Coalition Representation in Abortion Policy Debates

One of the biggest innovations within the policy process theories is the concept of coalitions, or how policy actors self-organize to collectively pursue shared goals. Despite the centrality of coalitions and extensive research spanning decades on this concept, there remains a lack of understanding about their functional purpose in a democracy. For this paper, we focus on one aspect of this objective by examining why coalitions matter within a representative democracy—particularly the way that members of coalitions function as representatives of a larger public, whom they imagine that public to be, and how they ascertain the public’s preferences to inform their advocacy. In this paper, we take an Advocacy Coalition Framework perspective, because it is the origin of the coalition concept, tackles coalitions most directly of any theoretical approach, and offers a theoretical framework apt for incorporating principles of democracy, like representation. This paper begins with an argument incorporating democratic representation into the theoretical infrastructure of the ACF. It illustrates this argument by examining coalition representation in the abortion policy subsystem in Colorado in 2022. This particular case is taking place against the backdrop of anticipation of and the ultimate announcement of the Dobbs Decision, which eliminated federal protections for abortion access. This case captures a historic moment in time in one of the nation’s fiercest abortion battleground states and offers an opportunity to investigate the ways that advocates represented, not only themselves, but the wider public in their policy debates. This paper ends with theoretical and empirical implications before returning to the theme of democracy and policy process research.