Ethnic mobilization and United States national interest: Cuban, Irish, and Jewish lobbies and American foreign policy

The primary determinant of success in ethnic foreign policy lobbying is found through an analysis of the ethnic group's initial immigration and subsequent integration into the American mainstream. Existing literature on the influence of ethnic lobbies is limited in that it tends to focus only on the particular lobby's structure, membership, and its relationship to the policymaking community. Alternatively, I offer a multidisciplinary approach that fosters a deeper understanding of ethnic identity formation and the potential for political mobilization.; Initial assumptions regarding immigrants were that they would follow a linear model of acculturation, wherein the individual would gradually shed old-world customs and adopt American norms. When it was observed that ethnic identities were not disappearing, the assimilationist model was formulated. Immigrants were expected to adopt most of American culture, but in the process would retain a portion of their ethnic heritage. However, it seemed that assimilationists overstated ethnic group ability and desire to melt. Cultures were not melting, but rather were coexisting in a pluralistic mosaic. Although the processes of acculturation, assimilation, and pluralization seem to be distinct, actual immigrant experience reflects that all three processes occur simultaneously. Not three separate phases, but a continual, concurrent process.; The cases of Cuban, Irish, and Jewish lobbies reveal how varied ethnic groups—racial, nationalist, and religious—adapted and dealt with the pressures of the integration process. The tactics of each in comparison with their level of success in political mobilization, help us to determine how other ethnic lobbies will fare in trying to influence official perceptions of U.S. national interest.; International relations theory tells us that foreign policy properly belongs under the purview of the executive branch of government, and therefore that is where our inquiry should naturally begin and end. However, such a narrow view of the policy process has lead only to simplistic analyses of ethnic behavior in terms of foreign policy lobbying. By studying the ethnic group through a multidisciplinary approach, we obtain the proper information necessary to predict successful political mobilization.