The Research Behind the MRXC Blueprint

Research informed. Movement tested. Built for real coalition work.

The MRXC Blueprint is grounded in both research and in lived practice. To better understand what helps coalitions become healthy, effective, and resilient, the Climate Advocacy Lab drew from real-world campaign case studies and peer-reviewed scholarship across political science, sociology, psychology, and related fields. This exercise helped identify the factors that shape a coalition’s ability to build trust, share power, navigate conflict, sustain participation, and create the conditions for meaningful collaboration. We also built on existing research around coalitions, including Designing Resilient Coalitions from the P3 Lab at Johns Hopkins University, which helped synthesize a broad body of scholarship on what makes collective political work durable.

We paired that research with what advocates are experiencing on the ground. Through dozens of in-depth interviews with climate advocates across the ecosystem, we heard directly about the conditions that make coalition work powerful, frustrating, transformative, and sometimes unsustainable. These conversations supported our hypothesis that no one framework can fully capture the complexity of power, personality, positionality, history, and trust inside a coalition, but patterns do emerge when we look close enough. The MRXC Blueprint was designed from those patterns.

What we ended up with reflects the recurring questions, tensions, and practices that show up across both the literature and in practice: how coalitions form, make decisions, build trust, respond to conflict, and stay aligned through changing political conditions. Rather than offering a rigid formula, MRXC Blueprint provides a practical guide for advocates to strengthen the relationships, structures, and strategic practices that make coalition work more equitable, resilient, and capable of winning.