitiative:
A stategets a 1 if it allowsdirectinitiativesand a 0 otherwise.9
I include a term to capturethe interaction
Interaction:
Foreign-born/Initiative
between the direct initiative process and the percentageof foreign-bornresidents. This term allows me to test whether the direction of the effect of state
demographicson declaringEnglishthe officiallanguagedepends on whetherthe
state allows for directinitiatives.
I use a hazardmodel with a Weibull distributionto test the five hypotheses.10This model provides a good way of answering the following question:
Given that a state has not declared English the official language by the year
under observation,what is the probabilitythat it will do so during that year?It
is an event history model and is particularlywell suited to answeringthe type
of question under scrutinyhere. It is also well suited to dealing with data that
which means that the time period ends before all potential
are "right-censored,"
events have a chance to occur. The conceptual difference between using a
hazard model and a more conventional probit model is whether one looks at
states as "stateswithout languagelaws,"as in a probit analysis,or as "statesthat
have not yet passed languagelaws,"as in a hazardanalysis (Box-Steffensmeier
and Jones 1997).1 An advantage of the hazard model is that it allows changes
in the independentvariablesover time to affectthe probabilityof experiencing
the event. Some factors that affect language law adoption are not fixed, but
ratherthey change over time; the percentageof foreign-bornresidentsis one of
these variables. Furthermore,the hazard model allows the effect of a unit
change in the level of an independentvariableon the probabilityof adopting a
policy to vary,depending on when in the time period such changes occur (BoxSteffensmeierand Jones 1997).
7 For example,in 1991, I add the figuresfrom 1989, 1990 and 1994 and divide by three.
8 California's
populationis 25.6 percentforeign-bornin 1998, but Californiadrops out of the analy-
sis in 1986.
9 In UT,WA, and ID, initiativesareallowed for statutesonly In MI and FL, they are allowed for the
state constitutiononly In the remainder(AZ,AR, CA, CO, MO, MT,NV,ND, OH, OK, OR, SD),
an initiativecan be for either statutesor the constitution(Council of State Governments).All of
these states are given a 1.
10 Beforethe model was estimated,the conservatismscores and unemploymentrateswere re-scaled
with a mean of zero to simplifythe interpretationof the results.
11 In this case, a probit model yields results similarto those from the hazardmodel, though using
probit instead hazardresults in lost informationand impreciseestimates(Box-Steffensmeierand
Jones 1997).
450
andthe States
Official-English
RESULTSAND DISCUSSION
Resultsare presentedin Table1.12The coefficientscan be interpretedas the
effect that a one-unit change in the independentvariablehas on the log-odds of
a state adopting a languagelaw in year t given that it has not yet adopted one.
Some initialconclusionscan be drawnfromexaminingthese results.As the percentage of foreign-bornresidents rises, the likelihood of declaringEnglish the
officiallanguagedecreases,but only for states that do not have directinitiatives.
Havinga unified Democraticgovernmentalso makes a state less likely to declare
Englishthe officiallanguage,and southernstatesaremore likely to pass language
laws than non-southernstates.Passingsuch laws thus has partisan,institutional,
and demographiccomponents, but neither the ideology of a state'scitizens nor
the unemploymentrate seem to matter.To understandbetter how the initiative
processand the demographiccompositionof the statework togetherto influence
policy adoption,it is useful to see how these factorsinfluencethe predictedprobabilityof makingEnglishofficial.
Examiningthe resultsin termsof predictedprobabilitiesis useful forvarious
reasons.First,interactiontermsyield conditionalslope coefficients,not constant
ones. To interpretthe results fully,I need to comparethe probabilityof passing
the law in stateswith high percentagesof foreign-bornresidentswith the probability in stateswith lower percentages.Further,I need to examinehow the probabilitiesdifferin stateswith directinitiativesand in stateswithout them. Second,
one of the featuresof the hazard model is that it provides a baseline hazard,
which is the probabilityof adoptingthe languagelaw in year t if all of the independentvariablesareequal to zero. This baselinehazardis differentfor each year
in the time period;it changeseach time a state adopts a languagelaw and drops
out of the data set. Informationabout the baseline hazardis useful because it
allows me to calculatethe probabilityof declaringEnglishthe officiallanguageat
differentvalues of the independentvariablesand at differentpoints in time.
It turns out that if all of the independent variableswere held at zero, the
probabilityof declaringEnglishthe officiallanguagein any given yearwould rise
over the time period, startingat less than 1 percent in 1982 and ending at 4.6
percent in 1999.13The increasing baseline hazard suggests the existence of
12 A model that included the percent foreign-bornsquared produced similar results;the squared
term yielded an effect for stateswithout initiativesthat was slightly strongerthan the effectin the
finalmodel, but the differencewas negligibleand therewas no significantevidence of non-linearity A model with an exponentialdistribution(constant hazard)and a Cox proportionalhazards
model also producedessentiallysimilarsubstantiveresults.
