University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Regional trade association and civil society: an analysis of contingent interactions between regime-level and organizational-level variables

(USC Thesis Other)

Regional trade association and civil society: an analysis of contingent interactions between regime-level and organizational-level variables

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content
REGIONAL TRADE ASSOCIATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY: AN ANALYSIS OF
CONTINGENT INTERACTIONS BETWEEN REGIME-LEVEL AND
ORGANIZATIONAL-LEVEL VARIABLES.

by

Ron Lehavi

_________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Ron Lehavi
ii
DEDICATION
This manuscript is dedicated to my family. Thank you for all your support and
endless love. The motivation you fueled me with, kept my sights on the finish line. I
am grateful for your love, trust, support and inordinate patience. I love you.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to take this opportunity to express my eternal gratitude to those who have
supported me in the completion of this manuscript.
To my loving and supporting spouse, I couldn’t possibly imagine going through life
without your words of encouragement unconditional love and great sacrifice through
these particularly difficult years.
To my beautiful child, thank you for being cute, loving and patient throughout this
trying endeavor.
To my mom, dad and mother in law, thank you for your unwavering support. You
gave us a sense of family when I was too exhausted to fulfill my duties.
To Dr. John Barnes, thank you for being both a tutor and a friend. You are most
responsible for making me a political scientist.
To Dr. Richard Dekmejian and Dr. Patrick James, thanks for your mentorship
support and invaluable ideas.
To my editor Dr. Shantanu DuttaAhmed, thank you for not only editing my
manuscript but for always saying the kindest words which ultimately pushed me
toward the finish line.
To my former student and future Ivy League attorney Florentino Salazar, thank you
for being my research assistant in Argentina and Uruguay. Your contribution was
invaluable to the best chapter in my manuscript for which I am enormously thankful.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication………………………………………………………………………… ...ii
Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………….. ...iii
List of Tables………………………………………………………………………...v
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………. ...viii
Chapter One: Introduction…………………………………………………… ...1
Chapter Two: Perspectives on Regulatory Style: MERCOSUR,……………...20
the EU and NAFTA

Chapter Three: Greenpeace…………………………………………………... ...39
Chapter Four: Friends of the Earth………………………………………… ...102
Chapter Five: World Wildlife Fund……………………………………….. ...159
Chapter Six: Summary and Conclusion………………………………….. ...219
References……………………………………………………………………… ...233
Appendix: Case Selection and Regulatory Regime Indicators………… ...238
v
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1: Summary of Findings: Evidence of Low Adaptation…………… ...39
Table 3.2: Greenpeace: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009……. ...49
Table 3.3: Greenpeace Actions Comparing Levels of Independence………. ...51
1994-2009

Table 3.4: Greenpeace Reputation in the Community……………………… ...53
Table 3.5: Greenpeace Comparative Ratio of Praising and Denouncing…… ...68
the EU Regime

Table 3.6: Ratio of Greenpeace Types of Activism in the EU: Levels of….. ...69
Independence

Table 3.7: Greenpeace’s Reputation in the EU Community………………... ...72
Table 3.8: Greenpeace Comparative Ratio of Praising and Denouncing…… ...86
NAFTA

Table 3.9: Percentage of Greenpeace Types of Activism in NAFTA:………...87
Levels of Independence

Table 3.10: Greenpeace NAFTA: Reputation……………………………….. ...90
Table 3.11: Greenpeace Data: Reputation……………………………………...96
Table 3.12: Greenpeace Data: Behavior…………………………………….. ...96
Table 3.13: Greenpeace Data: Press Releases Polarity……………………… ...97
Table 4.1: Summary of Findings…………………………………………... ...103
Table 4.2: FoE: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009…………... ...112
Table 4.3: FoE: Activism 1994-2009……………………………………… ...114
Table 4.4: Reputation in the Community………………………………….. ...115
Table 4.5: Organizational Behavior: FoE Regime Praise and…………….. ...125
Denouncement 1994-2009
vi

Table 4.6: Behavior Part 2: Type of Activism…………………………….. ...126
Table 4.7: Reputation……………………………………………………… ...128
Table 4.8: Organizational Behavior: FoE Regime Praise and…………….. ...144
Denouncement 1994-2009

Table 4.9: Behavior Part 2: Activism……………………………………… ...145
Table 4.10: FoE NAFTA: Reputation………………………………………. ...146
Table 4.11: Friends of the Earth Data: Reputation………………………… ...157
Table 4.12: Friends of the Earth Data: Behavior……………………………...157
Table 4.13: Friends of the Earth Data: Press Releases Polarity……………. ...158
Table 5.1: Summary of Findings…………………………………………... ...160
Table 5.2: Organizational Behavior: Regime Praise and Denouncement…. ...168
1994-2009 by WWF

Table 5.3: Organizational Behavior: Type of Activism…………………… ...169
Table 5.4: WWF: Reputation in the Community………………………….. ...171
Table 5.5: Organizational Behavior: Regime Praise and Denouncement…. ...183
1994-2009

Table 5.6: Organizational Behavior: Level of Activism………………….. ...184
Table 5.7: WWF-EU: Reputation…………………………………………. ...186
Table 5.8: Organizational Behavior: Regime Praise and Denouncement…. ...201
1994-2009

Table 5.9: Organizational Behavior: Level of Activism…………………... ...202
Table 5.10: WWF-NAFTA: Reputation……………………………………. ...204
Table 5.11: World Wildlife Fund Data: Reputation………………………... ...217
vii
Table 5.12: World Wildlife Fund Data: Behavior………………………….....218
Table 5.13: World Wildlife Fund Data: Press Releases Polarity……………...218
Table 6.1: Key Regime Findings and Hypotheses…………………………....223
Table 6.2: Organizational Core Coupling…………………………………. ...226
Table 6.3: Organizational Level Resource Dependence…………………... ...228
viii
ABSTRACT
Since World War II, we have witnessed the growth of regional trade regimes
and the emergence of an international civil society, which consists of organizations
dedicated to activism within and across nation states. This confluence of
development raises fundamental questions about the relationship between
international regimes and civil society. This dissertation focuses on the political
implications of the development of different styles of regional-international regimes
on their civil society, and on the corresponding, mediating effects of organizational
level contingencies. This exploration, further addresses the debate as to whether
regimes matter or not.
This project finds that regimes do matter, but their effect varies widely. At
one extreme, regimes whose regulatory style is characterized by bureaucratic
retreatism, such as MERCOSUR, because of their lack of institutional capacity and
excessive corruption, tend to develop the widest opportunity structures, which allow
their civil society to actively define its unique style of activism. On the other
extreme, regimes whose regulatory style is characterized by bureaucratic legalism,
such as the European Union, tend to create an organizational environment consisting
of relatively narrow opportunity structures with clearly institutionalized range of
options for their civil society to engage the regime.
This project also finds that organizations matter. Specifically, organizations
that are tightly coupled tend to have a greater probability for independent activism
and for less variability across regime in terms of their pattern of strategic
ix
engagement. In contrast, organizations that are less tightly coupled tend to display a
higher range of variability across regimes and a greater probability for less
independent activism. Moreover, while organizations that are resource dependent
tend to be less independent, organizations that are not resource dependent have a
greater tendency to maintain independence from the regime.
In short, this dissertation finds that both regimes and organizations matter and
that understanding the complex interaction among these variables is critical to
understanding how civil society functions within and across national boundaries.
Apart from addressing the broad debate, this research helped expand the theoretical
knowledge within the State and Society literature and bridge the gap between several
subfields of political science.

