The Shifting Power of Labor-Community Coalitions: identifying common elements of powerful coalitions in Australia and the USA

Summary:

This is an academic peer-reviewed article comparing coalition building in Australia and the US, building a way to differentiate between practice. It suggests strategies and elements of coalition practice to support union and community campaigners to improve their practice.

The article is open access and available in English.

Abstract

This article presents and explores a theoretical framework of common features across labor-community coalitions. While researchers in both the U.S. and Australia have written about labor-community coalitions, most of their work has focused on profiling “best practices” rather than building a framework for understanding coalition and such work in general. This article argues that all coalitions are defined by four common elements: the nature of common concern, the structure of organizational relationships, organizational capacity and commitment, and the scale of coalition activity. It then uses these elements to identify four different ideal types of coalitions, varying from ad hoc coalitions, to simple coalitions, to mutual interest coalitions to deep coalitions. The article illustrates the usefulness of this framework by using it to examine sample coalition experiences in the U.S. and Australia. The Australian case displays variation in coalition type within a single ongoing campaign around public education. By contrast, eight samples of U.S. living wage efforts demonstrate variation in coalition type among different campaigns.

Citation:

Tattersall, A., Reynolds, D. (2007). The Shifting Power of Labor-Community Coalitions: identifying common elements of powerful coalitions in Australia and the USA. Working USA: the journal of labor and society, 10(3), 77-102.