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ABSTRACT
Interest in social movement coalitions has been increasing significantly in recent years. While this growing body of research has paid much attention to conditions and processes of coalition building, the consequences of coalitions remain understudied. This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of coalitions’ internal impact by exploring how different types of coalitions affect each other. In particular, we analyse how coalitions across countries influence coalitions across movement sectors. The article explores the diverse coalitions in the Global Justice Movement (GJM) in Europe and Southeast Asia, a movement characterized by its strong transnational as well as cross-sectoral ties. Our analysis includes four case studies from different transnational coalitions within the GJM: the peasant network La Vía Campesina, the debt-relief campaign Jubilee 2000, the network of women’s movements World March of Women, and the grassroots network Peoples’ Global Action. The case studies in Indonesia, the Philippines, the UK and Italy show how coalition building across countries can both enhance as well as hinder coalitions across sectors. We demonstrate how transnational coalitions in some cases deepen divides between local movement sectors and hamper domestic coalition building, while they help bridging divisions within local movement coalitions in others. Our findings point to the relevance of conflicts, power inequalities and trade-offs in coalition building as well as to the importance of negative effects of coalitions.
Acknowledgments
We thank the reviewers for their helpful comments. The article draws on a research grant provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG); project title: ‘No Alternative? Social Protest in the Alter-Globalisation Movement between Opposition and Dissidence’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Eight to twelve interviews were conducted for each of the national or regional movement groups, i.e. 39 in total for the four case studies.
2. For each case we collected materials published by the respective activist network in the period under investigation. Depending on the case, the kind of documents and availability differed: For the case of Jubilee UK we draw on reports and discussion papers published between 1998 and 2000 on the campaign webpage (www.jubilee2000uk.org; accessed via the web archive wayback machine in February 2018). For the case of PGA we draw on reports published by Italian grassroots activists about activities between 1998 and 2002 on the PGA archival webpage www.nadir.org. For the case of La Vía Campesina we draw on the websites of the Indonesian local groups (https://spi.or.id/and predecessor http://www.fspi.or.id/accessed via the web archive wayback machine in February 2018), and KMP press releases or statements in the newspaper ‘Manila Standard’. For the case of the World March of Women we draw on pamphlets and press releases between 2002 and 2008 received vie email or hard copy from the Philippine member groups.
3. In this way, the below case studies only include interview statements that have been triangulated by documents or secondary analyses. However, due to the brevity of the case studies the document analysis itself cannot be discussed in detail.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Priska Daphi
Priska Daphi is Professor of Conflict Sociology at Bielefeld University and co-founder of the Institute for Protest and Social Movement Studies (IPB) in Berlin.
Felix Anderl
Felix Anderl is a research associate on the ERC-funded project ARTEFACT at the University of Cambridge, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.
Nicole Deitelhoff
Nicole Deitelhoff is Professor of International Relations and Theories of Global Orders at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.