1
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The Question
Immediately following the Second World War, there was a concerted effort
to weaken nationalism, reintroduce world trade, and promote global collective
approaches to solve transnational problems. What started in 1945, with the former
English Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speech in Zurich calling for European
integration, and with the establishment in 1947 of the General Agreement on Tariff
and Trade (GATT), was followed by a plethora of cross-national treaties. While
some of these agreements were minimal single issue bilateral defense treaties
between neighboring states, others sought to develop multilateral comprehensive
regimes dealing with a host of subjects ranging from common trade to common
environmental, social and even foreign policies. Furthermore, whereas some of these
agreements were global in scope and sought to involve as many states as possible,
others preferred regional solutions characterized primarily by intergovernmental
agreements that gave preference to geographical proximity and to cultural
commonality. Moreover, all of these treaties necessitated the development of
governmental institutions with the power to legislate, interpret complex new codes
and basically ensure that the common purposes and goals of the regimes were
followed through. The further these new institutions widened and deepened their
bureaucratic means, the more they were able to overrule decisions made by their
2
member states; thus, weakening the traditional states sovereignty and ability to run
their own domestic, economic, and foreign policies.
The 1990s, which were the heyday of free trade, led to a proliferation of
Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) that integrated states with geographic proximity
and cultural commonality. These regimes recognized the need to regulate and
establish common standards for social, economic and environmental policies on a
regional level. The establishment of common standards became known as
“harmonization”. In the process of institutional harmonization of standards the
different RTAs substantially varied from one another: two major variations among
such institutions were their level of integration and their style of legal traditions and
regulatory systems. Whereas some of the supra-governmental regimes were
established through an inter-governmental treaty allowing for maximum
independence and sovereignty for their member states, other regimes sought to
establish a thorough system of deep integration seeking to harmonize all standards
and laws among their member states; obviously, the latter form of integration
minimized the sovereignty of member states.
In addition to the level of integration, RTAs display variances in the type of
regulatory regimes and legal traditions they advocated. While some of the RTAs
adhered to the Roman Civil code and the French-continental civil code, others
followed the tradition of the Anglo-American common law. Furthermore, some
RTAs adopted the German style of bureaucratic legalism, a system of regulation that
minimizes legal conflicts and empowers the bureaucracy to legislate, interpret and
3
carryout the codes through internal processes. The North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) adopted the American style of adversarial legalism, a system
that empowered the courts to become the ultimate arbiters of the scope and meaning
of regulations.
Recognizing the shifting center of power and decision-making from the
national to the regional and international, civil organizations represented by a
multitude of Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) began to shift their operations
to the new regimes. This new type of civil society represented well organized groups
that were neither members of the political system nor random members of the
unorganized citizenry. Their role was to act as self appointed civilian tribunes or
watchdogs representing the interest of the community vis-à-vis the regime, while
prodding the regime to enforce compliance with its standards. Many scholars have
studied the recent growth in regional and international civil society (Wapner,1996;
Duina, 2006), and there is a considerable body of extant scholarship on the topic;
however, this project addresses a different debate:
This dissertation focuses on the political implications of the development of
different styles of regional-international regimes on their civil societies, and on the
corresponding mediating effects of organizational level contingencies. Consequently,
this project entertains the theoretical implication of a contingent and reciprocal
interaction between regimes and civil society rather than a causal relationship.
Specifically, the salient question that guides the study is as follows: how do different
types of regional international regimes interact with civil society and vice versa?
4
This exploration, mediated by the components stated above, eschews the historical
debate as to whether regimes matter or not. While considering that the interaction
between regimes and civil societies is mediated by regime centered and
organizational based variables, the theoretical instinct suggests that the debate in the
literature presents a false dichotomy. Consistent with the above theoretical argument,
this project will trace the manner in which the interaction between regimes and
corresponding civil societies is mediated by various organizational contingencies. In
addition, the project will examine how these internal variables help moderate the
pattern of organizational adaptation in the following areas: organizational structure,
personnel, political behavior, and the organizational style of engaging the regime.
The Debate
Within the fields of International Relations, Comparative Politics, and
Organizational Sociology, the debate concerning the ability of the regime to shape
civil society has maintained its salience. On one side of the debate, scholars have
explained that regimes either do not matter or are very limited in their ability to mold
civil society. In other words, civil society operates outside the realm of the state and
is independent of the state. Conversely, the counter argument is that regimes are
indeed very powerful in shaping civil society. While this debate maintained a certain
degree of salience, a growing field of research suggests that there a convergent
middle ground in which a reciprocal relationship of state-in-society exists. Indeed,
those who support the convergent approach prefer to move beyond the initial stages
of the debate and to concentrate on understanding the contingent variables that
5
contribute to the complex relationship between state and society. Consistent with the
convergent theory, various scholars suggest that such a debate posits a false
dichotomy, consequently, they seek to transition the research from its previously
stated embryonic stage. The following section will review the history of the debate
in the literature.
The State and Society Debate
On the one extreme, there are scholars that support the notion that the state
has the power to penetrate and direct every level of organized and unorganized
society and direct it at will. The scholarship of social engineering exaggerates the
importance and power of the post-Westphalian state and presents the state as an
absolute power in society. Furthermore, the statist scholarship asserts that social,
economic as well as environmental problems are still best address by the state. On
the other extreme, postmodernists, globalists, cosmopolitans and communitarians,
attempt to prove that society is independent of the state. The latter scholarship holds
society as the political unit of analysis (Wapner, 1996; Lipschutz, 1996). In recent
years, a convergence theory of state-in-society seems to present a symbiotic
compromise between the previous approaches. According to the state-in- society
approach (Migdal, 1997), there is a recursive relationship between the regime and
civil society in which they affect each other and change one another.
The Regime Does Not Matter
The argument that civil society is independent of the state and that the regime
does not matter has a long history and has been approached from different angles.
6
Some of the scholarship identifies the problem as an inherent weakness in the
institution of statehood which limits the state’s ability to mold civil society to its
purpose. Since the 1950s, several scholars have researched important case studies
that served as counter examples to theories that exalted the capacity of the state to
dominate civil society. Among them, Barrington Moore (1966) used a Marxist
analysis to study the rise of British civil society in the 18
th
and 19
th
centuries
avoiding any significant analysis of how the British regime contributed to that
development. In addition, Frances Hagopian and Viviane Shue (1997) described how
strong states in Brazil and China failed to transform their respective civil societies.
Other normative scholars have looked at supra-statist, or sub-statists
alternatives to the state regime. This approach suggests regional or global regime
alternatives to the state, while the sub-statist approach promotes the influence of a
local community. These post-modernist (Rengger, 1992; Waltzer, 1997) approaches
that fall within the communitarian (localists) and cosmopolitan (globalists) solutions
to the weaknesses of state regimes, do not go far enough according to various
scholars (Wapner, 1996; Ohmae1995) because they do not dispense with the concept
that some kind of regime would still be needed to interact with civil society and thus
provide direction. In contrast with the approaches that believe in the inherent
weakness of the state, Wapner suggested the use of civil society as the unit of
analysis and to completely ignore any kind of regime as the independent variable that
guides society. Ronnie Lipschutz (1996) studied the politics of global environmental
civil society as a counter hegemonic movement with linkages all over the world,
7
rising primarily against free market capitalism but not against any particular state or
international regime. Both civil society scholars attempted to demonstrate that civil
society did not rise against the state, nor sought to become an alternative to the
regime. They argued that civil society exists outside the regime and is not affected by
it. The failure of the regimes both locally and internationally, as well as the market to
develop environmentally sustainable policies, suggest (Lipschuts, 1996) that civil
society is the one institution that is capable of changing societal discourse on the
environment. Furthermore, in The End of Nation State, Ohmae (1995) has argued
that the new restructuring of the world economic politics would increase the power
of individuals and peripheral regions within the state while decreasing the power of
the power of central governments; thus, allowing civil society greater independence
of the regime without creating an alternative regime. This would also increase the
ability of local civil society to link with other societies across the border.
In addition to the State and Society literature that contends that regimes do
not matter because they are too weak or irrelevant, the field of sociology and
organizational studies suggests a different set of reasons for the failure of the regime
to modify civil-society behavior. This literature explains resistance to adaptability on
the part of the civil society organization. Thus, this approach does not contend that
the state is too weak but rather that civil society has a strong organizational core that
was established early on by command and control or a top down method. History
provides sustained examples of the fact that sometimes organizations do not adapt to
the surrounding ecological, cultural or institutional changes (Hannan, 1998).
8
Correspondingly, the principles of core function analysis explain that to be effective
and efficient an organization should apply its energy on its most important core
functions. In contrast with core functions, non-core functions are less important and
can change or evolve as needed. Organization ecologists believe that due to inertia,
an organization’s ability to adapt its style of operation to the surrounding is
exaggerated. Thus, even if the regime changes, civil society is resistant or slow to
adapt.
The Regime Does Matter
From a historical standpoint, the statist approach to political analysis became
popular during the Renaissance era. Machiavelli asserted that the state was the
highest achievement of man and that one should love the state more than his own
soul. Hobbes implied that the absolutist state required no legitimacy beyond its
success to achieve peace and prosperity. After the peace of Westphalia in 1648,
states were recognized as the arbiters of domestic and foreign policies throughout the
world.
In contrast with the regime deniers, the contemporary analysis of regimes as
the main independent variables in socio-economic reform range from state centered
social engineers such as Skocpol, (1985) to the more reciprocal state-in-society
approach (Migdal, 1997). EP Thompson (1976) and Francisco Duina (2006) are most
relevant among scholars who promote the interactive approach in which the state and
society engage in mutual negotiation to define state policies and the structure of civil
society. Thompson’s analysis of the rise of the working class in 18
th
century England
9
demonstrated that the working class structured and adapted its organization and
methods of social engagement to fit the recent institutionalization of the English
legal system. In addition, Duina’s project (2006) illustrated a quantitative rise in the
level and complexity or thickness of civil society activism in regional trade
agreements, which was in response to the institutionalization of regulatory regimes
in various policy areas. In other words, wherever the regime developed
comprehensive codes and bureaucratic rules regulating social and economic conduct,
civil society responded by growing and crystallizing around these institutions.
The literature has examined the adaptive capacity of organizations in order to
survive the evolving cultural and institutional milieu. The early theories of Barnard
(1938) and Selznick (1948) contended that organizations are social units of self
interests which are also adaptive social systems attempting to survive in their
environment. Much of the history of the development of organization studies since
the 1970s reflects a growing recognition that there are many ways in which the
environment constitutes, influences and penetrates organizations (Scott, 2004).
Various scholars have attempted to explain why organizations adapt to the regime
and the cultural environment. The contingency theory (Woodward, 1958) attributed
this to environmental resources and technical information. Organizations whose
structure best adapted to the surrounding, tended to benefit the most from these
resources and perform the best. Resource dependency theory has stressed the
benefits of adaption to the environment (Emerson, 1962), and this approach includes
political as well as financial resources. Other theories that have stressed adaptability
10
include the historical institutional theory that stressed regulations, norms, and
cultural cognitive contingencies that exist in different societies and different regimes.
(Scott, 2004).
Summary of Literature and Intended Contributions
The current scholarship on regime and civil society literature is divided:
Among those who deny that the regime is capable of molding civil society, there is a
group that attributes the lack to the weakness of the state; however, they do believe
that the state can become stronger if the center of power is shifted to the local level
or the international level. Others claim that regimes are simply irrelevant on any
level and that civil society must be analyzed independently from the concept of
regime (Wapner 1996; Lipschutz 1996). Within the field of sociology, various
scholars explain lack of organizational variance to the inability or reluctance of civil
society to adapt. Conversely, scholars on the opposing side of the debate
(Thompson, Migdal; Duina 2006) support the notion that regimes do indeed mold
their civil society. On the organizational level, a substantial amount of scholarship
supports the notion that the institutional and cultural environment leads to the
adaptations that occur within civil society.
Beyond the Binary Approach to State-Society Relations
In recent years, there has been a growing scholarship that seeks to move
beyond the debate whether regimes matter or do not matter. The post-binary
approach of the likes of Kagan, Gunnigham, Thornton (2003) and others, suggests
that if we really want to understand how regimes matter, we need to carefully
11
analyze the interaction between the regime and civil society. Consistent with this
approach, instead of looking for a single pattern that would demonstrate a causal
connection between regime and society, their cutting edge research is searching for
intra-organizational characteristics and contingencies which mediate the interaction
between state and society. Thus, instead of causal connections, the literature is
looking to study the complex variables governing the interaction itself. This
inductive approach seeks to generate hypothesis by carefully observing the complex
patterns involved in the reciprocal interactions between state and society.
I intend to add a theoretical perspective to these ongoing debates, in the hope
of expanding the theoretical understanding of how regimes interface with civil
society from the state-society nexus into the realm of international and regional trade
regimes. In doing so, I hope to add external validity to the above stated argument.
Furthermore, I intend to trace the patterns through which international Regional
Trade Agreements affect their civil societies. Empirically, I intend to research how
the contingent variables internal to social organizations help mediate the manner in
which Non-Governmental-Organizations adapts to the different opportunity
structures created and organized by the regulatory regimes. I intend to examine
these theoretical contentions, by examining how Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth
and World Wildlife Fund organize and behave in three different types of regulatory
regimes. This project will examine the following regimes: 1) MERCOSUR, a
paradigm of bureaucratic retreatism, lack of institutionalization and enforcement,
which provides the widest opportunity structure and allows the greatest level of
12
independence for civil society to operate. 2) The EU represents an example of the
deepest interstate integration and harmonization. It also models the strongest
prototype of bureaucratic legalism. The European Union’s (EU) legal culture and
level of institutionalization provides the narrowest opportunity structure for civil
society to operate in. 3) The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a
model of shallow integration and adversarial legalism should provide a wider
opportunity structure than the EU, but narrower than MERCOSUR for its civil
society.
Findings and Implications
As developed more fully in the next chapters, this dissertation explores this
debate using a comparative analysis, which examines how three international
organizations, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and World Wildlife Fund behave
differently under international trade regimes: A) the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), which represents adversarial legalism; B) the European Union
(EU) which represents bureaucratic legalism; and C) MERCOSUR, which represents
regulatory retreatism.
Consistent with those who argue that civil society adapts, this study finds a
pattern of organizational variation that is related to the width of the opportunity
structure and to the style of regulation established by the three types of regimes, but
mediated by internal civil society characteristics. With some noted exceptions that
will be further elaborated on, the more bureaucratic and legalistic the regime, the
greater the pressure on civil society to adapt. Conversely, the type of regulation that
13
is displayed by adversarial legalism, and lack of institutionalization displayed by
bureaucratic retreatism, contributed to greater independence within the
corresponding civil society organizations.
More specifically, this project discovered the following findings and
implications: For one, the notion that civil society operates outside the realm of the
state and neither seeks to replace it nor is it substantially influenced by the regime,
was safely refuted by the substantial evidence showing the tremendous efforts NGOs
make to engage the regime on every level. Moreover, the marked differences in the
organizational structure, reputation and behavior of the same NGOs across the three
different regimes, demonstrates that the regime has an important influence on the
culture and behavior of civil society.
While evaluating the data related to the more substantive question, how the
Regional Trade Agreement’s structures interact with civil society and affect its
organizational behavior, I discovered more complex and nuanced patterns. The
variations in the organizations’ international governance structures, which tend to
affect control over the organizational cores of the three NGOs, as well as various
contingencies and intra-organizational variables, helped to mediate and moderate
their level of adaptation to the regulatory style of each of the regimes.
As a result, Friends-of-The-Earth displayed the greatest difference in its
behavior in the different RTAs because its confederate governing style, loosely
controlled organization core, and organizational dependence, serves to allow a high
degree of organizational adaptation. In contrast, Greenpeace, owing to its tightly
14
controlled organizational core and its resource independence, displayed the least
amount of cross-regime adaption. Finally, World Wildlife Fund’s relatively tight
organizational control, federal style of governance and relatively high resource
dependence, and low organizational dependence demonstrated a greater loss of
independence in NAFTA’s corporate culture than in the EU’s bureaucratic culture.
The above stated patterns of behavior helped generate the hypothesis, that
while regimes exert considerable influence on their respective civil societies, the
resulting organizational degree of adaptation should be studied as a product of
reciprocal institutional interaction rather than a causal connection. In further
developing the above observations, it appears that the two most extreme variations in
the patterns of organizational behavior were displayed by organizations in
MERCOSUR and in the EU. MERCOSUR’s lack of regulatory capacity created a
vacuum of power—a wide opportunity structure for civil society to behave in the
manner in which it originally intended to. Civil society in MERCOSUR whether it is
the more militant FoE and Greenpeace or the more moderate WWF enjoys a wide
space to operate and define its political behavior. Civil society in MERCOSUR is
opportunistic in that it engages the regime wherever it exists and replaces the regime
or appeals to outside regimes wherever institutions do not exist. This leads to a
thriving independent community centered civil society. The NGOs’ antagonism
toward the regime helps empower the community and excites supporters. Civil
society in the MERCOSUR states is open and behaves like a true social movement.
15
In contrast, the EU’s strict codes and rules, its bureaucratic legalism, and
effective harmonization tended to reduce the independence of civil society and to
incorporate it into the regime. At its most independent extreme, Greenpeace uses the
regime’s own bureaucracy to aggressively enforce EU law. However, FoE and WWF
prefer to incorporate into the regime, and form a bureaucratic structure that mirrors
that of the EU and assists the EU’s bureaucracy to enforce its laws by performing
bureaucratic or educational tasks. The EU’s narrow opportunity structure leaves civil
society the option of deciding whether to accomplish less by being a total outsider or
to lose its independence and accept the money, prestige and authority that comes
with merging into the regime. However, while it is quite probable that civil society
accomplishes a lot as part of the EU bureaucracy, it is also doubtful that there is a
non-governmental civil society in the EU. By becoming a Semi-Governmental
Society, EU’s civil society has lost its original purpose of being independent and
antagonistic. Civil society trusted the regime to protect the environment and lost its
ability to become an independent critic of the regime. Thus, in the EU there is little
or no true environmental social movement.
Finally, NAFTA’s relatively wide opportunity structure, its adversarial
legalistic institutions and piecemeal method of harmonization of environmental law,
allow for a relatively independent civil society. The NAFTA institutions contributed
to a growth of an aggressive and independent social movement consisting of
Greenpeace and FoE Mexico and to a large extent Greenpeace and FoE in the-USA
and Canada. The linkage and support across national borders and community
16
organizing efforts intended to engage the NAFTA regime demonstrate a thriving
social movement. In contrast with MERCOSUR and the EU, legal campaigns are an
essential part of the environmental social movement in NAFTA. Additionally, the
organizing of communities against national regimes helps develop a healthy
antagonistic element to this social movement.
On the other hand, corporate finances, the lure of money and style of
American aggressive lobbying, affected civil society in several ways. NGOs adopted
a corporate style structure and hired high profile employees, thereby closing the
organizations to volunteers. A formal and closed structure removes civil society from
the rest of society. The lure of money and the revolving door phenomena particularly
absorbed and co-opted WWF. By assigning WWF funding and responsibilities of
environmental enforcement, previously given only to the bureaucracy, the regime
has reduced WWF’s ability to operate as a social movement, and transformed it. To
some extent, NGOs that behave like WWF risk becoming part of the NAFTA
bureaucracy.
Beyond deepening the theoretical support and empirical data, this project
contributes to the extant ‘state in society’ literature and to literature on organizational
adaptation; additionally, this project has several theoretical implications on some of
the larger debates in the various fields in political science. In addition, the research
data points at some important avenues for research in the fields of linkage theories,
social movement theories and level of analysis. One of the important issues
associated with the substantial increase in cross-national linkages among civil
17
societies, invites further research as to whether Regional Trade Agreements can be
analyzed as states. Additional and future philosophical questions, might ask whether
RTAs could ever replace the old state’s institutions that used to organize societies
with a new type of citizenships and new loyalties? When the Roman philosopher
Lactantius referred to ancient Rome as the “city which sustains all things”, he meant
that the entire empire was one unit that provided effective governance to its citizens.
The extent to which RTAs and their civil society can develop and enforce
environmentally sustainable existence to its citizens remains to be seen and should
be a subject to future analysis. In addition to these implications, my project raises
questions as to the future and goals of social movements. The extent to which
effective bureaucracies that are modeled on the bureaucratic legalism regime can
extinguish or redefine the need to maintain counter-hegemonic social movements is
also an important subject for future research. This dissertation fleshes out these
arguments in six chapters:
Chapter Plan
Chapter 2: This chapter provides the contextual information detailing the
structural variables that characterize the three different regimes. This chapter also
explains how the three regulatory regimes organize the rules of interaction and
engagement between them and their civil societies.
Chapter 3: Greenpeace: Greenpeace is the most unitary and centrally
controlled international NGO. This chapter analyzes the extent to which the regional
chapters of Greenpeace International adapt in their structure and behavior in
18
MERCOSUR, NAFTA and the EU. This chapter will map out how the
institutionalization of environmental policies promotes the development of regional
civil society. It will map out how different regulatory regimes develop opportunity
structures that encourage organizational adaptability in the behavior of
environmental civil society. Most importantly, this chapter will analyze the intra-
organizational contingencies and variables, that mediate the interaction between the
regime and civil society, which serve to considerably moderate the regime’s impact
on Greenpeace.
Chapter 4: Friends of the Earth: FoE’s international governance is a loose
confederation. Within the organization, member chapters are allowed the most
autonomy from their international organization. This chapter analyzes how the
regional chapters of Friends-of-the-Earth International adapt their structure and
behavior and political patterns in MERCOSUR, NAFTA and the EU. This chapter
will map out how the institutionalization of environmental policies promotes the
development of regional civil society. It will map out how different regulatory
regimes develop opportunity structures that encourage changes in the structure and
the behavior of environmental civil society. This chapter will suggest that Friends-
of-the-Earth displays the greatest pattern of adaptability.
Chapter 5: WWF is the most moderate and regime friendly of the
environmental NGOs. Between the centrally controlled unitary structure of
Greenpeace and the loose confederation of Friends of the Earth, WWF represents a
federal middle way. Within WWF, the regional units are allowed to pursue
19
individually appropriate goals and mode of operations. Furthermore, WWF is
resource dependent. This chapter analyzes how the regional chapters of WWF
International vary in their structure and behavior in MERCOSUR, NAFTA and the
EU. This chapter will map out how the institutionalization of environmental policies
that promote the development of regional civil society. Furthermore, it will map out
the manner in which WWF interacts with the three regulatory regimes.
Chapter 6: Conclusion: This chapter will summarize the key findings and
their implications. It will analyze how these findings explain patterns of
organizational behavior and adaptations across different regulatory regimes and how
these findings open up opportunities for further research in this field.
20
CHAPTER TWO
