In Contesting the Last Frontier, Pei-te Lien and Nicole Filler conduct a nuanced investigation to understand the representation of Asian Americans, the fastest-growing immigrant group in the US, in elected office at the local, state, and national levels. This book is a foundational contribution to the literature on Asian American (also described as Asian Pacific American, or APA, in the book) representation in an era of rapid population growth and increasing diversity within the community. Using a mixed-methods approach that draws on an original longitudinal dataset of APA office holders and detailed qualitative case studies, the authors explore the contours of Asian American political representation, paying close attention to variation across gender, national origin, and generational subgroups.
Lien and Filler argue that public discourse surrounding APA underrepresentation in political office obscures a rich history of representation at the local level, especially by women and immigrants. In turn, the authors evaluate APA representation across levels of government using a four-stage model of political incorporation: beginning with descriptive representation (or the presence of APA office holders), which becomes sustainable when they retain seats, proportional when representation in elected office reaches parity with population numbers, and substantive when Asian Americans impact policy (p. 21). The first half of the book documents the stories of diverse, pioneering APA elected officials and provides a descriptive overview of APA representation at the local, state, and national levels. The second half explores the role of political parties in candidate recruitment and the extent to which APA elected officials represent the substantive interests of Asian American constituents. This review focuses on four major contributions of the book, which is an invaluable resource to scholars of Asian American politics, students, practitioners, and members of the educated public interested in political representation within this diverse panethnic community.
Most centrally, this book contributes an intersectional perspective to the growing literature on Asian American representation in political office by documenting the contours of representation in a way that centers variation, similarly to some existing work (e.g., Carol Hardy-Fanta et al., Contested Transformation: Race, Gender, and Political Leadership in 21st Century America, 2016; Christian Dyogi Phillips, Nowhere to Run: Race, Gender, and Immigration in American Elections, 2021). Drawing on a comprehensive dataset of APA elected officials that spans decades, regions, and levels of government, Lien and Filler trace complex patterns of APA descriptive representation and assess whether it is proportional and sustainable.
Although the number of APA elected officials is growing steadily and diversifying at subnational levels, there is variation in whether Asian American subgroups achieve proportional and sustainable representation across time and place (p. 108). Focusing on APA representation on California city councils, the authors reevaluate theories of coethnic representation, which find mixed support in research on Asian Americans (e.g., James Lai et al., “Asian Pacific-American Campaigns, Elections, and Elected Officials,” Political Science and Politics 34, 2001; David Lublin and Matthew Wright, “Diversity Matters: The Election of Asian Americans to US State and Federal Legislatures,” American Political Science Review, 2023). Lien and Filler find an increasingly strong relationship between Asian population size and their share of city council seats over time, particularly in small and medium-sized cities (p. 99). This points to the political incorporation of Asian Americans in certain municipalities and suggests the need for future research focused on local-level dynamics of APA representation.
The book also offers a fresh perspective on the role of political parties in APA candidate recruitment. In line with prior work on the limited role of parties in mobilizing immigrant voters (e.g., Zoltan Hajnal and Taeku Lee, Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure (of Political Parties) to Engage the Electorate, 2011), Lien and Filler find that the major parties historically did little to recruit or support Asian American candidates. However, the authors note that this might be a “blessing in disguise,” since many local-level elected positions are nonpartisan and APA candidates instead gain political experience through community organizing (p. 113). This is an important finding in view of the success of APA candidates at the local level. The final chapter highlights the role of ethnic organizations in helping APA candidates to develop civic skills and experience, which comports with Janelle Wong’s (2006) account in Democracy’s Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions. In analyses of the partisan affiliations of contemporary APA elected officials, Lien and Filler find that nearly 70% identify as Democrats (with higher numbers among women than men), though a large proportion of local officials are nonaffiliated (pp. 125–27). This is an example of the nuanced descriptive information this book provides as a resource to scholars and practitioners alike.
Another major contribution includes analysis of whether APA elected officials are substantive representatives of minority group interests. In chapter 5, Lien and Filler analyze original data about the policy priorities of APA elected officials serving in 2020, finding variation in the extent to which they prioritize social justice issues. While only one in five APA elected officials prioritize these issues, these numbers are higher among women, which points to the role that “womanist leadership praxis” plays in social justice advocacy among APA elected officials (pp. 157–59). This chapter also considers whether APA elected officials are substantive representatives of the APA community. These analyses draw on rich historical case studies focused on issues affecting Asian Americans, including redress for Chinese exclusion and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as a contemporary analysis of responses to racialized dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis among APA members of the 116th Congress. Taken together, these analyses highlight the variation, complexity, and, at times, contradictions of APA substantive representation.
Finally, the book centers the personal stories of pioneering APA elected officials from many places, subgroups, and periods in history. This effort contributes to the documentation of Asian American history and will serve as a valuable teaching resource. Lien and Filler chronicle the political trajectories of well-known historical figures like Patsy Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress, and a new generation of APA elected officials, including Mee Moua and Swati Dandekar—respectively, the first Hmong and Indian American women elected to state legislatures (pp. 39, 44, 199). A common theme across these stories is that many APA elected officials, especially women and immigrants, struggled to obtain mainstream partisan traction and gained civic experience through community work.
Contesting the Last Frontier is essential reading on Asian American political representation as the community moves toward a sustainable model of long-term representation in political office and the policy-making process. While the book offers many valuable insights, there are several important topics that are beyond the scope of the research. For example, the book does not offer a comprehensive explanation for changes in APA representation across time and place or of the role of APA elected officials in the policy-making process beyond a narrow set of issues. To that end, the book stimulates further inquiry, raising several theoretical questions for future research. For example, how do constituency characteristics shape Asian American representation at different levels of political office? Are these dynamics static or do they change over time? Turning to substantive representation, to what extent do Asian American (and non-Asian) elected officials represent the policy interests expressed by Asian American constituents? Lien and Filler’s research provides a solid theoretical and empirical foundation for future work on these and many other topics.
