One central mechanism through which transformative coalitions sustain coordination over time is the strategic role of information. Rather than treating data as a technical input or an instrument of persuasion, these coalitions prioritize the joint production, interpretation, and use of territorial information as a shared resource (Kolbjørnsrud 2017; Hamilton & Lubell 2018). Credible and collectively recognized data, on environmental impacts, social dynamics, land use, or economic trends, helps reduce informational asymmetries, reframes contested issues, and anchors dialogue in commonly understood evidence. In doing so, transformative coalitions create conditions for learning, trust-building, and adaptive governance, enabling actors to move beyond short-term bargaining toward more coordinated and anticipatory responses to complex territorial transformations. A useful distinction is between coalitions that are primarily defensive or transactional and those that are genuinely transformative. Defensive coalitions typically emerge when actors mobilize to protect existing positions, mitigate perceived threats, or contain uncertainty (Fortunato 2020, De Bièvre & Eckhardt 2010). Their logic is oriented toward safeguarding prerogatives (whether institutional, economic, or political) rather than reworking the underlying governance configuration. In extractive territories, this can include alliances aimed at preserving operational continuity, managing reputational risks, or preventing the redistribution of authority (Taarup-Esbensen 2019). Such coalitions may be effective at stabilizing a situation temporarily, but they tend to reproduce the asymmetric and institutional weaknesses that make conflict recurrent within the territory. Transactional coalitions, by contrast, are organized around short-term exchanges among actors whose coordination is conditional on immediate benefits (Hamilton & Lubell 2018). Their cohesion depends on bargaining over concessions such as compensation packages or discrete public investments rather than on a shared territorial vision (Bebbington et al. 2018). Because these coalitions are often activated under crisis conditions, they prioritize quick settlements and measurable deliverables that can demonstrate responsiveness. Yet their time horizons remain narrow, and their agreements frequently lack robust monitoring, enforcement, or mechanisms for revision. As a result, transactional coalitions can normalize a governance mode in which collective action becomes the primary route to obtain attention and resources, while the structural drivers of conflict remain largely untouched. Transformative coalitions differ in three interrelated ways. First, they are oriented toward changing the rules of the game rather than merely negotiating within them. This involves building institutional arrangements that can coordinate actors across scales, clarify roles and responsibilities, and reduce fragmentation in decision-making (Gustafsson et al. 2020). Second, they operate with a longer temporal horizon, recognizing that territorial transformations (particularly in conflict-prone mining corridors) cannot be governed through episodic crisis response (Nem Singh& Camba 2020). Third, they treat information as an infrastructure for collective action: not simply as evidence to support one side’s claims, but as a shared basis for problem definition, prioritization, and accountability (Pinzur 2021). In practice, this means investing in mechanisms that can produce credible territorial baselines, sustain participatory monitoring, and translate knowledge into negotiated commitments with follow-through. From this conceptual perspective, the relevance of transformative coalitions lies not only in their capacity to reconfigure actor alignments, but also in the institutional and informational infrastructures that make such reconfiguration possible. Studying how transformative coalitions 162
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