Hiding in Plain Sight: The Mattachine Society’s Use of Loose Coupling as a Strategy for Covert Political Action

Abstract

Covert political organizing is a vital means by which subordinate groups express grievances against authorities or elites. This article develops an understanding of the process of covert organizing to show how the selection of an organizational structure is a strategic decision. Using original, archival data from the Mattachine Society, a homosexual organization founded in 1950, and the affiliated Mattachine Foundation, I show how the structure of the organizations enabled leaders to segment their audiences and adapt to challenges from outside and inside the group. In particular, I use the concept of a loosely coupled system, emphasizing relations between organizations, to show how organizations can work with varying degrees of discretion. Moreover, building off analytically similar cases in the literature, I demonstrate that a loosely coupled system enables both organizational flexibility and covert political action.