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Identities, interest group coalitions, and intergroup relations

ABSTRACT Interest groups are well known for lobbying and providing information to citizens. However, no extant scholarship explores how the actions of interest groups affect intergroup relations, even though these organizations represent a variety of social identities. I argue that the decisions of interest group leaders to work together or reject collaboration send signals to everyday members of the identity groups they represent about their relations to other groups. In a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of African-Americans, I vary whether respondents receive information about a successful coalition or a rejected coalition between African-American interest groups and organizations representing another identity. I find that when African-American interest groups successfully form a coalition with a high-solidarity outgroup (e.g., Hispanics), individuals develop greater feelings of closeness with the outgroup and express greater support for policies that benefit that group. However, when leaders of the outgroup organizations reject the coalition, it creates a backlash effect of lower closeness and weaker policy support. This backlash effect does not occur for low-solidarity outgroups (e.g., atheists). These findings suggest that interest groups are an understudied source of elite influence on identity-based perceptions, which can either promote or obstruct harmonious intergroup relationships.