Environmental Movement Organizations and Political Strategy

Abstract

The authors introduce the study of material-organizational dependencies into research on political differences in the environmental movement. Presently, the study of disparities in the environmental movement focuses on the ideological differences among major environmental groups to the exclusion of some very glaring discrepancies in the material-organizational context of these groups. The authors present a conceptual model of organizational differences among several U.S. environmental movement organizations to explain variation in their political behavior in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fight (1991-1993). The case of NAFTA offers a useful context given the volatility of environmental movement politics at the time, the range of issues forced to the surface in major groups, and the ultimate movement split that the politics over NAFTA engendered. It is evident that the split between pro-NAFTA and anti-NAFTA environmental groups stems in large part from substantial differences in both the ideological frames and material-organizational alliances formed among these groups.