Advocacy coalitions are perhaps the most powerful yet fragile instruments of institutional change. When they hold together, they can topple regimes, reshape international norms, and fundamentally alter the distribution of power within societies. When they fracture—as they so often do—they leave behind not merely failed campaigns but depleted networks, embittered activists, and opportunities squandered for a generation.

Paul Sabatier's advocacy coalition framework offers the most sophisticated lens for understanding these dynamics. His insight was deceptively simple yet profound: coalitions are not primarily held together by shared interests or tactical agreements, but by belief systems arranged in hierarchical layers. At the deepest level sit fundamental normative commitments that are nearly impossible to change. Above these rest policy core beliefs about how the world works and what strategies serve those values. At the surface lie secondary aspects—the tactical and instrumental preferences that seem most urgent in daily coalition work but matter least for long-term cohesion.

The strategic implications of this framework are substantial. Most coalition failures stem from a fundamental misdiagnosis: treating deep belief conflicts as tactical disagreements, or conversely, allowing secondary disputes to metastasize into existential threats. Skilled coalition architects learn to distinguish between these layers and develop differentiated management strategies for each. What follows is a systematic analysis of how this works in practice—how coalitions can be designed, maintained, and navigated through the inevitable tensions that arise when diverse actors attempt collective action for institutional change.

Sabatier identified the deep core as the fundamental ontological and normative beliefs that define an actor's worldview. These are not policy preferences—they are the axioms from which policy preferences derive. For a human rights coalition, deep core beliefs might include the inherent dignity of persons, the illegitimacy of arbitrary state violence, or the primacy of individual rights over collective interests. These beliefs are formed early, often through formative experiences or professional socialization, and resist change even in the face of contradictory evidence.

The critical insight for coalition builders is that deep core alignment is necessary but not sufficient for coalition stability. Organizations may share fundamental values yet still find themselves in irreconcilable conflict over what those values demand in practice. However, without deep core alignment, coalitions become purely transactional arrangements—useful for specific campaigns but lacking the resilience to survive setbacks, internal disputes, or strategic pivots.

Diagnostic precision matters enormously here. Before forming or joining a coalition, sophisticated advocates conduct what might be called axiom mapping—identifying not just what potential partners say they believe, but the foundational premises that generate those stated beliefs. A labor union and an environmental organization may both oppose a particular trade agreement, but if one operates from a fundamentally nationalist framework while the other holds cosmopolitan commitments, their alliance will likely fracture the moment those premises come into tension.

The practical challenge is that deep core beliefs are often tacit. Organizations rarely articulate their foundational premises because those premises feel self-evident to insiders. Effective coalition formation requires making the implicit explicit—forcing conversations about why partners hold the positions they do, not merely what positions they hold. This diagnostic work feels inefficient when campaigns demand immediate action, but it prevents catastrophic fractures later.

Experienced coalition architects also recognize that deep core alignment creates its own risks. Coalitions of the ideologically identical may achieve internal harmony at the cost of strategic reach. The most effective coalitions often include actors whose deep cores overlap rather than perfectly align—sharing enough foundational commitment to maintain trust while differing enough to bring diverse resources, constituencies, and legitimacy to the collective effort.

Takeaway

Before investing in coalition formation, map the foundational beliefs that generate partners' stated positions—shared conclusions mean nothing if they derive from incompatible premises that will eventually collide.

Secondary aspects in Sabatier's framework encompass instrumental decisions: tactical choices, resource allocation, messaging approaches, and organizational procedures. These are the daily substance of coalition work, and they are also the terrain on which most coalition conflicts visibly occur. The sophisticated coalition manager understands that secondary disagreements are inevitable, legitimate, and potentially valuable—but only if properly contained.

The containment principle rests on a counterintuitive insight: attempting to resolve all secondary disagreements actually destabilizes coalitions. Partners with different organizational cultures, constituencies, and strategic traditions will inevitably prefer different tactics. A litigation-focused organization will see court cases as primary; a grassroots mobilization group will prioritize direct action; a policy research institution will emphasize evidence and elite persuasion. These preferences are not arbitrary—they reflect accumulated organizational knowledge about how change happens.