13 Rememberthat conservatismand unemploymentare scaled such that they have a mean of zero.
Thus, the baselinefor a given yearrepresentsthe probabilityof declaringEnglishofficialfor a nonsouthern state with averageunemploymentand ideology, divided government,no foreign-born
residents,and no directinitiativeprocess.
451
PoliticalResearch
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1
TABLE
INFLUENCES
ON OFFICIAL-ENGLISH
IN THESTATES:
RESULTS
FROMEVENTHISTORYMODEL
Variable
Democratic
government
Republican
government
Stateideology
rate
Unemployment
South
%Foreign-bom
Directinitiative
* (Directinitiative)
(%Foreign-born)
Constant
Loglikelihood
Coefficient
Robusts.e.
-0.85*
0.63
-0.02
-5.79
2.99***
0.56
0.8
0.04
10.01
0.85
-55.73***
15.94
-0.93
58.15***
-2526.04**
80.09
0.93
17.26
957.75
No. of obs = 630; no. of states = 44
*p < 0.1
**p< 0.05
***p< 0.001
policy-diffusionacrossstates over time. It is possible that as more states declare
Englishthe officiallanguage,the remainingstatesbecome more likely to do so as
well. This diffusion of ideas need not be spatial (i.e., geographicallyadjacent
states do not necessarilyinfluence one another);rather,states might be influenced by other states that are similar to them in other characteristics.The
increasingbaseline also suggests that it is not the case that some states are predisposed to make Englishofficialwhile others are not. If that were so, then we
would find a decreasinghazardinstead;afterthe predisposedstates drop out of
the analysis, the probabilityof the remaining states adopting language laws
would decreasetowardzero.
To illustratehow the initiativeprocess and ethnic change work togetherin
influencingpolicy adoption, I calculatethe probabilityof adopting officialEnglish laws at the end of the time period. Figure 1 shows the probabilityof declaring English officialat the start of 1999 for states with direct initiativesand for
states without direct initiatives.'4First, one should notice that the probabilities
are rathersmall-a state with the direct initiative and a population that is 25
14
To calculate the predicted probabilitiesin states without direct initiatives, I first converted the
baseline hazardinto a log odds ratio (ln(baseline/l-baseline)). This ratio was then added to the
slope coefficienttimes the percentageof foreign-bornresidents.For stateswith directinitiatives,I
added on the slope for the interactionterm times the percent foreign-bornand the slope for the
initiativeindicatorvariable.
452
andthe States
Official-English
1
FIGURE
PROBABILITY
OF DECLARING
ENGLISHTHEOFFICIALLANGUAGE
(1999)
0.06
0.05
0.04
Xt
0.03
O
CL 0.02
0.01
0
5
10
15
20
25
PercentForeign-born
-|^-
withoutinitiatives
L-'-+- withinitiatives
percent foreign-bornhas only a 3.5 percentchance of declaringEnglishofficial
in 1999. In any given year the probabilityof passageis low, even though 20 of
the 44 states under study have alreadyadopted official-Englishlaws by 1999.
One should note, however,that while the probabilityof passagein a single year
is low, the probabilityof passageover the time period is considerablylarger.For
example,a state that allows directinitiativesand has a populationthat is 10 percent foreign-bornhas a 2.4 percentchanceof makingEnglishofficialin 1999 but
a 13 percentchanceof doing so over a 10 yearperiod. If the percentforeign-born
increasesover the time period, as it is likely to do, then the probabilityof adoption would increaseeven more.
The more importantthing to notice about the patternin this graph is that
the two types of states divergequite dramaticallyin their probabilitiesof declaring Englishofficial.If a state does not allow for initiatives,the chance of it passing official-Englishlegislationis zero once its foreign-bornpopulation reaches
around 7 percent.In contrast,states with initiativesbecome more likely to pass
such legislationby roughly 2.5 percent across the observed range of the independent variable.The relationshipbetween the two types of states is reversed
when the percentageof foreign-bornresidentsis low. States with a population
that is less than 3 percent foreign-bornand that allow direct initiativesare not
more likely than similarstateswithout initiativesto adopt a languagelaw.In fact,
453
PoliticalResearch
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stateswithout initiativesand with few immigrantsare the most likely candidates
for makingEnglishthe officiallanguage.l5
A comparisonof probabilitiesacrossyears(not shown) revealsthat the qualitative relationshipbetween the two types of states is constant over time; states
with initiativesaremore likely to pass the law as their proportionsof immigrants
increasewhile stateswithout initiativesare less likely to do so. The probabilities,
however, increase dramaticallyfrom 1982 to 1999, suggesting that language
issues havebecome moresalientduringthe time periodunder investigation.This
increasedsalience lends credence to the claims of those who fear that language
laws are not just anti-immigrantbut are particularlyanti-Latino;that the changing face of immigrationcoincides with an increasein debatesabout languageis,
perhaps,no coincidence.
