Abstract:  This article examines the dynamics of coalition formation in the context of the EU–Mercosur negotiations, utilizing the “Bootleggers and Baptists” analogy to understand how diverse actors—such as import‐competing sectors, civil society organizations, and policymakers—engage in issue‐linkage in public debates surrounding preferential trade agreement negotiations. The framework explores three types of coalition formation: opportunistic framing, strategic alliance, and mediated convergence, each representing varying degrees of coordination between moral and economic actors. The findings suggest that active coordination between such groups is rare, yet de facto coalitions are quite important. The empirical analysis uses quantitative text analysis of online debates in France and Ireland to show that coalitions are formed through opportunistic framing, rather than strategic alliance or mediated convergence. The findings are corroborated through a congruence analysis of discourse networks demonstrating that Bootleggers and Baptists represent distinct communities, each primarily engaging with their own narratives and borrowing from the other only when it serves a strategic purpose. These findings suggest that policy outcomes are shaped more by the overlap of win‐sets and the de facto coalitions necessary for ratification, rather than deliberate issue‐linkage by policymakers or the formation of alliances across groups. The results have important implications for understanding how environmental, labour, and human rights concerns become intertwined with trade policy. We demonstrate that, even when there is a confluence of interests between actors, discourse coalitions tend to grow across actor types as a result of discursive opportunism rather than strategic alliances.

Keywords:  coalition formation; European Union; package treaties; trade

Published:   30 July 2025

Issue:   Vol 13 (2025): The Politics of Environmental Networks (In Progress)