PERSPECTIVES ON REGULATORY STYLE: MERCOSUR,
THE EU AND NAFTA
The main purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the three types
of regulatory regimes that constitute the independent variables in the three case
studies. In each of the subsequent chapters, I will control for the type of civil society
by analyzing how the same Non-Governmental-Organization behaves in the three
different regimes.
MERCOSUR: Institutional Structure and Law
MERCOSUR, the Common Market of the South, institutionalized a trade
agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. This agreement
created a market for the free circulation of goods, services, and producer goods
among the member countries. The treaty went into affect on January 1, 1995,
substantially increasing the market share of interregional trade and exports among its
member states. MERCOSUR’s legal and institutional foundation was cemented in
four original documents (Porata-Doria jr. 2004): the treaty of Asuncion and its four
annexes, Ouro Preto, the Brasilia Protocol on the resolution of controversies, and the
Olivos Protocol for resolution of controversies. These treaties call for the gradual
harmonization of economic policies and the introduction of a common tariff among
the signatory states. Furthermore, these treaties created seven different institutions
that were charged with implementing MERCOSUR’s policies. These institutions are:
the Common Market Group, the MERCOSUR Commerce Commission (MCC), the
21
Joint Parliamentary Commission, the Economic and Social Consultative Forum
(FORUM), the Administrative Secretariat (Secretariat), and the Permanent Appellate
Tribunal (Tribunal). The Secretariat manages a panel of arbitrators whose
responsibility is to resolve disputes arising out of the Treaty of Asuncion.
Weaknesses of the MERCOSUR system
Although on paper the MERCOSUR treaties appear similar in structure to
that of the EU, they display substantial weaknesses and lack of institutionalization.
For one, the Secretariat is the only institution within MERCOSUR that has a
permanent staff and a bureaucracy. In addition, the dispute resolution system does
not work well because the member states do not respect the decisions made by the
panel, and because the panel includes members from the complainant states rather
than disinterested umpires; thus, making it difficult for the panel to reach clear-cut
resolutions. Furthermore, in recognizing that member states would not agree to the
regional dispute resolution decisions, MERCOSUR encourages its member states to
seek further help from outside tribunes such as that of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) or any other international economic organization in which the MERCOSUR
states participate. Additionally, MERCOSUR does not have an effective procedure
for individuals or civil society organizations to seek redress of their disputes with
corporations, with states or with MERCOSUR. The procedure presently in place, is
weak and lacks an effective mechanism of enforcement. Furthermore, the procedure
is very complicated to use and its process is long and discouraging, calling for an
endless series of mediations and arbitrations. Moreover, as in other MERCOSUR
22
panels, arbitrators are not neutral umpires but rather interested members of the
member states that are not likely to make any decisions that negatively impact their
position. Despite the addition of permanent arbitration panels by the Olivos Treaty,
the decisions of these new panels are not binding, the members are not professional
judges, their meetings are not transparent, and there is a perception of a lack of
fairness due to the panel members’ national proximity and affiliation with each of the
feuding parties. Through recent interviews, I ascertained that members and leaders of
MERCOSUR civil society were not aware of the existence of dispute resolution
panels (Villalonga et al. 2009).
The weakness in regional institutionalization is primarily manifested in the
area of environmental law. The preamble of the Treaty of Asuncion states that the
guiding principles of MERCOSUR environmental approach would be “the
preservation of the environment…on the grounds of the principles of graduality,
flexibility, and equilibrium” (Treaty of Asuncion). Along these rather vague lines, a
small sub-committee was established (Special Meetings on Environment or REMA).
The REMA task force, lacking any formal structure, met infrequently to discuss and
make declarations and resolutions on environmental issues. However, as no effort
was ever made to enforce these resolutions, and no bureaucracy was established to
encourage compliance, these declarations were basically empty. Throughout the last
fifteen years, on a regional level, MERCOSUR has occasionally made declarations
about the environment (the CANELA resolution), and recently invited members of
civil society to participate in discussions with the EU on future economic integration.
23
However, overall regional environmental institutions are weak and lacking
institutionalization.
In addition, on the national level there are barriers to enforcement and
coordination of environmental policy. Individual states have very limited capacity to
enforce their own environmental laws. Some of the states such as Argentina and
Brazil suffer from jurisdictional difficulties due to their federal structure.
Environmental law in these states is dispersed through various jurisdictions causing
intra-state conflict and difficulties in enforcement associated with a weak state
structure. Environmental laws in Argentina and Brazil are generally weak, often
overlap, and are seldom enforced. Paraguay, on the other hand, lacks any type of
institutionalization or effective bureaucracy and demonstrates corruption and
institutional retreatism that often afflicts developing countries. Within this context of
the lack of regional and national bureaucratic institutionalization and enforcement of
environmental standards, civil society in general, and Greenpeace in particular, finds
itself stepping into the institutional gap in various capacities.
EU: Institutional Structure and law
The EU is in many ways the most advanced of all Regional Trade
Agreements. It is a deeply integrated supra-governmental structure representing a
full common market system. Between 1945, when it was first conceptualized by
Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a practical method of uniting war-torn Europe,
and its current post-Maastricht status, the EU has deepened regulations and
standardized laws covering issues that went far beyond market integration. The
24
current configuration of the Union is based on a series of treaties originating with the
Treaty of Rome (1957) culminating with the Maastricht Treaty and the Aarhus
convention which went into affect in 1994 and 2007 respectively, and the recently
approved Lisbon Treaty. The latter agreements and treaties turned the EU from
being primarily an economic union to developing common standards codifying areas
that range from common foreign policy and domestic security to standardizing
environmental, labor and as well as a wide gamut of social legislation.
Institutional Structure and Civil Society
According to the EU official website (EU institutions and other bodies)
decision making in the EU involve a process agreed upon by various bodies of the
EU governing institutions. These institutions include the European Commission, the
European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and its Presidency.
Additionally, there are several other important bodies that interpret legislation and
carry out policies. These are the ECJ-the European Court of Justice, the Court of the
Auditors, the Committee of the Regions, a variety of regulatory agencies, the
European Investment Bank and the Central Bank. When a dispute occurs as to
whether an agency or one of the EU institutions has violated its authority vis-à-vis
the Maastricht Treaty or any other previous or subsequent treaties, there is a formal
appeal process to the EU Ombudsman. There are various opportunities within this
complex structure for Civil Society to intervene and participate in the decision
making process. Overall, the EU regulatory regime is based on the German model of
bureaucratic legalism combined with the French model of the Roman civil code.
25
Although the ECJ appears to model itself after the US Supreme Court, the ECJ
jurisprudence and jurisdiction make it more compatible with the traditional German
style of bureaucratic legalism. Until the recently enforced Aarhus convention, access
to the court for civil society was generally denied on the principle of lack of legal
standing. Since the Aarhus convention has only been in effect for the past two years,
there is not enough data to demonstrate how the transition to a more adversarial
system affected the behavior of NGOs in the European system.
Environmental Law and Environmental Enforcement
Until 1998, most environmental law was instituted on the state level.
However, since 1998, the EU has taken significant steps that signaled a willingness
to enforce EU environmental laws on a community wide basis. Thus, through the
harmonization of environmental law and by making harmonization mandatory and
enforceable, the EU has achieved the deepest and most interventionist integration
any RTA bureaucracy has been able to achieve so far. The steps towards the legal
enforcement of community environmental law consist of three provisions: judicial
enforcement with the threat of sanctions, central coordination of inspections and
monitoring, and new legislation on public access to environmental information.
The European Commission is the executive administrator, the legislative
engine, the chief implementing agency, and the think tank for the EU. It represents
the EU in the world. The Commission is in charge of guarding and enforcing the
Maastricht Treaty. The Commission is authorized to monitor member states’
implementation and to bring enforcement actions against member states whose
26
implementation is not sufficient or timely. The Commission, consisting of 25
members, is a large bureaucracy with a staff of 20,000 personnel. Five hundred
members of the personnel are devoted solely to environmental enforcement. The
Commission and the Environmental Agency spend close to 600 million euro per year
on environmental research, enforcement and compliance programs.
The European Environmental Agency (EEA), which became operational in
1993, is in charge of collecting, processing and publishing information on the
European environment. However, despite on going discussion, the EEA does not
have the authority to regulate environmental policy; all regulation is done by the
Commission itself.
The greatest challenge to EU environmental enforcement comes from the
member states, especially the more independent ones such as England and the new
member collectively representing Eastern Europe. The EU is in the process of
becoming a federal state with less sovereignty for its members, and a deeper
harmonization of laws and centralization of decision making. Once an environmental
law passes, in order to enforce it three components are needed: 1) the ability for
judicial enforcement of the laws, 2) the ability for central oversight of the ongoing
implementation of the laws, including inspection and reporting, 3) transparency of
the law and procedures and ability of the citizens to be involved in the oversight
process. Within the European complex but relatively tight opportunity structure,
NGOs in general and Greenpeace in particular, need to find the space and participate
in the decision making and enforcement processes.
27
The Role of NGOs within the EU
Since the Maastricht treaty, a series of additional conventions and treaties
have opened the EU administrative, bureaucratic and judicial structure to citizens’
participation, oversight and even assistance in enforcement and compliance. NGOs
are welcomed by the EU to participate in a variety of opportunities to influence
environmental policy. NGOs can lobby and participate in various committees,
commissions and review boards in order to affect legislation vis-à-vis the states, the
Parliament, the Commission, the Council and the various agencies. NGOs can
participate in legislation or attempt to block legislation on the Committee of the
Regions, which has grown in power and popularity since the year 2000 when it
began operation. As the Regions are gaining in political power at the same time that
the states decline in sovereignty, local citizens, businesses and NGOs find it easier to
influence the process through the Committee of the Regions.
In addition, NGOs when denied proper internal review by any institution, can
appeal to the EU Ombudsman. The Ombudsman is yet another bureaucracy that can
resolve disputes and conflicts without resorting to a lengthy judicial procedure.
Finally, as of 2007, NGOs can influence enforcement, compliance and supervise the
bureaucracy by resorting to the European Court of Justice. Considering this
bureaucratic labyrinth, it is important to remember that overall the content and extent
of environmental bureaucracy in the EU is impressive as is the EU commitment to
improve environmental standards. Thus, the main role NGOs play in the EU system
is that of watchdogs, helping the Community enforce its rules against the states, and
28
helping the governing structure perform its job of regulating business and the
environment correctly. NGOs also behave as experts by helping to craft proactive
legislation through lobbying and participating in committees. The EU rarely creates a
situation in which NGOs are shut out of the process, or one in which the process is
so hostile to the environment, that it leads the NGOs to resort to antagonistic
activities. However, these occasions do happen because the system or the Regional
Trade Agreement was created to facilitate trade, and the system is open to various
interests competing for attention. The same institutions that work with NGOs also
work with industry and business. Victory on individual issues sometimes requires
political and organizational skills in navigating the various agencies in an attempt to
stop dangerous projects.
NAFTA: Institutional Structure and Law
NAFTA, The North American Free Trade Agreement, was first proposed by
former Vice President George Bush in 1988. In 1992, President Bush was granted
fast track from Congress which enabled him to negotiate and sign NAFTA after a
short period of ninety days. After several additional months of negotiations, Canada,
Mexico and the United States reached an agreement on North American free trade.
Based on the fast track rules, the agreement was submitted to Congress after formal
notification on September 18, 1992. Private sector advisory reports were solicited
and submitted to Congress. Around 300 Congressional briefings were held over
ninety days, and then the Presidents of Mexico, the U.S and the Prime Minister of
Canada signed the treaty. On June 30, 1993, the U.S District Court in DC ordered the
29
United States to perform an environmental impact statement (EIS) based on the
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). The act concerns the
environmental impact of agreements on the prospective free trade zone. As a result,
Canada, Mexico and the U.S reached agreements on labor and environmental side
accords to NAFTA on August 13, 1993. NAFTA was finally ratified with the side
agreements on November 20, 1993. Given this history, NAFTA’s environmental
laws have always been perceived as an after thought and not as a solid part of the
original regime.
In contrast with the EU, which standardized and harmonized every rule and
regulation from the community level to the national level, NAFTA is a paradigm of
shallow integration in which harmonization of environmental law is done on a case
by case bases and based on reactive adversarial law. In addition, NAFTA does not
have a capital city like Brussels where a bureaucracy regulates every aspect of
regional law. There are no directives bringing about harmonization of a North
American law; NAFTA’s expectation of environmental integration is more along the
line of normative declarations (H.P Glenn 2001:1793). By providing minimal
standards and a shallow integration, NAFTA opened up the system to a large amount
of possible disputes and disagreements. NAFTA has established panels for dispute
resolutions on a reactive basis. In other words, NAFTA does not anticipate disputes
but provides for a regime that will resolve them as they come. The following
chapters of NAFTA deal with different types of disputes: Chapter 11 investment
disputes, chapter 14-financial services disputes, Chapter 20-trade disputes, NAALC-
30
labor disputes, and NAAEC-environmental disputes. Legal harmony between the
three states is difficult to achieve, because NAFTA imposes an American style legal
system on top of a Mexican and Canadian legal systems that are markedly different.
Environmental Law and Side Agreements
The NAFTA preamble states that environmental consideration would receive
equal treatment as commercial considerations. NAFTA preserves national and
international environmental standards by affirming the sovereignty of each country
and its respective constitutions. NAFTA prohibits the erosion of national
environmental standards and regulations as a mechanism to attract foreign
investment. The agreement confirms the supremacy of international environmental
agreements over Community or national law.
Like the NAFTA Preamble, the Environmental Side Agreement begins by
declaring that the agreement is trying to achieve the improvement of the environment
(Greenwire, 1995). The NAAEC: a) fosters the protection and improvement of the
environment in the territories of the parties for the well-being of present and future
generations; b) promotes sustainable development based on cooperation and
mutually supportive environmental and economic policies; c) increases cooperation
between the parties to better conserve, protect and enhance the environment; f)
strengthens cooperation on the development and improvement of environmental
laws, regulations, procedures, policies and practices; g) enhances compliance with,
and enforcement of, environmental laws and regulations; j) promotes pollution
prevention policies and practices.
31
The opening provision of the NAAEC also obliges the parties to take certain
environmentally sound actions within their own territories. Although, these
provisions are very general, article 5 of the NAAEC not only requires the parties to
effectively enforce their environmental laws, but more importantly, it defines how
they are supposed to do so. These requirements are binding.
One of the most important differences between NAFTA’s NAAEC and the
equivalent provisions in the original Maastricht Treaty and MERCOSUR, is that
NAFTA gives citizens of each member country the right of access to a judicial or
quasi-judicial enforcement mechanism. Each party to the agreement must allow
“interested” persons to make a request to the appropriate government authorities to
investigate alleged violations of an environmental regulation. Furthermore, each
party must also ensure that those who have standing to sue under domestic law will
be provided a judicial or quasi-judicial proceeding to settle their claims. The
Environmental Side Agreement established a method by which, for the first time in a
trade accord, a concerned public can play a role in enforcing the terms of the
agreement. Thus, these side agreements are perfect examples of adversarial legalism.
The Agreement invites the public to dispute and appeal to the NAFTA judicial
proceeding in order to help interpret and enforce the law.
The structure of the Environmental Side Agreement, are: 1) the Commission
for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), and 2) the dispute resolution mechanism. The
CEC is an independent entity made up of a hierarchy of three separate bodies each
32
charged with different functions and duties: the Council, the Secretariat, and the
Joint Public Advisory Committee.
The Council is the first body of the CEC. The Council is an independent body
made up of representatives from the political echelons of each party to the
agreement. The Council is empowered to oversee the implementation of the
Environmental Side Agreement, address controversies between the parties, oversee
the Secretariat, develop recommendations assessing the environmental impact of
projects, and strengthen cooperation on the continuing improvement of
environmental laws. Furthermore, the NACEC is charged with providing for upward
harmonization of environmental laws in the three member countries. Additionally,
the Council has an open channel to work with NGOs and on a wide variety of
environmental concerns. The Council is charged with monitoring the environmental
effects of NAFTA.
The second body of the CEC is the Secretariat. The Secretariat serves two
functions. First, the Secretariat acts as the Council supporting staff by providing
technical and operational assistance to the Council, and any working group created
by the council. The CEC derives its efficiency from the Secretariat. The specialized
subgroups of the Secretariat handle all the time intensive tasks such as compiling
data, developing statistics, and issuing reports. By placing this burden on an
independent entity, the council can allocate the resources saved towards fulfilling its
considerable mandate.
33
The Secretariat’s second function is to monitor the parties and evaluate their
compliance with the agreement. The Secretariat has two means by which to achieve
this end. When a party of an NGO claims that a particular party is failing to enforce
its environmental regulations, the Secretariat is empowered to develop a factual
record. The record is to contain any information relevant to the controversy and shall
be kept on file with the Council for further consideration. Thus, subject to the
Commission approval, the Secretariat can independently investigate a party’s
performance. Since treaty benefits can be suspended should this investigation
uncover any violations, the maintenance of a factual record is important. The
Secretariat can also monitor a party’s performance by addressing such in its annual
report. In the annual report the Secretariat covers actions each party has taken to
honor the agreement, views and information submitted by the NGOs and any
relevant information the council wishes to include.
The third and final body within the CEC is the joint public Advisory
Committee. Its primary responsibility is to provide additional support to the Council
through advisory meetings concerning any matter within the scope of the agreement.
This committee makes the CEC stronger as a whole. The Joint Public Advisory
Committee contributes to the formation of a legitimate regulatory scheme.
Individual citizens are guaranteed rights of access to information and access
to judicial and quasi-judicial procedures as well. They can make submissions to the
Secretariat forcing a review of each party’s enforcement of environmental law within
its borders. NACEC has an open design. It must hold public meetings. The Council
34
may seek advice from NGOs, the public and independent experts, and decisions must
be made public; the annual report must be made public as well. A citizen submission
must meet six criteria: 1) A submission must be written in a language specified by
the party complained against, 2) clearly identify who is making the submission, 3)
provide sufficient information to allow the Secretariat to review the submission, 4)
appear to promote enforcement rather than harassment, 5) indicate that the issue has
been communicated in writing to the party complained against, 6) and be filed by a
person or NGO residing or established in Mexico, Canada or the United States. The
criteria for response by the Secretariat includes the following aspects: 1) the
submission alleges harm to the person or organization making the submission, 2)
raises issues whose further study would advance the purpose of the NAAEC, 3)
indicates private remedies under national law have been pursued, and 4) indicates
whether the submission is drawn exclusively from mass media reports. Once the
CEC accepted the submission, it will investigate the matter and make a decision.
The Process of Enforcement
Once it is established that one of the parties refuses to live up to their
obligations under the accord, the dispute resolution mechanism is implemented, and
is designed to settle the conflict in as mutually acceptable manner as possible; but the
dispute resolution mechanism also has some enforcement teeth. After a complaint is
made, and the Secretariat of Social Development has found a company in violation
of national law, or the state not enforcing its law, the complaining “interested”
person must be provided a remedy in accordance with national laws. Even though, in
35
1994, Mexican law did not allow NGOs to sue private companies in its courts, the
NAFTA procedure could fine the violating companies and arrest their CEOs. While
the United States cannot force Mexico or Canada to enforce their laws, NAFTA can
do it.
However, in the event that after the procedure, one of the parties refuses to
abide by the decision, a deadline for a joint resolution is established. If the dispute
has not been resolved by the target date, intervention by independent agencies of the
accord automatically occurs. Article 23 of the Agreement provides for a special
session of the Council to be called when the two parties have been unable to reach an
agreement within sixty days. The Council’s function is to help the parties break the
gridlock through mediation, expert advice, and appropriate recommendations.
Should that not help resolve the dispute within sixty days, an arbitration panel is
established. The function of this panel is to bring the parties to resolve the dispute
themselves. The arbitration panel, unlike the Council can make a finding of facts and
determine who is at fault and who failed to comply with the law. The panel can order
one of the parties to comply through a panel designed action plan. At that point the
panel will decide in a future meeting whether the party at fault complied with its
orders. In the event that the party at fault failed to comply, the arbitration panel, like
a regular court, is allowed to assess fines and force full implementation. In the event
that the offended party is still not happy that the fines were paid and that
enforcement has been complied with, the panel may suspend NAFTA benefits from
the offending party. Thus, while a fine of 20 million dollars a year may be trivial to
36
an offending party, a suspension from NAFTA could be a harsh threat. Thus
comparatively, while the MERCOSUR dispute resolution program is not
independent and does not allow civil society participation, the EU legal system does
not easily grant standing to NGOs and the Commission is not an independent
agency, the NAFTA system is the only one that provides a somewhat independent
quasi-judicial procedure for NGOs to engage in adversarial action against national
and private entities.
Prior to NAFTA, direct litigation between private persons and states was
extremely rare if not impossible. Such engagement between these two types of
entities generally occurred through international agreements and international bodies.
Some of these agreements which allowed citizens to challenge states were
commercial bodies such as the World Bank, which allows NGOs to challenge states
and corporations. NAFTA’s citizens’ submission process broke new ground in this
area. Chapter 11 provides that in any investment causing dispute any person can
bring action directly against a NAFTA host government, whether there is a prior
arbitration agreement or not. Article 1116 allows investors and private corporations
to sue one of the three states over violation of its trading rights. Thus, while NAFTA
opened the door for NGOs to sue the state it also opened the door for big business to
sue over trade discrimination. Much of the clash between NGOs, states, and
corporations resulted from chapter 11 (NAFTA Law and business Review 2000).
37
Differences in Law Between the United States and Mexico
The American legal system is based on the common law traditions. It uses the
theory of stare Decisis or relying on precedents. Common law precedents are
adhered to and serve as the basis for civil law; these decisions are binding upon the
courts. In Mexico, the French-continental civil law is the authority, where judicial
decisions do not create binding precedents. However, despite this fundamental
difference, the Mexican judicial system resembles the American one. The Mexican
Constitution is the supreme law of the land just like the American one. Most of the
provisions in the Mexican Constitution are adapted from the American one.
Mexico’s constitution is more detailed than the American one but overall very
similar.
The major difference between the two regulatory regimes is the role of the
judiciary. In the United States the judiciary interprets the law, and that includes the
rules created by regulatory agencies. In Mexico, regulatory agencies cannot exceed
the scope of the law. The President in Mexico is in charge of interpreting the law.
Since the regulatory agencies are under the President, environmental law is
interpreted by the agencies and not by the court. Thus, while the American
regulatory system is adversarial, the Mexican one is bureaucratic and does not give
the courts jurisdiction to review the law. Consequently, NAFTA represents a
marriage between countries that have different regulatory regimes (Texas Wesleyan
Law Review, spring 1994). Additionally, Mexico’s regulatory retreatism, lack of
institutional capacity, and failure to enforce its laws is more reminiscent of that of
38
the MERCOSUR states. This factor further serves to complicate the picture in that
Mexican civil society is more likely to use the NAFTA procedures than either the
American or Canadian civil society.
The following chapter will examine how the opportunity structures created
by the three regulatory regimes impact the structural organization, independence and
patterns of political engagement of the Greenpeace organizations within these
regimes.
39
CHAPTER THREE
GREENPEACE
Greenpeace offers a particularly interesting case for probing how regimes
interact to affect international civil society. The reason is straightforward. Given its
unitary, centralized governing board, top-down management style, long history, and
resource independence, it seems likely that its operations will be stable across
regimes. Consistent with the above expectations, Greenpeace features marginally
different styles of activism, types of leadership and patterns of strategic management
within MERCOSUR, the EU and NAFTA. (See Table 3.1 for a summary of these
differences.) To develop these findings, this chapter seeks to explain how the three
regulatory regimes, by developing different opportunity structures through their
institutions and laws, caused these variations.

