Inclusion is defined by a “full access to participation, representation in important decision-making processes and institutions, influence in/power over government decisions, adoption of public policies that address group concerns or interests, and socioeconomic parity” (Hero, Wolbrecht, 2005, p. 4). Full access to participation is the first in illustrating the meaning of inclusion. A system of democracy that does not offer all of its citizens the means to participate is one that is not fully democratic. Jan Leighley argues this point further in that “a fundamental indicator of democratic inclusion in a representative democracy is the extension of full …show more content…
population. Because political parties lack the proper descriptive features of racial minorities they do not take into account things such as socioeconomic parity which prevents many minorities from participating in the electoral process. Political parties are supposed to represent the ideologies of those who elected them to enacted policies; racial minorities require a stronger group consciousness to affect the nature of the political parties that exist. That is why when a political party makes the effort to reach out to the racial minorities by finding members for the party who apart of those communities the people of those same communities are more likely to participate and vote in the favor of that political