Effective minority influence requires coalition dominance, not representation alone

Evidence

The key to higher levels of responsiveness was not representation but coalition: minority inclusion in a coalition that was able to dominate a city council produced a much more positive government response than the election of minority council members who were not part of the dominant coalition. (Browning et al., 1986:576) They also point out that white support for minority incorporation was not a matter of benign altruism because the existence of these coalitions depended on the support of black and Hispanic politicians. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2156

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the intuitive ‘descriptive representation’ assumption that electing minority officials is what produces policy change; connects to similar findings in political science on substantive vs. descriptive representation. — connects to: Small networked elite groups can dominate policy debates without being a majority — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 443; Marginal groups gain a political will only through representation itself — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 313