Table 3.1: Summary of Findings: Evidence of Low Adaptation

Name
GREENPEACE
MERCOSUR
GREENPEACE
EU
GREENPEACE
NAFTA
Regime Type Retreatist Bureaucratic legalism Adversarial legalism
Level of
independence
Highly independent
Somewhat to highly
independent
Highly independent
Style of activism
Opportunistic,
antagonistic
Formal, collaborative Formal, antagonistic
Type of leadership Open, activist, grassroots
Closed, professional,
bureaucratic, with some
grassroots activism
Closed, professional,
corporate, with grassroots
activism
Pattern of
strategic
engagement
Non-engagement, seeks
other regimes to engage
Plays by the book, mostly
cooperative
Somewhat engaging,
opportunistic
40
In the following sections, I will briefly explain the history, culture and
structure of Greenpeace International and its regional organizations. I will analyze
and compare Greenpeace MERCOSUR, EU and NAFTA based on independence
indicators, and variations in its methods of engaging the three regimes.
Greenpeace: Historical Review
Greenpeace dates its origins to Oct 1, 1969. On that date, there was a
demonstration on the Canadian-American border protesting the American
government’s testing of nuclear weapons on the Amchitka Island. The demonstrators
blocked the main highway between British Columbia and the state of Washington in
an effort to stop the U.S. nuclear test that was scheduled. This action eventually led
to the foundation of Greenpeace International, and to a tradition of non-violent civil
disobedience as its principle mode of activism. The decision to attempt to sail a boat
to the island and try to physically stop the nuclear testing, added another element to
Greenpeace activism, which is the use of sea-faring vehicles as an important part of
its civil disobedience.
Since 1972, Greenpeace has grown from having a single office in Vancouver
to staffing offices in over thirty countries and in all continents including Antarctica.
Greenpeace maintains a large eco-navy with a growing number of ships. The
organization owns helicopters, hot air balloons and airplanes. It employs thousand of
full time staff members, including scientists and lobbyists as well as thousands of
volunteers. The organization’s income rose to over $100 million and counted over
six million dues-paying members all over the world. The Greenpeace website as well
41
as its leaders and members proudly claim that their money comes from donations
mostly in the form of individual contributions. Greenpeace does not accept corporate
donations or government donations of any kind. Throughout the years, Greenpeace
has expanded its operation from anti-nuclear activism, to transnational
environmental activism, covering the entire gamut of environmental issues.
However, with the corporate-like success enjoyed by Greenpeace, much
criticism has also ensued. As Greenpeace reached its peak support in the early 1990s,
several issues led to a downturn in its membership and contributions, as well as
internal conflicts, and consequently less public support and enthusiasm.
Greenpeace’s involvement with anti-war activism in 1991 was perceived by many
Americans as lacking in loyalty. Furthermore, the organization’s coziness with the
Clinton administration in the USA, and with the EU administration, led to a
perception that the organization was “selling-out”, and the work for which
Greenpeace was primarily known, environmental activism, was being taken over of
by the regime’s bureaucracy. As a result of the lack of financial support, Greenpeace
USA had to reorient its campaigns and activism. Greenpeace first closed all of its
major American city offices, finally closing down even the key New York Office,
and they now maintain only a trimmed down presence in Washington D.C.
In addition to the troubles faced by the organization in the United States,
contribution and membership in Europe declined to such an extent that Greenpeace
had to reconsider its international commitment to support offices all over the world.
Much of the internal conflict within the organization occurred over issues of the style
42
of activism, support for the increasingly powerful Latin American offices, and issues
of governance and organizational structure. However, by the early part of the 21
st

century, Greenpeace made a strong comeback on all fronts. Once more the
organization’s American and Canadian offices gained public support and influence
within North American civil society. This increase in support was primarily
attributed to the Bush administration’s hostility to the environment in general, and to
Greenpeace in particular. By deliberately excluding Greenpeace from access to his
administration and consequently to formal political engagement, President George
W. Bush inadvertently gave the organization legitimacy as a radical activist group. In
addition, as Greenpeace began to reemphasize its street activist credentials as part of
a two-pronged approach: radical and disobedient or the “bearing witness approach”
on one level, and a scientific-diplomatic approach on the other. With a successful
execution of these changes, the popularity of the organization, and fiscal
contributions returned to their previous records.
Greenpeace: Governance and Structure
Greenpeace’s main environmental concerns are: toxic substances, energy and
the atmosphere, nuclear issues and ocean and land ecology. Greenpeace divides its
attention among these issues through a series of campaigns. Within each of these
policy areas, Greenpeace works on multiple sub-issues related to the main ones. For
example, under the marine ecology issue, Greenpeace works on anti-whaling
campaigns and for protection measures for sea turtles, fisheries and dolphins.
43
As a transnational organization, Greenpeace undertakes its campaigns world
wide. Greenpeace organizes for global scale operations but maintains offices in
individual nation states. The leadership of the organization is made up of the
Greenpeace council, an executive board, and regional trustees. The Council is made
up of representatives from every country where Greenpeace has offices, and this
body meets once a year to decide on organizational policy. The council is one of the
ways in which Greenpeace coordinates its diverse activities. The council sets
guidelines for the general operation of Greenpeace, approves the international
budget, and develops long-term goals. Because council members come from many
different countries, decisions tend to reflect sensitivity to differing regional and local
aspects of environmental problems. In addition to the council, there is an executive
board that ratifies all council resolutions and makes significant decisions for
Greenpeace throughout the year when the council is not in session. The board,
consisting of voting and non-voting members is elected by the Greenpeace council.
In addition to the council and the executive board, there are regional trustees
that provide the final stamp of approval for the overall operations undertaken by the
organization. Trustees are representatives of the areas of the world where
Greenpeace has offices. These include Latin America, the Pacific, North America,
Africa and Europe. The trustees generally approve all decisions put forward by the
council and the executive board. However, they serve as the final arbiter of
Greenpeace policies. Because the individual trustees represent diverse regions of the
world, as a whole they advance a global rather than a national or a regional
44
orientation within Greenpeace. Thus, Greenpeace activism and policy is supposed to
be fairly uniform around the world.
Greenpeace’s structure and policy are promulgated through a worldwide
organization that is in charge of the four main campaign areas mentioned above.
Each campaign has an international coordinator. The coordinator designs the way
specific campaigns play themselves out in different regions and national contexts.
Underneath the international campaign coordinators there are project directors.
Project directors are scattered across the world and work on the sub issues.
Working under the project coordinators are regional and national
campaigners. Campaigners devise specific Greenpeace activities. They identify what
they take to be the most effective ways to communicate with people and change
environmentally destructive practices. They propose and execute activities intended
to alter the discourse on the environment in particular states and regions. In the
following section, I will describe how the MERCOSUR regime’s lack of institutional
capacity creates a wide opportunity structure for Greenpeace to explore its role as a
leader of a social movement. In the following section, I will describe how the
MERCOSUR regime’s lack of institutional capacity creates a wide opportunity
structure for Greenpeace to explore its role as a leader of a social movement.
Greenpeace MERCOSUR
In response to the institutional vacuum and at times, the obstructionist
policies of the MERCOSUR regime, Greenpeace style of activism is characterized
by resolute independence and opportunistic behavior. The weakness in the regime
45
forces Greenpeace to engage in a reactive style of activism in which it finds itself
more adept at stopping environmentally destructive projects than at developing and
producing forward looking agenda. Furthermore, while Greenpeace engages any
level of the regime that appears willing to listen and act, it often finds that it is easier
to appeal to corporate and international entities than to regional ones. Moreover, in
the absence of institutions, Greenpeace finds itself developing policy standards and
stepping into the institutional gap as an alternate regime; at times Greenpeace is
placed in a position of being the main institution that enforces compliance with
environmental standards. In other cases when the regime is obstructive, Greenpeace
is forced to engage in hostile “outsider” behavior. In doing so, Greenpeace has
developed a two-pronged or two-level style of activism: street activism, and
simultaneous expert political engagement. Despite Greenpeace International’s
unitary structure, which promotes standardized style of activism and discourages
opportunism, Greenpeace within MERCOSUR, more often than not, ends up
pursuing its goals by engaging any level of the regime as well as individual
politicians that are willing to work with environmental civil society.
On a final note, the capricious behavior and lack of regularity in the
MERCOSUR retreatist bureaucracy discourages the development of unofficial
permanent alliances with political parties or members of the bureaucracy. It is not in
the interest of civil society to tie its fortunes to the fate of individuals who lack
institutional power or any political permanence. In that sense the regime’s retreatist
features directly contribute to the independence of civil society. In the following
46
sections, I will analyze how the opportunity structures created by the MERCOSUR
regime and its member states contribute to civil society independence in the case of
Greenpeace. In addition, I will trace how MERCOSUR’s institutional weakness
contributes to the unique pattern of activism displayed by the regional Greenpeace
organizations.
Indicators of Independence
Organizational Structure and Self-Perception
The evolution of Greenpeace within MERCOSUR led to the establishment of
two main national offices: Greenpeace Argentina and Greenpeace Brazil. Although,
both organization were founded several years before the founding of MERCOSUR,
the increase in trade and to some extent the institutionalization of environmental law,
led to an elevation of Greenpeace activism. Both Greenpeace offices maintain two
separate websites and independence from each other. The two Greenpeace offices
promote different agendas that are unique to the national and regional needs of their
countries. Greenpeace Brazil is primarily focused on rainforest and anti-nuclear
campaigns, and Greenpeace Argentina is concerned with glaciers, pollution, forestry
and the preservation of fisheries. Both organizations participate in Greenpeace
International campaigns opposing the cultivation and production of Genetically
Modified Food Stuffs (GMO). Greenpeace Argentina maintains that it is the most
independent, largest and most important organization outside Greenpeace
International (Villalonga, 2009). Greenpeace Argentina was the first office to open in
a developing country (website). In addition, Greenpeace Argentina is also known as
47
Greenpeace the Southern Cone. It fights for environmental issues in most of the
MERCOSUR states except Brazil.
The Greenpeace organizations within MERCOSUR maintain their pride of
independence in both website and campaign literature. Its leaders (Villalonga, 2009)
explain that unlike other organizations, Greenpeace receives all of its funding
through support from its partners and donors. These donors are citizens from around
the world. “We do not accept contributions of any kind from corporations or
governments; nor do we align ourselves with any political party or regime”
(Greenpeace Argentina). Other methods of maintaining independence include,
receiving funds from Greenpeace International and selling Greenpeace memorabilia,
shirts, mugs and environmentally friendly products on the website. In addition,
Greenpeace licenses the brand “Greenpeace” throughout Latin America to
environmentally sustainable products.
The Greenpeace organizations within MERCOSUR share the same formal
organizational structure modeled after that of Greenpeace International. This model
consists of an Executive Director, Political Director, Media Director, Fundraising
Director, and individual directors for each of the campaigns taken on by Greenpeace.
Greenpeace maintains an open style organization, which translates into opportunities
for promotion for the young volunteers. These volunteers receive training in
agitation and public demonstrations. In addition, the volunteers participate in the art
department working on graphics, posters and campaign literature. Volunteers can be
promoted to leadership positions. Most of the leadership of Greenpeace
48
MERCOSUR traces their background to previous experience as community
organizers, volunteers and employees in non-profit organizations whose main
training was in fund-raising and communication. However, the greater
institutionalization of environmental law in Brazil, in 2000, and the opening up of
the legal standing to sue, led to increases in the hiring of lawyers by the organization;
thus, requiring more specific professional training and less possibility for promotion
for volunteers. Despite this development, both the Argentine and Brazilian
organizations do not engage in any revolving door activities with the regime. No
Greenpeace employee, or scientist has ever run for office or served in the
government in any of the MERCOSUR member states (Villalonga, 2009). In
addition, lobbying in the MERCOSUR system and in the individual member states is
not a high stakes financial game. Greenpeace does not contribute to campaigns and
its lobbyists do not benefit from power or income associated with lobbying.
The Greenpeace leadership perceives that in MERCOSUR there are no
regional actors in the environmental arena, and that the national actors are weak. The
consequences of which, is that it allows Greenpeace independence to improvise
(Villalonga, 2009). Part of the improvisation involves engaging international actors
instead of national or regional ones; some of these actors are the World Bank,
CEPAL-the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the World
Trade Organization. However, Greenpeace leadership feels that the organizational
independence they have is not necessarily an advantage because promoting
environmental standards on a regional level is the only way to support sustainable
49
practices and preserve nature (Villalonga, 2009). Thus, the perception of the
leadership is that regional independence is primarily a fact and not a goal. The goal
is effective environmental policy. Despite its leadership’s attestation that stronger
regional governance is preferable to independence, the Greenpeace website promotes
the notion and perception of independence through press releases and video links
which emphasize street protests and outsider style activism including civil
disobedience and regime denouncements (Greenpeace Website, Argentina, Brazil).
In fact between 1994 and 2009, Greenpeace’s level of regime denouncement through
the use of the media far exceeded collaborative statements or support for the
MERCOSUR regime. The following table compares and contrasts the percentage of
articles and press releases in which Greenpeace either supported or denounced the
regime:

