When do coalitions form

Taking the long view is as important to successful social change as making a long-term commitment. When you have not only a good reason for starting a coalition, but also the possibility that one can be started successfully in the community.

This is an extremely important issue, one that is dependent upon a number of factors:. Even if there is enough trust to start a coalition, be aware that it is not only possible, but just about inevitable that there will be bad feeling among some groups or individuals. That's a reality in any community, and the coalition will probably have to face it.

In many cases, working together toward a common purpose can do a lot to change attitudes and to smooth over the past In general, the broader the membership of any coalition, the better, but there are certain people and groups whose representation on a coalition is absolutely essential. These are the people who have a stake in the success of the coalition's efforts. They can include:. It's extremely useful to save seats at the table for those who can influence large numbers of others.

Clergy, business or civic leaders, or people who are simply highly credible in the community may fall into this group. Involving emerging leaders is equally important.

These are people, often without a particular position, whom others look to for guidance. They may be leaders of volunteer efforts, youth highly respected by their peers, active parents, or just those with clear leadership potential. They are important to have on board, both for their ideas and energy, and for the influence they wield and will wield as they become more widely known and respected in the community.

The participation of local political leaders, state representatives, and others in policy-making positions will both add credibility to your enterprise and increase the chances that you can actually influence policy in your area of interest. In addition to these specific groups, virtually any coalition can benefit from the membership of at least some concerned citizens who may have no direct connection to the issue at hand.

Such people can both act as barometers of the attitudes of the community at large, and can bring information back to the community that helps to explain the work of the coalition and give it a higher profile. Another group that you might want to involve, but in a slightly different way, is the media.

Rather than trying to get media members to join, you might want to contact them to publicize and cover your coalition and its efforts. If they join, there may be ethical limitations on the amount of coverage they can give you. How do you actually go about starting one?

You're probably already not alone in your concerns about the issue at hand, and you may already have a core group - a few individuals or organizations - ready to work at forming a coalition. If not, your first step is to find and make contact with those few individuals and organizations most involved with the issue. There are a few ways to approach assembling a core group :. Try to recruit to the core group some members of the group most affected by and concerned with the problem.

A youth violence coalition should look for teens - perhaps gang members - to be core group members; a homeless and housing coalition should try to recruit current or former homeless people. Incorporating such people into the core group will give you a built-in reality check, provide a link to the group they represent, add credibility to your effort, and make clear your commitment to a participatory process.

Especially if your coalition has a narrow and time-limited purpose, there are probably people or organizations you can't do without. It's important to identify them, and to target them specifically for membership. This may mean courting them - an initial meeting over lunch where you pick up the tab, for instance, or a promise of a place on the steering committee.

Most of these individuals and organizations are referred to in "Who should be part of a coalition? In yours, there may be a specific person among the target population, or a particular town official, without whom nothing can get done.

The chances are you - and if not you, then other members of the core group - know this person, or at least know who she is, and have some connection to her. As mentioned earlier, none of this is to say that you shouldn't recruit many other people and organizations to your coalition as well.

It simply means that you need to make a special effort to enlist these crucial members. Now that your core group is in place, and you've decided on the potential members who are necessary to the success of the coalition, you can start recruiting members.

Although it's important to start with the individuals and groups mentioned above, you'll probably want to be as inclusive as possible. It's unusual to hear about a coalition suffering because it has too many members.

Use the networking capacity of your core group to the fullest. The core group can brainstorm a list of possible members, in addition to those deemed essential. Then each member can identify individuals on the list whom he knows personally, or organizations where he has a personal contact. If there are names left on the list without a contact, they can be divided among the members of the core group. These are listed here in their approximate order of effectiveness, with direct personal contact being the best.

It also takes longest, however, and probably should be reserved for those "must-haves" we discussed earlier. Most people are likely to be recruited by phone. Be sure to ask those you talk to for suggestions about other potential members, and try to have them make the contact.

That will spread out the work, and also give the invitation more credibility, since it comes from someone the contacted person knows. If you are successful, you could end up contacting and recruiting several times the number of people and organizations on your original list.

When you contact people to recruit them to the coalition, make sure you have something substantive to offer or to ask them to do. An invitation to a first meeting - at a specific time and place far enough in the future that schedules can be arranged to fit it in - is perhaps the most common offer, but you could also, for instance, ask people to contact their state representative or to work with a small group.

An appeal to join without something specific attached to it will often fall on deaf ears. People's time is valuable, and they want to know that it won't be wasted. The first meeting of a coalition is important. If it's a high-energy, optimistic gathering that gets people excited, you're off to a good start. If it's depressed and negative, or just boring, it's a good bet that a lot of people won't come back. It's up to the core group - in what may be the last official task they undertake - to plan a meeting that will start the coalition off on the right foot.

There are really two concerns here: the logistics of the meeting where, when, how long, etc. There are a number of possibilities for the content of the first meeting. The agenda should depend on your particular issue and purposes, and on the needs of your community, but you'll probably want to include some of the following:. You've held a successful first meeting - terrific! The job of building a coalition has only begun, however.

First, you have to follow up to make sure that there will be a well-attended second meeting at which work can continue. The list that follows is one for whoever is actually putting the coalition together.

That may be an individual, a core group, a staffer, or even a new coalition governing body of some sort. Whoever it is, someone has to be responsible for keeping an eye on the larger picture and making sure that the jobs get done.

Without some level of coordination from somewhere, it's very unlikely that a coalition will survive and succeed. There are a number of specific things - some of which you 've already started in that first meeting - that need to be done to make sure that the coalition keeps moving forward. Stay tuned! Yorktown , VA , Phone: What Is a Coalition Anyway? Follow Us! Contact Us Coalitions Work.

Volunteering Is Alive and Well in America! All rights reserved. Voters then have a direct influence over government policy. If, on the other hand, parties have to seek a coalition partner in order to gain a majority of seats, voter preferences are not necessarily reflected in the final coalition government. Pre-election coalitions are said to be helpful in these cases, as they enable the voters to identify possible government alternatives even before the votes are cast.

The voters may directly support one of the proposed coalitions and therefore furnish the new government with more legitimacy. Although the conditions of forming pre-electoral coalitions have not been explored systematically, one can find two major hypotheses about the factors influencing coalition formation.

The so-called disproportionality hypothesis states that pre-election alliances are more likely to arise in disproportional electoral systems if there are many or at least more than two parties. The basic assumption would be that the electoral system may have a considerable effect on coalition forming and alliances in the pre-election period. If there are more than two competing parties in the party system, the major parties would tend to seek pre-election alliances in order to enlarge their chances of achieving a majority in the legislature and thus being part of the government.

In these kinds of electoral systems, parties may for instance share their votes or even systematically transfer votes within their electoral alliances.

Another approach to explain the formation of pre-election arrangements would be the so-called signalling-device theory.