ABSTRACT
Non-state actors are increasingly prominent and significant players within global environmental governance regimes (Smith et al. 1997; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Khagram et al. 2002; Clark 2003b). This chapter is about two of the largest environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) and Greenpeace, and about the organizational design they have adopted to remain viable over the three decades since their founding. Their continued organizational viability is a significant accomplishment given the shifting nature of their political environment and the complexity of their subject area, as well as their complex and sometimes hostile interactions with other actors in the global environmental regime. The political environment within which they operate can be considered to be complex and dynamic not least because FoEI and Greenpeace are actively and creatively working to influence and change this environment. Greenpeace and FoEI are social movement organizations (SMOs) which ‘are associations of people making idealistic and moralistic claims about how human personal or group life ought to be organized’ (Lofland 1996: 3). SMOs seek to alter the status quo and to ‘change some element of the social structure or reward distribution, or both, of a society’ (McCarthy and Zald 1977: 1218). Greenpeace and FoEI are also transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs). They are transnational because they organize across national boundaries to include participants from more than one country and engage in ‘global level contentious politics’ to influence global regimes (Smith 2005: 229). This international focus and multi-country span results in ‘additional environmental and organizational complexity’ (Ghoshal and Westney 2005: 5). The term ‘transnational social movement organization’ can be distinguished from the broader category of ‘international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs)’ (also referred to as transnational civil society organizations) that are private, voluntary and nonprofit but not necessarily seeking change in the status quo (Kriesberg 1997: 12; Anheier et al. 2001; Kaldor 2003).