Table 3.2: Greenpeace: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Qualified praise 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Denounce 0 1 1 1 4 4 4 1 1 0 4 2 3 3 1
Sample Size: 31
Percentage of Praise items: 3%
Percentage of praise with qualifications: 0
Percentage of denouncement: 97%
50
The above data demonstrates that Greenpeace issued a steady level of
denouncement against the MERCOSUR regime and its member states. There was a
reduction in the number of denouncements during the economic collapse of the
Argentine economy and the ascendance to power of left leaning Presidents in
Argentina and Brazil in 2002. However, by 2004 the honeymoon was over and the
denouncement continued. Greenpeace issued one “praise”: It was in 2002 when the
Brazilian government decided to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. This pattern of
denouncing the existing regime, generally establishes an antagonistic relationship
between Greenpeace and the national regimes, and is demonstrative of a high level
of independence and outsider type of activism.
In addition to press releases and interviews with the media, Greenpeace has
engaged in a variety of activities and engagements of the regime. The following table
and analysis compares and contrasts the three types of activism that represent the
manner in which Greenpeace engages the MERCOSUR regime. The type of activism
that is compared here ranges from behavior that is completely outside the system,
assertive engagement that challenges the MERCOSUR institutional structure but
well within the regime’s rules of institutional engagement, and insider collusive
engagement collaborative with the MERCOSUR governance.
51
Table 3.3: Greenpeace Actions Comparing Levels of Independence 1994-2009

Yr 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
High 6 2 1 4 4 1 3 2 2 1 4 2 4 2 1
Somewhat 2 3 1 3 5 4 11 2 7 1 5 2 2 6 3
Collusive 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
Sample Size: 98 Level 1: 40% Level 2: 58% Level 3: 2%

The distribution of Greenpeace activism in the MERCOSUR countries,
during the years, 1994-2008, demonstrates that Greenpeace is overwhelmingly an
independent organization (98 percent of its activities fall either in the independent or
highly independent category). However, while there are many local and native NGOs
and other organizations that are completely outside the system and do not work with
the regime in a constructive manner, Greenpeace is consistently becoming more of a
watchdog organization that works with the regime but still remains independent. In
further clarification of the above trend, it appears that the increase in a somewhat
more independent style activism and relative decrease of the highly independent type
in the late 1990s, and especially after the turn of the century, do not reflect a growing
capacity and institutionalization in the MERCOSUR regime, but rather a growing
capacity and institutionalization in Brazil. This trend was associated with the
ascendance of President Cardoso and later President Lula. In the year 2000, new
laws were introduced that allowed NGOs to act as private citizens, and sue
corporations and individuals that damaged the environment. And there was growing
52
collaboration between Greenpeace and the Brazilian attorney general, in using the
law to enforce environmental regulation, which reflects this trend. Furthermore, in
the year 2007 Brazil was becoming a clear favorite of the environmental movement
as President Lula made strong shifts from Brazil’s previous commitment to
development above all else, to environmental protection of the rain forest. The
relationship between Greenpeace and the Lula government became closer and
Greenpeace began to praise and represent the Brazilian government’s position in
international conferences.
The other trend occurring after the year 2000 is a renewal of “outsider” style
of activism such as demonstrations, taking over nuclear facilities and other ultra-
independent activities. Those can be explained by the growing criticism of
Greenpeace for “forgetting its roots” and abandoning its origins. Greenpeace was
being accused of becoming too corporate and too “soft”. There was a call for
returning to the activist type of behavior which the Greenpeace brand was always
associated with. As a result, Greenpeace increased its use of boats to interrupt the
importation of waste into Latin America, and to halt the exports of genetically
modified soy and other products. Similarly, the takeover of nuclear facilities in
Brazil and Argentina and public demonstrations intended to disturb President Bush
and Prime Minister Blair’s visits, reminded people that Greenpeace was still an
activist organization.
Overall, the percentage of collusive behavior associated with the Greenpeace
organization is very small when compared to independent and highly independent
53
actions. The high percentage of highly independent style of activism demonstrates
that there is a healthy distance between the MERCOSUR regime and Greenpeace. In
addition to Greenpeace’s self- perception and activism, this project analyzes the
organization’s reputation in the community as an indicator of independence. The
following table compares and analyzes media reports and references to Greenpeace
MERCOSUR between 1994 and 2009.

Table 3.4: Greenpeace Reputation in the Community

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 2 1 1 3 0 1 1 2 2 1 3 1 5 2 0
Watchdog 3 1 1 0 3 3 4 2 1 1 0 0 5 1 1
Collusive 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Sample Size: 54
Percentage of Activist items: 46%
Percentage of watchdog items: 48%
Percentage of Collusive items: 5%

The relatively even number of articles describing Greenpeace as a renegade
outside the system or as an activist organization, and those that described
Greenpeace as an expert on environmental research, as a prime participant in the
enforcement of environmental compliance and generally as a watchdog organization,
does not stem from the schizophrenia of the media or due to an even analysis of
conservative and liberal news sources. This reflects the concept of the two pronged
approach, or the “two roads” approach, as termed by Villalonga (Villalonga, 2009).
54
When Greenpeace sends volunteers on boats to blockade a river or take over a
nuclear facility, it is described by the media and or the governing authorities as
activist, militant or even by the Uruguayan government as the activities of a hijacker.
However, when Greenpeace was invited to test toxic waste by the government of
Paraguay who lacked the capacity to do it, or help enforce forest and Amazon
protection laws by the Brazilian government, or help expose polluters, Greenpeace
was labeled as a watchdog organization. Furthermore, relatively early on, when
Greenpeace started its Latin American operations, it was variously labeled by local
activists as conservative, colonialist, corporate, the Coca Cola of environmental
groups and a “North” organization. These conservative or captured labels and
attitudes died down when most local NGOs, activists, and the public stopped seeing
Greenpeace as a foreign organization that was out of touch with “South” related
issues. Thus, Greenpeace enjoyed a historical evolution in its reputation by gradually
gaining the respect and trust of the Latin American community and media. None-the-
less, the low percentage (5 percent) of media items accusing Greenpeace of being
captured by the regime is indicative that the organization is perceived as independent
and has gained the trust of the MERCOSUR media. In the next section I will analyze
how MERCOSUR maintains a wide opportunity structure for Greenpeace to develop
an independent style of activism.
Greenpeace and MERCOSUR- Patterns of Activism
In the MERCOSUR regime, Greenpeace operates on two levels. On one level
Greenpeace demonstrators challenge the regimes in a highly antagonistic fashion.
55
Militant volunteers attack government nuclear facilities, and attempt to block
corporate polluters as well as other projects that contribute to deforestation. On the
second level Greenpeace maintains professional offices in Brazil and Argentina and
attempts to engage national governments and local governments to promote
proactive environmental policies. This pattern is exemplified in the following
instances: on October 3, 1994, Greenpeace activists were arrested during the opening
session of the IMF/WORLD bank meeting held in Brazil. At the time, the president
of Oxfam-Bank said that the bank will continue to work with Greenpeace. “We will
still work with them, with the professionals in particular because they are good
technically” he said, but he added, “there are two kinds of Greenpeace people. There
are the professional people who are quite good, and those who try to get people
excited and to get the press to talk about them. They like to have enemies” (IPS
1994). Later on, in 1998, Greenpeace Argentina came to the aid of the government of
Paraguay and helped it conduct a toxic waste study, which the regime had no
scientific capacity or financial ability to conduct (AP Jan 9, 1998). In addition,
Greenpeace Brazil’s coordinator Marcel Furtado worked to coordinate a regional
accord against European waste dumping in the MERCOSUR states. However, in the
same year, Greenpeace members were arrested during public demonstrations against
the Rio Condor project and threatened the Trillium timber project with direct
physical action. In 1999, Greenpeace advised the Argentine regime on how to stop
dangerous oil spills and worked with the Argentine Parliament to pass a wind energy
project. However, at the same time, Greenpeace activists attacked a Dow Chemical
56
facility in Brazil and blocked it from discharging polluting chemicals. In 2000,
Greenpeace used the Brazilian courts to enforce a judicial ban on Genetically
Modified crops and helped the government of Brazil enforce the law against illegal
logging in the Amazon. However, in the same year, Greenpeace activists were
arrested in a protest against the sale of Amazon forest lumber. The protesters in Sao
Paolo came within a few inches of hurting the visiting British Prime Minister Tony
Blair. Meanwhile, in Argentina, Greenpeace attempted to deliver a barrel of toxic
waste (as symbolic of their activities) to chemical corporations, and activists
attempted to force down the closing of the facilities (Chemical Business, Jan 4,
2001). These examples are just a few representing the duality of Greenpeace
activism. The main example of the two-road or two-level activism occurred from
2005-2007, during the conflict between Argentina and Uruguay in the Botnia paper
mill case. While Greenpeace negotiators were trying to achieve a working standard
for negotiation between the two sides, Greenpeace activists were using boats to block
the river and deny the paper mill the conditions necessary to operate.
The lack of institutionalization of environmental bureaucracy and the lack of
enforcement of environmental laws on the regional level lead Greenpeace to
completely ignore, and not engage, the RTA level governance. Greenpeace leaders
perceive the MERCOSUR leadership on environmental policy to be no more than
“declaration of intentions” (Villlalonga, 2009). However, the lack of
institutionalization on the national level in Argentina and weakness of law
enforcement in Brazil, create a wide opportunity structure for Greenpeace to direct
57
its organizational structure and behavior in an opportunistic manner. Greenpeace
leadership perceived, that in the MERCOSUR states it was easier for Greenpeace to
use a variety of legislative lobbying, legal challenges and appeals to international
funding regimes and agencies, to delay or prevent bad projects from coming to
fruition by “confusing and complicating the discussion” (Villalonga, 2009), than to
initiate positive environmental legislation. However, it should be noted that when
Greenpeace is finally able to engage the national regimes in developing a pro-
environmental policy, Greenpeace often finds that the government fails to enforce
the law and leaves compliance and enforcement to the NGOs. At times, Greenpeace
participated in law enforcement to such an extent, that it essentially came to replace
the regime and was virtually acting as proxy for the regime. There are several such
examples when Greenpeace has presented itself as an alternative to an absent regime.
On several occasions Greenpeace officials joined Brazilian law enforcement agents
on trips to the Amazon region to enforce compliance of Brazilian laws against illegal
logging and poaching. In 2002, Greenpeace began to regularly join eco-cops or the
special environmental police in helicopter raids in the Amazonas. Greenpeace
activists participated in arresting illegal loggers and confiscating timber (IPS June
21, 2002). In addition, during the on-going crisis between Argentina and Uruguay
regarding the Botnia paper mill project, Greenpeace replaced the MERCOSUR
regime in trying to negotiate between the two sides and developed legal standards for
mediation and dispute resolution. “The focus of Greenpeace during the conflict
between Argentina and Uruguay was to try to help establish common criteria
58
between these two countries for the possibility of bi-lateral discussion” (Villalonga,
2009).
The ineffective method of dispute resolution in the MERCOSUR regional
level, create a wide space for civil society to step in and act as the alternative to the
regime. In addition, the policies regarding the development of the paper mill industry
in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, are different from one another, and
there is no regional code or institution to unite them. Thus, Greenpeace by becoming
the de facto mediator, replaced MERCOSUR as the regional authority. Another
example in which Greenpeace stepped in to replace a weak regime occurred in 1998,
when the government of Paraguay, lacking in financial capacity, requested that
Greenpeace-Argentina conduct a toxic waste study in Paraguay. This task was
clearly the job of the state bureaucracy, but in its absence, Greenpeace stepped in and
acted instead of the regime.
However, when in the year 2000, Brazil developed the legal standard for civil
society organization by allowing them to sue in the Brazilian Supreme Court, in
order to enforce environmental compliance, Greenpeace became the most prolific
NGO in using that institution for the purpose of enforcing compliance. There are
several examples that illustrate how Greenpeace uses the law to enforce compliance:
In the year 2000, Greenpeace complained that after working tirelessly to initiate a
ban on Genetically Modified Crops in Brazil it had to bring a team of specialists to
monitor and enforce the law. Marian Paoli, Greenpeace spokesperson claimed that
Greenpeace is the only institution that is responsible for enforcing the judicial ban on
59
GM food stuffs (Paoli, 2000). In 2004, the Brazilian federal police followed a
complaint by Greenpeace regarding the illegal sale of government lands to timber
companies. In 2005, Greenpeace confiscated truckloads of illegally cut wood and
brought them to police stations in Sao Paolo. These examples, however, also shed
light on the greater problem, that projects in the MERCOSUR system are endless
because the state does not step in and effectively enforce compliance (Villalonga
2009). Therefore, it remains for Greenpeace to enforce the laws that it initiated in
the first place. In addition, there are several examples that demonstrate, that in the
absence of institutions it is easier for Greenpeace to block “bad projects” (Villalonga,
2009), than to initiate good ones: On August 5, 1994, as part of its campaign against
toxic waste, Greenpeace helped to expose government officials that assisted in
importing toxic waste to Latin America. Another example that illustrates this
contention, concerns the production of ethanol in Brazil: “the Regional Development
Bank of Brazil finances the ethanol project without concern for any regional debate”
(Villalonga, 2009). Greenpeace had to go to outside regional actors such as CEPAL
and the World Bank to attempt to slow down or stop this project.
In contrast to the above stated findings, Greenpeace does not ignore
institutionalization and growth of capacity. Its type of activism is opportunistic and
depends on the degree of institutionalization. When the regime is absent, Greenpeace
resorts to public demonstrations, appeals to international panels, works with local
provincial and city governments as well as local communities, and the organization
basically steps in to replace the regime. However, in 2000, when the Brazilian
60
government developed a more open adversarial legal system, Greenpeace augmented
its own legal staff and initiated legal challenges to the system. Furthermore, since
2001, the emergence of favorable environmental and energy ministries in Brazil led
to greater cooperation between Greenpeace and the Brazilian regime. Greenpeace
demonstrated its interest in working with the regime by opening a new office in the
city of Manaus in the Amazon region in order to step up the drive to prevent illegal
oil exploration in the Amazon (Petroleum Economist Feb 15, 2000). In 2007,
Greenpeace participated in drafting legislation that would allow limited and
controlled logging in the Amazon in a sustainable manner.
However, unlike the improving situation in Brazil, Argentina presents a more
complex problem. In Argentina, Greenpeace is forced to deal with a lack of
institutionalization on both regional and national levels. In the case of the paper mill
industry, Greenpeace pursued its agenda in the Argentine Parliament and in the local
community governance. Greenpeace negotiated with the Parliament and resorted to
lawsuits in local provincial courts, thereby introducing environmentally safe
procedures. However, Greenpeace finally had to be the one that enforced the law by
working with industry to develop standards with an Argentine paper mill named
Cellulosa. It awarded Cellulosa the environmentally coveted Forest Stewardship
Council-FSC certification. In addition, when Greenpeace sponsored a parliamentary
law regarding sustainable gold mining in the Salta province, President Cristina
Kirschner vetoed the law. After Parliament overrode the veto, the President refused
to enforce it. Greenpeace again had to follow up and ensure compliance through the
61
help of the local provincial government. According to Greenpeace leadership in
Argentina Greenpeace cannot rely on institutions to work with, but must rather rely
on friendly individuals (Villalonga, 2009). In addition, on the national level,
Greenpeace was challenged by an erratic application of environmental law because
while the environmental agency is useless and lacks capacity, the minister of energy
has sometimes proven to be helpful. Hence, in the MERCOSUR states, civil society
has to deal with regimes that are based on the efforts of individual personality rather
than on standardized laws and procedures. Some members of Parliament are helpful
because of personal pro-environmental convictions (Villalonga, 2009). Thus, the
Greenpeace strategy is to work with whichever governance level or individuals that
is most helpful at the time.
Summary Greenpeace MERCOSUR
In tracing the patterns of activism and degree of independence of Greenpeace
in the MERCOSUR regime, I have reached several conclusions: 1) Greenpeace
MERCOSUR considers the regime to be weak and lacking in capacity. As a
consequence, Greenpeace did not attend regional meetings and coordination with the
MERCOSUR regime. Furthermore, Greenpeace prefers to work with national
governments, local communities (cities, villages, provincial leadership), individual
power brokers that happen to be supportive of environmental policy, and with
international regimes when available. 2) Greenpeace MERCOSUR is more adept at
slowing down or stopping “bad projects” than at developing positive policy. 3) When
Greenpeace manages to develop policy along with the regime, often the regime does
62
not establish effective bureaucracy to enforce compliance; thus, forcing Greenpeace
to step in and enforce the law instead of the regime. 4) Greenpeace often finds itself
performing the duties of MERCOSUR or the national governments in environmental
enforcement or dispute resolution. 5) Greenpeace operates on two levels
simultaneously: Greenpeace volunteers perform highly independent street activism,
while its professional leadership performs scientific research, lobbying and
enforcement of environmental compliance. 6) Greenpeace is highly independent,
refusing entangling alliances with any political institutions. Sources of funding for
Greenpeace are independent, and its leaders do not run for office or engage in
revolving-door lobbying activities with the regime.
Some of the final questions that need to be addressed regarding Greenpeace
MERCOSUR is how can an organization maintain independence without operating
outside the system as a renegade non-player? Furthermore, how can an organization
engage in politics without being co-opted by the regime? In observing some of the
indicators of independence, it appears that Greenpeace’s reputation is split between
being considered an activist and a watchdog. The organization’s style of activism is
also split between highly independent outsider behavior and somewhat independent
watchdog behavior. The key to understanding this split is related both to the
Greenpeace style of politics and to MERCOSUR’s style of governance. By not
engaging in entangling alliances by becoming associated with a particular
bureaucracy or political party and by avoiding the use of money for high pressure
lobbying, Greenpeace maintains the type of neutrality which allows it to step in and
63
replace the regime when compliance is needed to be enforced. Thus, Greenpeace can
engage in politics without being perceived as political. Furthermore, the split in
Greenpeace’s style of activism and pattern of engagement is also attributed to
Greenpeace’s International unitary, top down governing system. By dictating a
particular organizational core, Greenpeace International helps the split between the
local organizations’ “public-face” and their grass root behavior, while the
organization formally behaves in a manner which is dictated from above. Thus,
resisting the regime’s opportunity structure, its grassroots activism and behind the
scene pattern of engagement, appear more amenable to variation.
In terms of MERCOSUR’s style of governance, because there is a vacuum of
power on the regional level and lack of capacity in the national bureaucracies, and
because political change is fairly rapid in Latin America, there is no benefit for
Greenpeace to become closely associated with political parties or individuals.
Therefore, working with all regimes but maintaining distance is the best method of
remaining relevant but ensuring against being co-opted. In the next section, I will
analyze how Greenpeace behaves in the EU-a regulatory regime that is the most
substantially different in its law enforcement mechanism than MERCOSUR.
Greenpeace-EU
Bureaucratic Legalism, Weaker Civil Society
While Greenpeace maintains its independence and cannot be characterized as
a captured or weak organization, the narrow opportunity structure established by the
EU, and the relatively efficient European bureaucracy, impacts Greenpeace’s role as
64
a leader of an environmental social movement. By choosing to engage the regime
and to gain relevance as an institutional actor, Greenpeace’s role in the EU is
markedly different than its role in MERCOSUR. In the EU, Greenpeace assists the
regime in enforcing compliance vis-à-vis recalcitrant states. Greenpeace performs
scientific research with the intention to impact public discourse on the environment.
Greenpeace collaborates with the regime on common goals. In addition, Greenpeace
participates in the lobbying and legislative process based on the rules of the EU and
its institutional requirements.
However, participating in legislation and lobbying in the EU bureaucracy
suggest a variance from that type of activism in MERCOSUR and NAFTA. In the
EU, bureaucrats tend to control every aspect of implementation. Furthermore,
bureaucrats in the EU tend to have permanent and long term presence as well as a
professional judicial style of behavior that is apolitical in the partisan sense.
Additionally, because money and financial donations is not the vocabulary of
lobbying in the EU, civil society must be careful and engage in a professional, soft
style lobbying and be careful not to offend the bureaucrats or entangle alliances with
the “wrong” political party. In walking that fine line, Greenpeace is able to appear
independent of party politics, (which is not entirely the case in NAFTA), but less
independent of the actual bureaucracy.
While, Greenpeace continues to perform public stunts of activism as part of
its “two roads” or two levels of activism, these are primarily intended to draw
attention to the onset of a new campaign. In recent years, Greenpeace has moved
65
toward acting in an assisting role to the EU as it enforces environmental compliance,
particularly against the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe. Consistent
with its reluctance to engage in entangling alliances and/or associate with a particular
group, Greenpeace activism appears to be in support of greater centralization of the
EU as long the EU supports the environmental positions advocated by Greenpeace.
However, in recent years, as the individual states have moved to a more progressive
and anti Genetically Modified food stuffs (GMOs) position than the EU
Commission, Greenpeace seemed to switch sides and advocated instead for
decentralization and states’ rights. Finally, Greenpeace is well adept at using and
engaging the EU institutions as a major component of its activism.
Thus, in Europe, Greenpeace has adapted to the role of a watchdog
organization. In the following sections, I will analyze how the opportunity structures
created by the EU regime and its member states affect the independence of
Greenpeace. In addition, I will trace how the robust institutional structure of the EU
contributes to the unique pattern of activism displayed by the regional Greenpeace
organizations.
Indicators of Independence
Organizational Structure and Self-Perception
The Greenpeace-European Unit is based in Brussels Belgium—the political
center of the EU. The Greenpeace website describes its work and role as a
“monitoring organization” whose work consists of analyzing the institutions of the
EU. As a watchdog, Greenpeace exposes deficient EU policies and laws, and
66
challenges decision-makers within the EU institutions (Greenpeace EU Website).
Greenpeace’s self-perception is that of assisting the EU to enforce environmental
compliance, and challenging it when it fails to do so. In contrast with Greenpeace
MERCOSUR, the EU website does not emphasize acts of civil disobedience.
Instead, the Greenpeace website and literature emphasizes the independence of the
organization. “Greenpeace is independently funded, and does not accept donations
from governments, corporations or political parties. It relies on contributions from
individual supporters and foundations grants” (Greenpeace EU-Unit). In addition to
maintaining independence through sources of funding, Greenpeace maintains
political neutrality. “In pursuing our mission, we have no permanent allies or
enemies. We promote open, informed debate about society and its environmental
choices” (Greenpeace EU).
Organizational Structure, Personnel and Leadership
Greenpeace’s organizational self-perception is that of an independent
professional organization. Its employees and staff are paid scientists and organizers.
The organization is properly registered and not outside the system. Greenpeace
office staff and personnel include professional advisors in the following areas:
Chemical and Pollution, Climate and Energy, Nuclear, Renewable energy,
Transportation, Forest and Trade, Genetic Engineering and Sustainable Agriculture,
and Oceans and Fisheries. Each of the above areas is led by an individual
professional advisor. In addition, the office maintains a professional communication
manager, a Director, an Assistant Director and an Office Manager. Thus, the unit is
67
professional, formal and organized. Other than the paid personnel, Greenpeace
encourages and maintains a volunteer program. This includes an online activist
registration list. Volunteers are directed to participate in a list of campaigns. In
addition, volunteers are asked to contact the government on behalf of Greenpeace
and to participate in cyber activism. Furthermore, Volunteers are instructed about
how to join one of the Greenpeace ships or public demonstrations.
The Greenpeace office is registered as a non-profit NGO under Belgian law.
In order to fit within the registration rules for the EU and Greenpeace International
rules, the EU office maintains a formal governance structure. It has a general
assembly consisting of an executive Director. The members of the board of
Greenpeace EU are elected from the members of the General Assembly. They also
include one representative from Greenpeace International, who is also a member of
the board. In contrast with MERCOSUR, Greenpeace EU staff consists of
professional lawyers, lobbyists and people who are experts at working with the EU
bureaucracy. As a result, volunteers find it more difficult to get promoted to
leadership positions, a fact that creates a more closed and formal organizational
structure. In order to maintain an image of transparency and openness, Greenpeace,
publishes a complete and detailed account of its finances, funding sources and
expenses.
Greenpeace EU regularly publishes press releases and reviews of the state of
the EU regarding environmental policy. These articles as well as interviews include
both praise and criticism directed towards the regime. The following table compares
68
and contrasts the percentage of articles and press releases in which Greenpeace either
praised or denounced the regime:

