Race, State, and Policy: The Development of Employment Discrimination Policy in the USA and Britain
Author(s)
Lieberman, Robert C.
Abstract
Long a central feature of American politics, racial diversity increasingly emerged as a critical dividing line in British politics as well in the last half of the twentieth century. Despite differences in the way national “color lines” are drawn, racial diversity poses similar policy problems in the two countries, encompassing particularly issues of state protection against discrimination in a variety of domains. In this article, the author offers an explanation for these differences in the evolution of employment discrimination policy in the United States and Britain that focuses on political institutions and the historical evolution of race politics in the two countries. He argues that the critical factor that accounts for these divergent outcomes is the nature of political institutions in the two countries, and in particular the historical trajectories that situated racial minorities differently in two different political systems.
