Grassroots Political Organizations in American Political Development

• In Event: Local Politics at the Forefront of America’s Fight for Racial Equality

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and mass protests of police violence have highlighted the role of local grassroots political organizations and the myriad ways they shape political discourse and outcomes. Yet little is known about how small, grassroots political organizations form or the role that they play in promoting policy agendas within a federalist system; nor are there many theories explaining the conditions under which such organizations coalesce into what is conventionally described as a social movement. This paper uses one-year of participant observation and in-depth interviews with a multi-racial coalition of 30 activist organizations in a large city in the Deep South. I thematically code and analyze these interviews to identify conditions under which grassroots political leaders form organizations and choose certain political strategies, including when and how to form coalitions and associate with broader movements. I accompany these interviews with an original dataset of contemporary grassroots political organizations in three states in the Deep South. This analysis yields two findings from which I theorize. First, local grassroots political actors are heavily networked and engage in what I term “issue delegation” to discern organizational gaps in what are often intersecting political issues at the local or regional level (e.g., affordable housing, community safety, environmental justice). Second, grassroots political coalitions form during the opening of a policy window not only to pool resources, but also to intentionally strengthen the dimensionality of a political issue and policy demand. These findings build on a foundation from which we may better understand the role of local grassroots political groups in American Political Development.

Author

• Gwen Prowse, Yale University