Table 3.5: Greenpeace Comparative Ratio of Praising and Denouncing the EU
Regime

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 1 0 0 2 2 3 2 2 2 1 0 3 1 3 1
Qualified praise 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Denounce 8 3 1 7 6 5 0 2 2 3 11 2 5 3 1
Sample Size: 83 Praise: 28% Qualified Praise: 1.2% Denounce: 71%

The numbers in this table reflect an aggregate criticism or praise of all levels
of the EU regime, the Commission, the Council, Parliament, the ECJ, and the state
regimes. All of the above institutions are part of the EU institutional structure. Even
though Greenpeace criticizes the states and the ECJ more often than it directly
criticizes the Commission, Greenpeace issues at least two reports per year critiquing
the work of the Commission. The on-going campaign against genetically modified
crops which appeared to be turning in favor of industry in 2004 led to an unusually
large amount of criticism against the Commission. However, in the last few years,
Greenpeace has helped the Commission enforce its laws against pirate ships and
other state and industrial violations of Community rules. Thus, the level of criticism
or denouncement has declined to the point that in 2009, the most recent major
criticism by Greenpeace was to give the incoming Swedish President of the
Commission a “yellow Card” or a warning (Greenpeace EU unit website). As stated
69
before, Greenpeace is very careful with the language it uses in its press releases and
interviews. Unlike the harsh denouncement often leveled at the MERCOSUR
regime, the majority of references to the EU and its member states often amount to
critique and expression of disappointment. Overall, when compared to the
MERCOSUR data, the level of criticism that Greenpeace engages in with the EU is
almost a third lower than Greenpeace’s denouncement of the MERCOSUR regime.
When comparing the level of praise, the data shows almost no praise for the
MERCOSUR regime while almost a third of the media references associated with
Greenpeace indicate a favorable relationship and support for the actions of the EU.
In addition to press releases and interviews, Greenpeace engages the regime in a
variety of ways ranging from outsider protests and civil disobedience to collaborative
work on common projects, including: lobbying, legislating, educating and
campaigning. The following table compares the various activities through which
Greenpeace engages the regime.

Table 3.6: Ratio of Greenpeace Types of Activism in the EU: Levels of
Independence

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
High 5 6 4 5 7 4 11 8 3 18 17 17 10 14 4
Somewhat 5 7 3 10 11 11 6 9 11 12 16 16 13 13 12
Collusive 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 3 4 4
Sample Size: 304 Level 1: 43.75% Level 2: 51% Level 3: 5.25%
70
This table represents the levels of actual organizational activism that does not
include press releases or interviews. “Highly independent” activism describes
“outsider” activities. These activities generally take place when the organization
feels that direct engagement of the regime is impossible because the regime is either
absent or is hostile in certain areas. In these types of cases, Greenpeace would resort
to civil disobedience, demonstrations and sabotage of anti-environmental activities.
Sabotage includes: blocking access to nuclear facilities, stopping operations of
factories, disrupting formal conferences held by the regime, and blocking harbors
and ships. In contrast, “somewhat independent” activities involves engaging the
regime bureaucracy and its courts against the regime itself or its member states. This
level also involves lobbying and calling for legislation. While these activities are not
“outsider” activities, they are not captured activities either. The third level of
activism describes collusive or captured activism. It involves receiving funds from
the regime, serving on legislative boards and commissions and representing the
regime’s point of view in joint campaigns and statements. Engagement at this level
also includes educating the community on behalf of the regime or postponing certain
activism that might embarrass the regime. Finally, level 3 activity, when it comes to
personnel, represents the appearance of a “revolving-door” in which NGO leaders
move in and out of government consulting or official positions.
The above table demonstrates several important trends. As in the previous
tables, the small number of Greenpeace activism from 1994-2000 reflect the years of
internal crisis. The worst year was 1996, in which Greenpeace donations,
71
participation, public support and activism declined. The overall criticism aimed at
Greenpeace was that it was soft and becoming “corporate”, which led to calls of
going back to their activist roots. At the turn of the century, with the increase in the
size of the Union, and infusion of Central and Eastern European activism, as well as
a host of new regulations that opened the path to newer types of activism, the overall
level of political engagement within Greenpeace increased. The year 2003, was an
anomaly because the war in Iraq led to an unusual spike in level-one activism.
However, the ratio between level-one activism and level-two activism gradually
changed in favor of level one because of the activism in Eastern Europe and the
general commitment that Greenpeace had made to going back to their roots.
However, after 2006, there seems to be an increase in level-two and level-
three activism. Greenpeace began to use the court systems much more often due to
the Aarhus convention. In addition, Greenpeace became more included in regime
commissions and joint campaigns. The Commission often praised Greenpeace for
helping it enforce the law, and a general increase in cooperation ensued. As
mentioned above, the EU Ombudsman as recently as last year implied that
Greenpeace and other NGOs are part of the regime because their role is essential to
implementing regime policy.
The overall higher percentage of insider behavior rather than outsider
behavior suggests that in the EU Greenpeace is primarily a watchdog organization
that plays by the rules in order to enjoy greater influence. The next table will
72
compare another indicator of independence. This indicator has to do with the
reputation Greenpeace enjoys in the community and in the media.
Reputation
Table 3.7: Greenpeace’s Reputation in the EU Community

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 1 5 3 3 7 7 6 6 7 14 14 10 12 15 4
Watchdog 2 5 1 3 6 5 8 9 3 5 13 6 11 9 9
Collusive 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 3 4
Sample Size 220 Activist: 51.8% Watchdog: 43.2% Collusive: 5%

