Exploring Group Alliances: The Women's Suffrage Movement and Agrarian Interests

• In Event: Groups and Parties in American Political Development

Abstract

While scholars have focused extensively on the important consequences of alliances between interest groups, less attention has been paid to the underlying dynamics shaping when, how, and why such alliances form. This is especially true of alliances uniting groups that, prior to their cooperative efforts, have few connections to each other and seemingly little in common. We aim to fill this gap by identifying the conditions that incentivize previously distant groups to work together and the actions that group leaders must take to make these unlikely alliances work. We first develop a theoretical framework that highlights both the permissive conditions that encourage alliances—namely shared threats and common vulnerabilities—and the productive conditions that bring them into existence—creative actions taken by entrepreneurial leaders to build cross-group identities, ideologies, and infrastructures. We apply this framework to the U.S. women's suffrage movement, which at the turn of the 20th century formed crucial alliances with agrarian groups. These groups were not viewed as highly compatible at the time, yet nonetheless succeeded at forming a successful partnership in some states. We explore how did so and how the alliance helped advance the suffrage cause.

Authors

• Boris Heersink, Fordham University

• Matthew Lacombe, Case Western Reserve University