Strategic Alliances

Coalition Building and Social Movements

2010

Nella Van Dyke and Holly J. McCammon, editors

The best current thinking on the conditions leading to successful activist coalitions

Strategic Alliances provides pioneering analysis of the circumstances leading to movement alliances. Contributors investigate coalition dynamics among social movements, including antiwar, environmental, and labor movements, as well as ethnic organizations and women’s groups. While many of the essays examine coalition formation in the United States, others consider coalitions in Britain, the former East Germany, East Asia, and Latin America.

Social researchers in the past have paid surprisingly little theoretical or empirical attention to movement alliances. Strategic Alliances provides a pioneering set of in-depth analyses of the circumstances leading to these organizational alliances. Contributors investigate coalition dynamics among social movements, including antiwar, environmental, and labor movements, as well as ethnic organizations and women’s groups. While many of the essays examine coalition formation in the United States, others consider coalitions in Britain, the former East Germany, East Asia, and Latin America.

Contributors: Paul Almeida, University of California, Merced; Elizabeth Borland, College of New Jersey; Daniel B. Cornfield, Vanderbilt U; Catherine Corrigall-Brown, U of British Columbia; Mario Diani, U of Trento; Katja M. Guenther, UC Riverside; Larry Isaac, Vanderbilt U; Isobel Lindsay, Biggar, Scotland; David S. Meyer, UC Irvine; Brian Obach, SUNY New Paltz; Dina G. Okamoto, UC Davis; Christine Petit, UC Riverside; Derrick Purdue, U of the West of England; Ellen Reese, UC Riverside; Benita Roth, SUNY Binghamton; Suzanne Staggenborg, U of Pittsburgh; Dawn Wiest, U of Memphis.

Nella Van Dyke is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced.

Holly J. McCammon is professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University.

Contents


Preface

Introduction: Social Movement Coalition Formation
Nella Van Dyke and Holly J. McCammon

Part I. Social Ties and the Development of Movement Coalitions
1. The Prehistory of a Coalition: The Role of Social Ties in Win Without War
Catherine Corrigall-Brown and David S. Meyer

2. Policing Capital: Armed Countermovement Coalitions against Labor in Late Nineteenth-Century Industrial Cities
Larry Isaac

3. Interstate Dynamics and Transnational Social Movement Coalitions: A Comparison of Northeast and Southeast Asia
Dawn Wiest

Part II. Movement Ideology and Coalition Formation
4. Approaching Merger: The Converging Public Policy Agendas of the AFL and CIO, 1938–1955
Daniel B. Cornfield and Holly J. McCammon

5. “Organizing One’s Own” as Good Politics: Second Wave Feminists and the Meaning of Coalition
Benita Roth

6. The Strength of Weak Coalitions: Transregional Feminist Coalitions in Eastern Germany
Katja M. Guenther

Part III. Broad Political Influences on Social Movement Coalitions
7. Organizing across Ethnic Boundaries in the Post–Civil Rights Era: Asian American Panethnic Coalitions
Dina G. Okamoto

8. Social Movement Partyism: Collective Action and Oppositional Political Parties in Latin America
Paul Almeida

9. Political Opportunity and Social Movement Coalitions: The Role of Policy Segmentation and Nonprofit Tax Law
Brian Obach

10. Sustained Interactions? Social Movements and Coalitions in Local Settings
Mario Diani, Isobel Lindsay, and Derrick Purdue

Part IV. Coalitions and Combinations of Causal Factors
11. Crisis as a Catalyst for Cooperation? Women’s Organizing in Buenos Aires
Elizabeth Borland

12. Sudden Mobilization: Movement Crossovers, Threats, and the Surprising Rise of the U.S. Antiwar Movement
Ellen Reese, Christine Petit, and David S. Meyer

13. Applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis to Empirical Studies of Social Movement Coalition Formation
Holly J. McCammon and Nella Van Dyke

Conclusion: Research on Social Movement Coalitions
Suzanne Staggenborg

Contributors
Index