From 1994-2009, the references to Greenpeace as an activist organization
represent 51.8 percent of the sample. In comparison, the references to Greenpeace as
a watchdog organization represent 43.2 percent of the sample, and media items
critical of Greenpeace’s collusive behavior, for its increasingly close cooperation
with the EU regime, represent 5 percent. The increase in the amount of references
and the level of activism after the turn of the millennium reflect three events and
trends: The first is the growing consolidation and activism in the new Central and
Eastern European states where most of the militant style activism has taken place.
The second has to do with the spike in militant activism among Greenpeace leaders
as well as rank and file because of the European involvement in the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. These led to a large amount of demonstrations and
denouncements. Particularly in 2003, the ratio between references as “watchdog”
and as “activist” suddenly spiked in favor of “activist” because of anti-war protests.
73
In addition, from 1994-1998, Greenpeace went through a major crisis with
donations going down and declines in membership. Consequently, there were many
internal discussions in the organization regarding scaling back operations and
changing tactics. By the turn of the century, Greenpeace had made a successful
turnaround, its membership and level of activism increased. Many in Greenpeace
leadership pushed to increase the amount of militant activities which Greenpeace
was known for in order to drum up support in terms of memberships and donations.
The urgency and growing activism and popularity of Greenpeace in Eastern Europe
also contributed to the increase in “activist” designation.
Finally, in the last few years, there has been an increase in criticism that
Greenpeace has become too closely associated with the EU institutions. Greenpeace
became more involved in participating in policy boards helping to craft legislation
not as lobbyists but as part time legislators. Comments by the EU Ombudsman
referring to Greenpeace as assistants in enforcing EU policy increased the media
scrutiny (US Fed News, Jan 24, 2008).
Overall, the media items appear to be divided between describing Eastern and
Central Europeans as militant activists, and between describing the participation of
Greenpeace leaders and experts as makers and enforcers of community policy as
insiders. However, despite the increased amount of joint presentation between EU
leaders and Greenpeace experts, and the growing perception that Greenpeace is
assisting the EU to enforce compliance, Greenpeace maintains a steady level of civil
74
disobedience, militant takeover of nuclear facilities, and public stunts on a yearly
basis sufficient to maintain a media perception that it is still an activist organization.
Greenpeace-EU - A Pattern of Activism
Greenpeace EU shares many similarities with other Greenpeace organizations
throughout the world. These similarities stem from Greenpeace’s central operation
and governing board. As a relatively unitary governing system, local Greenpeace
organizations and offices intend to carry out the directives of Greenpeace
international. In addition, variations in the level and style of operation from one year
to the next are sometimes due to the ebbs and flows of the donation level and energy
level of the international Greenpeace office. However, there are some important
differences between the organizational behavior of Greenpeace EU and other
Greenpeace organizations that are due to the structure of the EU, bureaucratic
culture, and regulatory style. Thus, Greenpeace’s two-level activism, consisting of a
militant wing and a professional lobbyist wing, is a constant throughout the world.
The Greenpeace corporate governing structure, refusal to accept funding from
regimes, refusal to form permanent alliances, or to receive corporate funding, is a
global Greenpeace characteristic. Finally, Greenpeace’s professional style, its adept
use of the media, and its use of public demonstrations as a tool to drum up support
and attention for newly announced campaigns, is also a familiar Greenpeace feature.
However, the unique style of activism associated with Greenpeace EU is
nuanced and attributed to its organizational adjustment to the EU regulatory regime.
Greenpeace has established an EU unit located in Brussels with the intention to
75
coordinate its entire European operation in the center of political gravity.
Recognizing the harmonized and increasingly unitary environmental regulatory
regime throughout Europe, Greenpeace shifted much of its political and lobbying
effort to the center. This effort demonstrated a growth of civil society that is
associated with the increase in the institutionalization of EU bureaucracy.
In contrast with MERCOSUR, Greenpeace EU engages the RTA regime as
much as politically feasible, to the point that it has been occasionally criticized by
the media of collusion with Brussels. Greenpeace helps the RTA regime to enforce
its environmental regulations against national regimes and recalcitrant states. In
many ways Greenpeace transformed itself to become the oil in the EU machine; thus,
making the bureaucratic machine work better. The following are several examples
that illustrate this point: In 1995, in response to French nuclear testing, Greenpeace
requested the commission to invoke article 34 of the EURATOM Treaty which
required the assent of the Commission for any dangerous experiment by member
states (UPI, 1995). This action not only helped the EU enforce its laws but ultimately
empowered the EU against the member states and supported centralization of
administrative authority. In 1997, in response to British oil drilling, Greenpeace sent
a formal letter of complaint to the Commission asking it to invoke a law against the
licensing of off-shore oil exploration that is done without proper assessment. As a
result of formal Greenpeace submission against the UK government in December,
1998, the EU Commission formally supported Greenpeace legal arguments against
state governments breaching EU laws (Deutche Press Agentur). In the latter action,
76
the EU commission indirectly recognized the value of its symbiotic partnership with
the NGOs and Greenpeace in particular. This partnership not only placed
Greenpeace as assisting the regime to implement its own laws, but also helped the
centralization of governance in the EU. Greenpeace has become even more
significant to the EU’s policy enforcement with the approaching accession of the
Eastern European states to the Union. In 2004, as Eastern European countries were
preparing for the final accession into full membership in the EU, Greenpeace
appealed to the Commission to stop Hungary from opening an environmentally
damaging radar station. In 2006, Greenpeace organized a petition drive in Hungary
against an environmentally hazardous gold mine. The collection of petitions is a
method of appealing to the Commission against dangerous projects. In 2007,
Greenpeace filed a complaint to the Commission against Poland in an attempt to
block its highway project. The Commission, in response, threatened Poland with an
ECJ action if the project was not abandoned. In early 2008, the EU Ombudsman
announced that Greenpeace’s primary role in the EU is to help the EU institutions do
their jobs better (US Fed News, Jan 24, 2008). The Ombudsman further pointed out
that Greenpeace filings helped expose maladministration of EU laws; thus, making
the bureaucracy more efficient. The latest complaint to the Ombudsman led to
closing loopholes that had allowed revolving door policies for lobbyists.
In addition, Greenpeace supported centralization of authority by working to
empower the European Court of Justice-ECJ against the member states. Greenpeace
has used the ECJ, although unsuccessfully, more than any other NGO, suing both the
77
states and the Commission itself. However, Greenpeace’s main contribution to the
empowerment of the ECJ centered on its push for the adoption of the Aarhus
Convention which went into affect in 2007 and opened the door for the right of civil
society to sue in the ECJ. One example of early testing of the EU laws occurred on
January 7, 1994, when Greenpeace appealed to the ECJ to stop the EU funding of
two oil rigs. The lawsuit was tossed out because of a lack of standing to sue
government institutions. In 1998, an additional Greenpeace filing to the ECJ was
again turned down due to denial of standing to sue. However, the loss in the Court
led to the previously discussed decade long pressure on the EU to pass legislation
opening up the Courts to civil society.
In order to help the EU in enforcing compliance, Greenpeace uses every
aspect of the bureaucracy that is available. Greenpeace appeals through the
bureaucracy against the states and sometimes against different levels of the EU
regime. At times, Greenpeace turns the EU Parliament against the Commission, the
Commission against the Parliament, the Ombudsman against the Commission, and
the Commission against the states. However, there are a few areas in which the EU
has sided with industry and against civil society. Because of corporate and
international pressure, the EU policy on permitting Genetically Modified food stuff
to enter the continent has become more relaxed. In committees wherein the regime
allows both civil society and industry to compete for policy and attention,
Greenpeace has sometimes found itself at odds with the EU. In those cases
Greenpeace reacted by once more resorting to militant activism. When the states are
78
more environmentally forward-looking than the Commission, Greenpeace switches
sides and becomes a champion of decentralization supporting regulatory federalism
and diversity. Thus, because of its opportunistic style and refusing alliances,
Greenpeace simultaneously supports EU centralization and decentralization
depending on the environmental issue at hand. In 2004, Greenpeace felt that it had
exhausted its ability to achieve the banning of GMO food stuffs through the
Commission and the central EU administration. As a result, Greenpeace began to
openly advocate for devolving power to the states and allowing more decisions to be
made locally. Greenpeace announced that the Commission was isolated on the issue
of GMOs and began bombarding the Commission with citizen petitions. . However,
even in the case of petitioning the regime, Greenpeace is not acting as a complete
outsider because it uses a political instrument that was created by the regime and one
that is acceptable within the realm of standard public policy. For the most part, the
declining areas of policy disagreement between Greenpeace and the EU led to more
positive political engagement and participation in common projects that ultimately
used Greenpeace’s effective organization to promote the RTA policy goals.
In addition, Greenpeace helps the EU enforce its policies against corporations
and individuals. There are several examples that illustrate the above pattern of
Greenpeace activism: In 1995, Greenpeace took action against Shell oil. The action
was welcomed by the EU Commission (Greenwire, May 17, 1995). This action led
to an immediate domino affect as several EU states followed suit and called for a ban
on all dumping of rigs in the sea. Shell immediately caved in and supported a ban on
79
dumping. In addition, in 2002, Greenpeace filed the results of an investigation to the
EU Commission which resulted in the importation of mahogany throughout the EU.
In the same year, the EU Commission, following a formal complaint by Greenpeace,
started an investigation into allegations that HFC manufacturers have too much
influence on EU standardization Committees (Chemical Week, 2002). That action
helped the EU in passing the REACH law which imposed strict regulations on the
chemical industry. This demonstrates Greenpeace’s assistance to the EU in terms of
enforcements against private industry. In May 2006, Greenpeace lobbied the
Commission to change its lobbying rules and make them more transparent by forcing
groups and industry to formally register. This resulted in the Commission issuing
new rules regulating lobbying by private industry. In 2007, Greenpeace went even
further in support of EU policy against private industry by organizing a pro-regime
demonstration in favor of EU climate policy and against energy waste.
Additionally, Greenpeace participates in lobbying and working on developing
environmental regulations and legislation by sitting on several committees in various
levels of the bureaucracy. There are several areas of the EU bureaucracy such as the
Committee of the Regions in which civil society sits on boards and contributes to
scientific discussion. Moreover, Greenpeace lobbies and contributes its expertise in
research to the point that the regime relies on its participation and analysis for the
purpose of policy making. In 1998, Greenpeace representatives participated in the
OSPAR Intergovernmental Commission which regulates radioactive and marine
pollution. On January 19, 2001, Greenpeace and other NGOs participated in hearings
80
at the EU Commission, helping to draft policy on the banning of PVC. Greenpeace
was consulted as a partner in drafting the law on PVC.
Summary of Greenpeace-EU
Finally, as opposed to Greenpeace’s Eastern European-militant style of
activism, Greenpeace in Western Europe engages mostly in professional style
activism that is centered in the Brussels EU-Unit office. The EU office displays a
formal closed style bureaucracy, which concentrates on insider lobbying, using a
variety of bureaucratic appeals whose purpose is to facilitate enforcement of EU. In
addition, a significant amount of Greenpeace activities are aimed at cooperating with
the EU on joint projects and on lobbying for positive reform. Unlike the
MERCOSUR regime, within the EU, projects have a beginning middle and an end.
After Greenpeace and the EU finish working on legislation such as the banning of
PVCs, the EU bureaucracy takes over and enforces the law, and Greenpeace is free
to move on to the next project. Thus, Greenpeace is not put in the position of
replacing the regime by being the only institution in charge of enforcing legislation.
The EU bureaucracy has developed a very narrow opportunity structure for
civil society to engage it. In order to become influential, Greenpeace has chosen to
engage the regime using the regimes own instruments. Even in extreme cases in
which Greenpeace attempts to turn the public against Brussels, it uses acceptable
methods such as appeals to the Ombudsman, to the ECJ or by submissions of legally
collected petitions. Most of Greenpeace’s “outsider” or militant activism was not
directed at the EU regime but rather at private industry or against the war in Iraq.
81
The only cases in which Greenpeace activists engaged in a more militant style of
activism occurred in the early 1990s in an attempt to help the EU enforce nuclear
policy against France, and in Eastern Europe helping the EU enforce its policy in the
new frontiers of the Union. Overall, while Greenpeace is still considered an
independent organization, it is not an outsider organization in a similar manner to its
MERCOSUR counterpart. Moreover, while Greenpeace MERCOSUR enjoys fairly
unanimous acclaim as an independent organization, Greenpeace in the EU has been
criticized at times for collaborating or being too close to the regime. In its press
releases Greenpeace EU often tones down its criticism of the regime, praising it
instead. In the next section, I will examine how Greenpeace behaves in the NAFTA
regime, an RTA whose opportunity structures represent a middle ground between the
EU and MERCOSUR.
Greenpeace - NAFTA
Adversarial Legalism: Civil Society and the Regime
NAFTA’s system of adversarial legalism and shallow intergovernmental
style of integration provides a much wider opportunity structure than EU’s much
tighter regulatory bureaucracy. However, NAFTA’s regime cannot be equated to the
vacuum of regulatory power existing in the MERCOSUR system. In contrast with
MERCOSRUR, NAFTA’s regulatory regime does not amount to wishful thinking.
NAFTA provides a method of dispute resolution and enforcement mechanism of
environmental law that is much more effective than that of MERCOSUR and
provides ample enticement for civil society to engage the regime by jointly linking
82
with other civil societies across national borders. Since its inception, NAFTA has led
to a creation of a vibrant civil society. The regional civil society in general and
Greenpeace in particular engage the NAFTA regulatory regime and its institutions in
the context of NAFTA’s adversarial regulatory style. NAFTA’s regulatory style
provides for a wider opportunity structure than that of the EU but a narrower one
than that of MERCOSUR. The following section will examine whether the
expectation that Greenpeace should display a different and more independent pattern
of activism than its EU counterpart, but less independent than its MERCOSUR
organization, is justifiable.
Indicators of Independence
Organizational Structure and Self-Perception
The evolution of Greenpeace NAFTA, consistent with NAFTA’s shallow
intergovernmental structure of transnational integration, led to the development of
three separate offices displaying somewhat different styles of activism. In contrast
with the above statement, however, the common environmental regime established
by NAFTA led to the gradual development of cross-national linkages and the type of
transnational collaboration that would merit a discussion of a NAFTA civil society
as opposed to three separate civil societies. Nonetheless, in reporting the data
concerning organizational structure, self-perception, style of activism, and
independence, I intend to trace the patterns of national variations within the
aggregate conceptualization of an RTA based civil society.
83
While Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Canada originated the International
Greenpeace organization in the early 1970s, and as a result absorbed and lived
through much of the international transformation surrounding the ebbs and flows of
the environmental movement, Greenpeace Mexico was established in 1994,
specifically to provide a counter-hegemonic response to the inception of the NAFTA
trade regime. Given that historical difference as well as Mexico’s lack of
environmental institutional bureaucratic capacity, there is a marked uniqueness to
Greenpeace Mexico’s style of activism.
Greenpeace USA
Greenpeace USA’s website and campaign literature introduce the NGO as a
leading independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful direct action and
creative modes of communication to expose global environmental problems and to
promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future (Greenpeace USA
Website). Similarly to other Greenpeace organizations, the USA office emphasizes
bearing witness and non-violence as important aspects of its activism. Furthermore,
Greenpeace USA, just like all its regional and national counterparts, accepts no
corporate or government funding and does not entangle any permanent alliances with
any political regime. Thus Greenpeace USA’s self perception promotes the ethos of
independence.
As far as its governing structure and staff, Greenpeace USA follows
Greenpeace International’s corporate bylaws and corporate style structure. In
contrast with other Greenpeace organizations, the American website provides an
84
extensive biographical data on each of its officers maintaining full transparency.
Greenpeace USA has eight officers, an executive director and a funding board. In
contrast with other Greenpeace organizations, however, Greenpeace USAs executive
board and office staff displays a higher profile and greater degree of professional
prestige. Given the higher salaries and need to frequently testify in front of
Congressional Committees as well as engage in the type of high pressure lobbying
activities that are mandated by the American Style regime, moving up in the ranks of
Greenpeace USA is difficult and requires a far more superior resume than would
suffice in the Greenpeace MERCOSUR organization. As a result, Greenpeace USA
displays a far more closed and formal organization in which volunteers cannot
simply expect the kind of internal training that would result in promotion. Thus,
Donald Ross, Greenpeace chair, has an extensive professional background in running
corporate style organizations and political campaigns, among them NYPIRG, a state
based research and advocacy institution, the directorship of the Rockefeller Family
Fund as well as a significant resume of lobbying and public relations campaigns.
These achievements have capped a career of partnership in a major law firm that
provides lobbying services to its clients. While, I do not intend to indulge in the
resume of each member of Greenpeace USA’s executive staff, it would suffice to
report that the rest of the resumes include top university professors in the fields of
law as well as highly reputable scientists, and communication experts. Most
members of the staff either have MBAs or law degrees, a factor that contrasts them
from their MERCOSUR counterparts. In addition, to its professional staff,
85
Greenpeace USA provides ample opportunities for volunteers to get involved in
activism. It maintains a student network and offers college units for summer
programs of environmental studies and tutelage.
Greenpeace Canada
Greenpeace Canada’s literature and website provides the same commitment
to independence as the rest of the Greenpeace organizations. Its board of directors
displays the same corporate style as that of Greenpeace International. In contrast
with Greenpeace USA’s website which thanks corporations and Congressional
leaders for their close environmental articulation with Greenpeace, the Canadian
webpage and literature emphasizes a more outsider style of activism, displaying
pictures and videos of acts of civil disobedience and take-over of facilities that is
more traditionally associated with the Greenpeace pedigree. Thus, Greenpeace
Canada presents itself as a more outsider organization. This marked difference is
associated with the substantial demise of Greenpeace USA in the 1990s which
ultimately forced it to close down its American offices and concentrate on
Washington D.C. centered activities.
Greenpeace Mexico
Greenpeace Mexico’s mission statement is similar to that of other
Greenpeace organizations. However, its website and literature refer to the
organization as “totally independent” and insists that it does not receive donations
from the Catholic Church—an important state institution in Mexico (Greenpeace
Mexico Website). In addition, Greenpeace Mexico emphasizes outsider style
86
activism more than its northern counterparts. Its literature indicates a substantial
participation in direct non-violent forms of civil disobedience, research, lobbying
legislation, and consulting and forming citizen organizations and groups. In general,
Greenpeace Mexico’s website and literature is more antagonistic toward the Mexican
regime and toward NAFTA than that of its Northern sister organizations.
In addition to its organizational structure and self perception, Greenpeace
NAFTA engages the regional regimes through various means. One method of
engagement is through press releases and interviews issuing criticism, support and
often denouncements of NAFTA’s environmental records. In the following table, I
will evaluate Greenpeace NAFTA’s attitude toward the regime as displayed by
comparing and contrasting its degree of support and denouncement of the regime.

Table 3.8: Greenpeace Comparative Ratio of Praising and Denouncing NAFTA

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Qualified praise 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Denounce 7 5 7 8 3 5 5 2 2 5 3 3 0 5 1
Sample Size: 68 Praise: 4.4% Qualified Praise: 6% Denounce: 89.6%

Greenpeace issued a high level of denouncement and criticism in the early
years of the establishment of NAFTA because it was an ardent opponent of the
agreement and fought against free trade. After the first few years, denouncement and
criticism were generally issued only against the national regimes of the three
87
member states with the most denouncements in 2003 against the USA because of the
war in Iraq. Because none of the member regimes initiated any significant, pro-
environmental legislation since the inception of NAFTA, Greenpeace did not issue
any significant praises of the regime. Greenpeace’s relationship with the
governments in NAFTA and its member states, demonstrate a high degree of
antagonism and dissatisfaction. When comparing the ratio of denouncement versus
praise in the three regimes studied, it appears that Greenpeace NAFTA can be placed
safely between Greenpeace MERCOSUR which displays the most hostile journalism
vis-à-vis the regime, and Greenpeace EU which displays the lowest percentage of
denouncement of the EU regime. As an indicator of independence, Greenpeace
MERCOSUR’s percentage of denouncing the regime, place it the furthest as a
political outsider, while Greenpeace EU occupies the least outsider position.
In addition to press releases and interviews, Greenpeace engages in a variety
of activities involving various degrees of engaging the regime. The next table
compares the percentages of highly- independent or outsider behavior to that of
somewhat independent and collusive behavior.