Effective coalitions develop what might be termed strategic pluralism with coordination. Rather than demanding tactical uniformity, they create frameworks within which diverse approaches can coexist and ideally reinforce each other. The civil rights movement exemplified this: legal organizations pursued constitutional challenges while mass mobilization groups filled streets and jails. These tactics were not merely parallel—they were synergistic, with each making the other more effective. Courts proved more willing to rule boldly when mass movements demonstrated public support; movements gained momentum when legal victories proved change was possible.

The operational challenge is preventing secondary disagreements from escalating into perceived betrayals of deep core commitments. When one coalition partner pursues tactics another finds objectionable, the aggrieved party often reframes the dispute in moral terms—"They don't really care about our cause"—transforming a containable tactical disagreement into an existential threat. Skilled coalition leadership involves constant interpretive work: helping partners understand that tactical differences reflect legitimate strategic diversity rather than value defection.

Procedurally, this requires explicit agreements about decision rights. Which decisions require full coalition consensus? Which can individual members make autonomously? What coordination mechanisms exist for actions that affect the coalition's collective reputation? Coalitions that leave these questions unaddressed find themselves relitigating foundational issues every time a tactical disagreement arises—exhausting trust and attention that should be directed at external targets.

Takeaway

Design coalition structures that explicitly permit tactical diversity while establishing clear boundaries and coordination mechanisms—unity of purpose does not require uniformity of method.

Coordination among diverse coalition members is not a problem to be solved once but a capacity to be continuously cultivated. Organizations bring different decision-making rhythms, communication styles, accountability structures, and risk tolerances. A coalition that fails to develop coordination infrastructure adequate to these differences will find itself perpetually frustrated—either paralyzed by the need for consensus or fractured by unilateral actions.

The most critical coordination mechanism is often the least glamorous: reliable information exchange. Coalition partners need to know what others are doing, planning, and learning. Without this visibility, coordination becomes impossible—partners duplicate efforts, miss opportunities for synergy, and stumble into unintended conflicts. Yet information sharing feels costly, especially when it requires revealing strategic intentions to organizations that remain, in some respects, competitors for funding, media attention, and influence.

Sophisticated coalitions address this through tiered information architectures. Not all information flows to all partners equally. Operational details may circulate within working groups while strategic intelligence reaches a smaller coordination committee. Sensitive information about organizational vulnerabilities or internal debates may be shared only among the most trusted partners. This differentiation is not deceptive—it reflects the reality that trust develops at different rates with different partners and that information security concerns are legitimate.

Resource coordination presents distinct challenges. Coalitions frequently struggle with the tension between collective impact and organizational survival. Partners may intellectually acknowledge that resources should flow to the most effective interventions, but organizational imperatives push toward protecting existing programs and staff. The most functional coalitions develop explicit resource-sharing mechanisms—joint funding proposals, shared infrastructure, seconded staff—that create material interdependence rather than merely rhetorical commitment.

Finally, effective coordination requires sanctioning capacity. When coalition members defect from agreed strategies—whether through free-riding, unauthorized actions, or outright betrayal—the coalition must be able to respond. This does not mean formal enforcement mechanisms, which are rare in advocacy coalitions. Rather, it means that defection carries reputational costs within the advocacy community and that coalition leadership has the standing to articulate norms and call out violations. Without this capacity, coordination agreements become merely aspirational.

Takeaway

Build coordination infrastructure before you need it—reliable information exchange, tiered sharing arrangements, resource interdependence, and clear norms with reputational consequences for defection.

Coalition management is ultimately an exercise in applied epistemology—in understanding what different actors truly believe, why they believe it, and how those belief structures will interact under pressure. The Sabatier framework provides not a recipe but a diagnostic instrument: a way of distinguishing between conflicts that threaten coalition survival and tensions that, properly managed, can become sources of strategic strength.

The most resilient coalitions are neither the most ideologically pure nor the most tactically unified. They are those that have done the foundational work of axiom mapping, developed explicit frameworks for containing secondary disagreements, and built coordination infrastructure adequate to their diversity. This work is unglamorous and time-intensive. It competes with the urgent demands of immediate campaigns.

But institutional change is a long game. The coalitions that achieve lasting transformation are those designed not merely for the current campaign but for the decades of sustained pressure that genuine institutional change requires. Investing in coalition architecture is investing in the possibility of victory.