Coalitions as frames: organizational support across partisan lines

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Partisanship (Table 14)

Abstract

Research on social movements has emphasized the organizational consequences of coalitions while paying less attention to their ideational effects. This article shifts attention to how the public mention of coalition formation shapes bystanders’ support for movement organizations. Drawing on social movement, polarization, and cognitive literatures, I argue that coalitions are not only tactical arrangements but also forms of interpretative work that reframe how organizations, issues, and collective boundaries are understood in polarized contexts. Using online survey experiments focused on an environmental movement organization, I show that the mere mention of a coalition can generate a frame effect, altering respondents’ support for the organization’s goals, interests, or tactics even when the broader communication remains constant. I test one mechanism underlying this effect: changes in perceived organizational identity. Coalition cues partially reduce support by weakening agreement with the organization’s claim to be an environmental advocacy group when it is presented in coalition with an organization advocating a different polarized issue. This indirect effect is significantly stronger among Republican respondents, indicating that partisan identity conditions how coalition signals reshape organizational interpretations. These findings highlight the symbolic consequences of coalition formation and suggest that alliances can reshape public interpretations of movement organizations in polarized environments.

Author

• Fabian D. Maldonado, University of Notre Dame