Emotions, Coalition Building, and Deliberative Governance: How Emotions are Used in Legislative Testimonies on Morally Contentious Issues

Legislative public testimony is a cornerstone of the deliberative elements of American democracy, particularly at the state level. Public testimony also often encompasses high conflict policy debates, particularly when legislation touches on morally contentious, highly polarized, emotionally laden public policy issues. While high conflict policy debates are routinely studied using the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Discourse Network Analysis, the role of emotions in these contests often remain in the background analytically. Actors engaged in public testimony express a range of emotions related to their moral positions on policy issues, and to their allies, opponents, and public officials. We analyze how policy actors in advocacy coalitions use implicit and explicit emotions on morally complex issues across legislative testimony on ten bills. These issues encompass education, housing, criminal justice, LGBTQ+, and reproductive justice legislation. This sample includes bills that both passed and failed during the 2021 Colorado Legislative session, and explores how emotions influence this success or failure of legislation. The testimony across these ten bills, along with in-depth, semi-structured interviews form a purposive sample of actors engaged in public testimony and deliberative democracy. We find that actors use a wide range of emotions, both explicitly and implicitly, in reaction to events that occur before and during the testimony debate and the actions and beliefs of other actors. They also use emotions to emphasize frames that support their moral and policy preferences, which can aid in both coalition building and contributing to resistance from opponents. Additionally, actors explicitly describe the emotions of themselves and their allies more frequently than the emotions of their opponents. This work contributes to the field by building on the literature on policy conflicts, advocacy coalitions, and deepening understanding of how actors use emotion in policy conflicts, specifically through the examination of public testimony. This paper concludes with a research agenda for continuing the study of the role of emotions, conflict, and advocacy coalitions.