ABSTRACT
Institutionalization has always been a key theme in social movement theory, going back to early twentieth-century sociology. This chapter argues that recent developments involving globalization, neoliberalism, and ecological modernization call for new conceptualizations of the relationship between environmental movements and institutionalization processes. Drawing on empirical research on processes of the institutionalization of environmental movements in Sweden, in the US, and in the context global climate governance, the main aim of the chapter is to provide new insights and revise existing conceptualizations of environmental movement institutionalization (and of social movement institutionalization more generally). It is argued that the concepts of responsibilization and (de-)politicization provide accurate theoretical tools for grasping these changes and that a key dimension of current climate activism, affecting how institutionalization is shaped today, is a politics of responsibility.
