The Impact of Social Ties on Coalition Strength and Effectiveness: The Case of the Battered Women's Movement in St Louis

Abstract

Although a number of researchers have studied social movement coalitions, we still need to develop better ways to analyze why some initiatives succeed and others fail. In this study, I compare three different coalitions in which battered women's movement activists participated to determine the factors that made some coalitions stronger and more effective than others. Using qualitative data from a 16-year longitudinal study, I found that an important variable affecting a coalition's strength is the quality of the social relationships among its members. In particular, close personal ties encourage a degree of trust, the sharing of detailed knowledge, and collective problem-solving mechanisms that enable coalition members to anticipate one another's preferences and behavior and overcome conflicts as they arise. The greater coordination capacity that results can make it possible for a social movement to exert increased political power and position it to take advantage of new political opportunities when they arise.

Keywords:

• Social movements
• battered women's movement
• coalitions
• social ties
• social networks

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank David S. Meyer, Kelly Moore, and Pat Martin for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Richard Colignon for steering me toward relevant articles in organizational sociology.

Notes

1. This organizational fragmentation in the movement mirrors the political fragmentation of St Louis itself. The City of St Louis (with a population of about 350,000) is separate from St Louis County (population 1,000,000), which has its own governing structure. Moreover, St Louis County itself is divided into over 90 municipalities. This political fragmentation makes both service provision and attempts to influence public policy more complicated for battered women's advocates who must deal with multiple administrative and legal entities in order to get even a single policy changed and implemented region-wide.

2. I am borrowing this term from anthropology to refer to information accompanied by enough details to give the recipient an understanding of what it means within the context of the speaker's priorities and, in this case, ideological perspective. ‘Thin’ information, by contrast, is conveyed with little or no indication of its significance within the speaker's larger world view.

3. The issue of rules, especially for battered women living in shelters, has been a highly contentious one throughout the history of the movement in large part because imposing rules seems to contradict the goal of empowering battered women.

4. In 2006, MCADV merged with the state's coalition against sexual assault, and the name changed to MCADSV: Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

5. For an overview of research in the Community Studies field concerning factors that facilitate or impede the success of collaborative bodies such as coalitions, see Foster-Fishman et al. (2001). Many of their conclusions either directly corroborate or complement my findings here.