Why Coalitions Are Key to Intersectional Advocacy — Diversity and Money Matter

🔎 What's the Problem?

Interest groups that represent marginalized populations (women, people of color, Native nations, and the poor) often claim to champion their most vulnerable constituents but regularly neglect those facing intersectional disadvantage.

📂 What Was Analyzed — Cosigned Public Comments on Federal Rules (2004–2014)

• A new dataset of cosignature patterns within public comments on proposed federal agency rules, submitted by a set of interest groups representing women, people of color, Native nations, and the poor between 2004 and 2014.
• The analysis focuses on whether advocacy targeted intersectional disadvantage and whether that advocacy occurred inside coalitions.

💡 Key Findings

• These groups are significantly more likely to pursue intersectional advocacy when they act in coalitions.
• Coalition participation alone does not predict whether intersectional advocacy will be influential in rulemaking.
• Particular coalition characteristics — especially organizational diversity and greater financial capacity — predict when coalition-backed intersectional advocacy achieves influence.

🌍 Why It Matters

Collaborative lobbying can be an effective tactic for mediating representational bias in interest group advocacy and for promoting more pluralistic administrative policymaking. The findings indicate that coalition composition and resources, not coalition membership by itself, shape whether intersectional concerns gain traction in federal rulemaking.