These findings provide quantitativeempiricalsupport to Tatalovich'scase
studies and to the work of those who have written on the potential for direct
democracyto produceanti-minorityoutcomes. The question of whetherthe initiativeprocessallows for a permanentmajorityto tyrannizea permanentminority is a valid one and my findings,along with the findingsof otherslike Gamble
activistsin
(1997), show that it should be takenseriously As pro-official-English
Floridastated, the legislature"putthe languageissue in a drawer,"opening the
way for an initiativecampaignto protectFloridiansfrom feeling like they "just
stepped off into South America"(Tatalovich1995: 92). A largenumberof immigrantsapparentlymakes native-bornresidentswant official-Englishlaws in the
hope of protecting the community from being overtaken by minorities and
makeselected officialsshun those same laws in the hope of protectingtheirposition. Stateswith fewerimmigrantsfaceno such dilemma;the stakesarelower for
everyone involved and language laws can be enacted through the legislature
without controversyIt is likely that interestgroupslike U.S. Englishor EnglishFirst will be active in such states but that there will be little, if any, organized
opposition. This one-sidednesscreatesa political situationin which there are a
handfulof winners and few losers.
CONCLUSION
A majorityof Americanssupportthe idea of makingEnglishthe officiallanguage.In some statesthis supporthas been translatedinto policy,while in others
it has not. One factorthat helps determinewhetherthis translationtakesplace is
the opportunityto bypass the state legislatureand let the voters decide on the
proposalsfor themselves.This opportunitymattersmore than other factors,such
15 Iowa is one of the few states without an officiallanguageand very few immigrantsat the end of
the time period, makingit, accordingto my findings,more likely than other states to make English the officiallanguage.In Marchof 1999, the Iowa Senateindeed passed a bill to do just that,
though the bill laterdied in the lower house (Glover 1999).
454
andtheStates
Official-English
as the partisanmake-upof the state'slegislature,the unemploymentrate,and the
ideology of the state'scitizens. Not every state that has Englishas its officiallanguageand a directinitiativeprocesshas used thatmethod to pass the law,but the
mere existence of the opportunitymakes passage more likely, especiallyas the
percentageof foreign-bornresidentsincreases.As Gerber(1996) shows, legislators in stateswith initiativesare more likely to pass laws that satisfytheir state's
median voter than legislatorsin states without initiatives.Even if a state rarely
uses the initiativeprocess,the simple fact of its existence can be enough to constrainlawmakers;vetoing or voting againsta bill that might later pass by voter
initiativewould resultin an unwantedcrisis of legitimacyArkansasprovidesan
exampleof a state that allows for directinitiativesyet adopted an official-English
law throughits legislature.As President,Bill Clinton expressedregretat signing
that bill in 1987 while he was governor, citing a veto-proof majorityin his
defense (Tatalovich1995: 222).
Some speculationas to how the processesexplored here might play themselves out on the national level is warranted.If the state-levelphenomenon is
analogousto national-levelpolicymaking,then the fact that there is no institutional provision for a national direct initiativecould imply that a national language law will not get adopted. Havinga nation with no initiativesand a population that is over 7 percentforeign-borncould mean that the chancesof passage
in any given year are near zero. Returningto the Arkansasexample, that state's
populationwas less than 1 percent foreign-bornin 1987 when Clinton signed
that state'sofficial-Englishlaw. In 1996, the ClintonAdministrationindicatedit
would veto the English LanguageEmpowermentAct should it reach the President's desk, a year in which the foreign-bornpopulation in the nation was
around9 percent (Green 1996).'6These findingsbolster the conventionalbelief
that if immigrantsand minoritiesbecome more involved in the politicalprocess,
both locally and nationally,then lawmakersmight be less likely to supportlegislationthatcould alienatethem. Thatthe recentDemocraticand Republicanpresidentialcandidatesregularlydemonstratedtheirabilityto speak Spanishsuggests
that this might alreadybe happening,though whetherthis symbolic gestureis a
previewto legislativeintent clearlyremainsto be seen.
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E.P Dutton.
16 The House passed the EnglishLanguageEmpowermentAct, which would have declaredEnglish
the officiallanguageof the country,in 1996. The bill died in the Senate but gets re-introduced
everyyear.Perhaps,as Tatalovichnotes at the state level, those representativesholding state-wide
ratherthan district-wideofficeswill continue to block such proposals.
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