ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have sketched out the basic strategies NGOs use to influence the environmental behavior of major corporations. These include efforts in the traditional domain of public politics, using government to change behavior (emphasized by sociologists and political scientists), and NGOs’ more recent expansion into private politics, or direct engagement with corporations (emphasized by economists and institutional theorists). John Elkington and Seb Beloe argued in Chapter 1 that NGOs have made a major shift of emphasis toward the use of private politics and divided NGOs into two main groups: those that use confrontation with corporations to disrupt the status quo, and those that collaborate with corporations and develop partnerships to bring about constructive change. Andrew Hoffman and Stephanie Bertels (Chapter 2), too, emphasized private politics and the distinction between NGOs that confront corporations and those that partner with them; they also showed that the latter group tends to have better ties to major foundations and corporations and the funding they offer. In contrast, Robert Brulle and Craig Jenkins (Chapter 3) emphasized public politics and highlighted the role NGOs play in shaping public discourse and laying the foundation for environmental legislation. Lawrence Rothenberg (Chapter 4) sounded a similar note in emphasizing the role of NGOs in providing information to policymakers. John Maxwell (Chapter 5) acknowledged the traditional role of NGOs in pressing for public regulation of environmental problems and went on to identify both confrontational and cooperative strategies for NGOs in the domain of private politics. Each of these chapters also mentioned that NGOs’ influence strategies may be tied to their fund-raising tactics and modes of internal organization, a topic that is discussed in more detail by Erica Johnson and Aseem Prakash in Chapter 13.