Table 3.9: Percentage of Greenpeace Types of Activism in NAFTA: Levels of
Independence

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
High 12 7 8 5 5 6 3 9 2 11 8 5 2 1 2
Somewhat 12 14 13 14 11 11 3 7 8 4 5 7 3 6 5
Collusive 3 1 1 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Sample Size: 218 Level 1: 39.4% Level 2: 56.4% Level 3: 4.2%
88
Between 1994 and 2009, 39.4 percent of Greenpeace activities were highly
independent outsider style of engagements. These included outsider behavior such as
civil disobedience, demonstrations, forceful takeover of government or industrial
facilities, takeover or blockading of ships and boats, and appeal to outsider
international bodies to force NAFTA states to obey international environmental
standards. In contrast, somewhat independent activism accounted for 56.4 percent of
Greenpeace political activities. These included engagement of the regime using the
regime’s institutionalized methods and instruments: included among these are,
testifying to the legislature, submitting scientific studies, lobbying, suing in a
NAFTA or a national court, and negotiating with government or industry. The
percentage of collusive behavior amounted to 4.2 percent of all activities. These
included serving on legislative or quasi-legislative agencies or commissions,
partnering with the regime on joint initiatives, receiving funding from the regime to
conduct research on behalf of the regime, or receiving any type of compensation
from the regime to conduct regular organizational activity. Finally, level three
activities also include conducting educational campaigns that are intended to
persuade the public to support specific government policies.
In 1994, the large number of highly independent activities reflected the initial
protests against the establishment of NAFTA in each of the three countries. From
1995-2000, there was a significant decline in level one activism primarily because
activism in the United States and Canada had to be scaled back due to the general
weakness in the Greenpeace organization during those years. The scaling back of
89
American operations and closing all offices except the Washington DC office
definitely made a difference in the amount of campaigns the organization was able to
initiate. In addition, Greenpeace responded to the friendly Clinton administration by
changing strategy to a more constructive engagement with the intention to increase
its clout. Much of the level one activism during the mid to late 1990s was attributed
to Greenpeace Mexico. However, in 2001, Greenpeace USA made a conscious
strategic decision to go back to its roots and initiate anti-regime provocations in
order to win back supporters that expected “outsider” radical behavior. The incoming
Bush administration, its anti-environmental actions and the war in Iraq led to a
revival in Greenpeace fund raising, popularity, and organizational strength. In
addition, Greenpeace initiated more radical “outsider” activism in Canada Mexico
and the U.S.
From 1994-2000, level two activism with the direct intention of engaging the
friendly Clinton administration in order to achieve more clout was Greenpeace’s
mode of operations. However, after 2001, the Bush administration and Republican
majority treated Greenpeace as an outlaw organization, excluded Greenpeace
members from commissions, congressional hearings, and sent the FBI to investigate
and spy on Greenpeace. Greenpeace’s level of engagement of the American regime
declined significantly. The few examples of level three collusive type of activism
were associated with Greenpeace temporarily serving on quasi-legislative
environmental commissions throughout NAFTA. Overall, Greenpeace NAFTA
demonstrates a strong level of independence. The national regimes in the three
90
NAFTA countries were never institutionally available for Greenpeace to structurally
engage them in a collusive or even a constructive manner. The Mexican bureaucracy
is controlled by the executive branch and its rules are not open to judicial
interpretation. However, the general lack of enforcement and compliance with the
laws in Mexico, and the general closed, secretive and retreatist manner in which the
Mexican bureaucracy operates, leaves Greenpeace no choice but to fight in the
streets or to organize indigenous populations and other NGOs for a fight in the
NAFTA courts.
In addition to Greenpeace’s self perception and level of activism, an
additional indicator of independence is the organization’s reputation in the
community. The following table will compare the percentage of media reports
referring to Greenpeace as an “activist”, “watchdog” or “collusive” organization.

Table 3.10: Greenpeace NAFTA: Reputation

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 14 8 10 5 4 7 5 11 4 13 12 6 6 1 5
Watchdog 7 7 5 9 7 12 6 5 9 2 6 5 4 5 2
Collusive 3 1 2 2 2 2 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
Sample size: 216 Activist: 51.5% Watchdog: 42% Collusive: 6.5%

Overall, 51.5 percent of media reports used the word activist, militant,
extremist or fundamentalist to relate to Greenpeace. In comparison, 42 percent of the
media referred to Greenpeace as a watchdog, legislative pressure groups, scientists,
91
or experts. These items referred to Greenpeace’s efforts to lobby, monitor or expose
government or industry using institutional methods of engagement. In contrast, 6.5
percent of the media items accused Greenpeace of collusion with the regime,
betrayal of their original mission, conservative, or of being partners with the regime.
From the media items, it appears that Greenpeace NAFTA has a reputation of an
activist “outsider” group which, in certain years engages in a more insider or
collusive behavior in order to achieve greater clout.
Greenpeace NAFTA: Patterns of Activism
The NAFTA institutions and their system of functioning as an adversarial,
legalistic, regulatory regime, established an operational method that is both
cumbersome, requires expertise, and necessitates the passing of a high threshold in
order to engage its courts. As a result, this system encourages linkages across
national and state lines. Cases to the NAFTA courts are brought by a coalition of
NGOs uniting the civil society of the three member states. The CEC board consisting
of members from each of the three member states sometimes raises the possibility
that different judges would take sides that favor their respective country. By
developing a multi-national coalition, Greenpeace and other NGOs attempted to
overcome this problem. The establishment of NAFTA and its environmental side
agreements became a variable that promoted the development of a supranational civil
society. Thus, a thriving environmental civil society spawned around the new free
trade institutions. Furthermore, Greenpeace Mexico became one of the largest, most
assertive and most vibrant of the Greenpeace global organizations. A substantial
92
portion of Greenpeace Mexico’s organizational energy is geared toward engaging
NAFTA and its courts. Thus, unlike the MERCOSUR regime which is ignored by
Greenpeace due to its lack of capacity, NAFTA creates an impetus toward the
development of large regional coalitions of civil society NGOs. The NAFTA system
encourages engagement in formal legal strategy. The following are examples that
illustrate how Greenpeace engages the NAFTA system: In 1995, a coalition of
NAFTA NGOs led by Greenpeace filed a complaint in the NAFTA courts against the
U.S. government for failure to enforce the endangered species act. This filing
included 27 Canadian, American, and Mexican NGOs. In 1996, Greenpeace sued the
Mexican government in the NAFTA CEC. This particular appeal concerned
Mexico’s promotion of cruise ship tourism in a sensitive Cozumel reef. Later that
year, Greenpeace filed an appeal against the U.S. in opposition to its building a toxic
waste dump on the Mexican border. In 1997, Greenpeace groups from the U.S.,
Canada and Mexico joined to take Canada to the NAFTA courts because of its
failure to enact an endangered species law. In 2005, Greenpeace filed a complaint
against a gas terminal in Mexico to the NAFTA courts. The above examples
represent a sample of appeals to the NAFTA courts. Greenpeace initiated or
participated in appeals against the NAFTA states regularly in each of the years since
the inception of NAFTA. Thus, although Greenpeace was the most anti-NAFTA
organization in 1994, its use of the NAFTA institutions helped strengthen these
institutions and legitimize them. Furthermore, once NAFTA was launched,
Greenpeace’s role within NAFTA was to fight to centralize and augment the reach of
93
these institutions. In doing so, Greenpeace’s role was not only to use NAFTA in
order to force its states to abide by their own laws, but also to save NAFTA from
national attempts to declaw its institutional reach. Greenpeace helped expose a secret
attempt by the Canadian government to weaken the CEC’s ability to enforce decision
against the national governments.
However, in recent years, NAFTA had transformed into an institutional space
in which corporations began to use the same procedures available to environmental
NGOs, to fight against national environmental laws. Consistent with Greenpeace’s
opportunistic and independent style and its refusal of entangling alliances, the
organization proceeded with attempts to weaken or eliminate provisions in NAFTA’s
chapter 11 and 14 that allowed corporations to sue national governments in the
NAFTA courts, in order to weaken national environmental laws. Particularly telling
was the Metalcald case in 2001. In that case Greenpeace participated in appeals
against a landfill which was located in Mexico. Metalcald ultimately won the appeal
in the NAFTA courts. However, Greenpeace bypassed the NAFTA decision and
further sued Metalcald in a Canadian court in British Columbia. In addition,
Greenpeace organized communities to demonstrate in Mexico against the landfill
and began earnestly to push for the idea of national sovereignty that would allow
states to not to abide by NAFTA decisions. Especially after 2002, as corporations
began to step up their use of NAFTA’s institutions against national governments,
Greenpeace found itself fighting for decentralization, and national sovereignty.
94
Furthermore, Greenpeace at that point engaged more in civil disobedience and
outsider style campaigning and community-organizing.
Thus, Greenpeace has gone from being initially antagonistic towards
NAFTA, to using the NAFTA process to enforce national environmental laws and
support strengthening of the CEC mandates and funding so that it can do its job.
Greenpeace’s current approach is to encourage the three national governments
involved, to defy the CEC when it rules in favor of international corporations and
against national environmental laws. Here again, Greenpeace simultaneously fought
to increase centralization and integration and to decentralize focusing more on the
environment than on institutional integrity. This demonstrates that Greenpeace’s
opportunistic style, that of refusing alliances when it proves efficacious, and
corporate or regime funding, helps the organization maintain political flexibility.
Moreover, by simultaneously engaging in legal appeals to the NAFTA courts while
organizing non-violence civil disobedience and community organizing efforts,
Greenpeace further demonstrated its two-roads or two-level approach to activism.
National Variations within NAFTA
In contrast with its northern counterparts, Greenpeace-Mexico is the most
activist and independent of the major North American NGOs. The Mexican system is
formally bureaucratic and legalistic. However, its lack of capacity, corrupt-retreatist
regulatory culture, and secretive procedures, led Greenpeace to conduct its activism
on the local level and the RTA level. Locally, Greenpeace Mexico works through
community organization and empowerment. Greenpeace is antagonistic in its
95
engagement of the Mexican government. It engages in acts of defiance and civil
disobedience toward the national regime. Greenpeace Mexico supported the rebels in
the Chiapas region as well as other local activism. Greenpeace Mexico has filed
more submission to the NAFTA CEC against Mexico and against American
corporations than its North American sister organizations. The NAFTA submission
process helped Greenpeace to develop deeper relationship with the local community
and to develop coalition and linkage with civil society groups in Mexico and in the
U.S. and Canada. Greenpeace Mexico is a grassroots, open organization with deep
connections to local communities.
Overall, the NAFTA adversarial legal process has contributed to the
development of a North American civil society. Greenpeace uses the NAFTA appeal
process as a way to enforce compliance of member states with environmental laws.
The NAFTA process is not bureaucratic but rather adversarial. The requirement to
involve the community that was harmed by environmental violation in the
submission process, suggests a more activist and socially engaging process than the
bureaucratic appeal that exists in bureaucratic legalism. The NAFTA regulatory
regime maintains a relatively wide opportunity structure for Greenpeace to operate
in.
96
Conclusion: What Varies and What does not Vary
Table 3.11: Greenpeace Data: Reputation

Reputation
Location Collusive Watchdog Activist
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
3
(5.56%)
(10.71%)
26
(48.15%)
(12.26%)
25
(46.30%)
(17.86%)
54
(100%)
(14.21%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
14
(6.80%)
(50.00%)
91
(44.17%)
42.92%)
101
(49.03%)
(72.14%)
206
(100%)
(54.21%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
11
(9.17%)
(39.29%)
95
(79.17%)
(44.81%)
14
(11.67%)
(10.00%)
120
(100%)
(31.58%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
28
(7.37%)
(100%)
212
(55.79%)
(100%)
140
(36.84%)
(100%)
380
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 48.418, df = 4, p < .0001 (test of independence)

Table 3.12: Greenpeace Data: Behavior

Behavior
Location Collusive
Somewhat
Independent Independent
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
2
(2.04%)
(7.41%)
57
(58.16%)
(17.54%)
39
(39.80%)
(14.55%)
98
(100%)
(15.81%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
9
(4.13%)
(33.33%)
113
(51.83%)
(34.77%)
96
(44.04%)
(35.82%)
218
(100%)
(35.16%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
16
(5.26%)
(59.26%)
155
(50.99%)
(47.69%)
133
(43.75%)
(49.63%)
304
(100%)
(49.03%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
27
(4.35%)
(100%)
325
(52.42%)
(100%)
268
(43.23%)
(100%)
620
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 2.875, df = 4, p = .578957 (test of independence)
97
Table 3.13: Greenpeace Data: Press Releases Polarity
Praise vs. Denouncement
Location Praise
Qualified
Praise Denouncement
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
1
(3.23%)
(3.70%)
0
(0%)
(0%)
30
(96.77%)
(20.00%)
31
(100%)
(17.03%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
3
(4.41%)
(11.11%)
4
(5.88%)
(80.00%)
61
(89.71%)
(40.67%)
68
(100%)
(37.36%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
23
(27.71%)
(85.19%)
1
(1.20%)
(20.00%)
59
(71.08%)
(39.33%)
83
(100%)
(45.60%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
27
(14.84%)
(100%)
5
(2.75%)
(100%)
150
(82.42%)
(100%)
182
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 23.581, df = 4, p < .0001 (test of independence)

Based on the above tests, there is little evidence for demonstrating a
correlation between regime type and civil society’s independence. Furthermore,
when comparing Greenpeace’s reputation and its type of activism in the three
regulatory regimes, MERCOSUR, EU and NAFTA, the results appear fairly similar
in both categories. This similarity could be explained by Greenpeace-International’s
governing structure, which dictates substantially the same mode of operation
throughout the world, establishes an organizational core, which is strongly resistant
to adaptation. As mentioned before, the Greenpeace organization displays a complex
behavior. In addition, Greenpeace’s organizational core resists adaptability in its
formal public-face level. That formal level is strictly governed by Greenpeace
98
International through its unitary style of governance. As a result, some of the
measures of independence such as reputation or formal behavior are less sensitive to
regime change. In contrast with the previously mentioned formal indicators of
Independence, the organization’s pattern of engagement, organizational structure,
personnel and culture, reveal far more interesting cross-regime varying patterns. The
necessity to delve deeper to the “behind the scenes” level of operation gives greater
justification to the theoretical approach, which centers on the interactions, between
the regimes and their NGOs. The pattern of the interactions between Greenpeace and
the three regimes, reveal the previously stated organizational contingencies that
mediate regime variables.
In considering the organizational “public-face”, it appears that Greenpeace
tends to stick to a fairly similar style of activism, consisting of the two-level activism
approach, financial independence, and refusal to engage in entangling political
alliances. As a unitary governing system, Greenpeace behavior in different regimes
appears to be statistically similar. However, despite these similarities, this project has
discovered some nuanced variations in the pattern of organizational behavior across
different Regional Trade Agreements.
The first variation establishes how the degree of regime institutional capacity
and depth of integration, shapes the role which Greenpeace plays within the RTA.
On the one extreme, MERCOSUR and its member states display a weak regime with
low capacity and retreatist bureaucracy. In that regime, Greenpeace prefers to engage
a range of alternative institutions locally and internationally. The capricious and
99
inconsistent behavior of the bureaucracy makes it easier for Greenpeace to avoid
entangling alliances with political parties or bureaucrats whose tenure is temporary
and effectiveness limited. In light of these opportunity structures, Greenpeace
inevitably maintains a high level of independence from the RTA regime.
Furthermore, Greenpeace tends to engage in enforcing compliance with
environmental laws not only as an assistant to the regime but mainly as a
replacement of the regime. Thus, civil society fills in the gap, an approach in which
the regime virtually does not exist. In addition, Greenpeace MERCOSUR ends up
engaging in sabotaging and preventing bad projects more than initiating good ones.
Finally, Greenpeace staff does not include high profile lobbyists and attorneys
because there is not need for them. As a result, Greenpeace MERCOSUR creates an
open space for a true social movement in which volunteers can be empowered and
promoted within the organization.
On the other extreme, the EU being the prototype of bureaucratic legalism
maintains high institutional capacity and comprehensive regulation of society. In the
EU, Greenpeace behaves more as an assistant to the regime and at times an extension
of the regime. Greenpeace helps the regime enforce the law. Although, in some
areas, the regime entrusts civil society to administer certain programs on behalf of
the RTA, this is not done to replace the regime but rather to be partially absorbed by
the regime’s institutions. Because in the EU, bureaucrats are the primary enforcers of
the regime, and their tenure exceeds the ebbs and flows of party politics, and because
financial donations are not the acceptable instrument of European lobbying,
100
Greenpeace avoids either entangling alliance or antagonistic behavior towards the
EU bureaucracy. The above tenant of bureaucratic legalism contributes to a mild and
collaborative type of engagement on behalf of Greenpeace.
Finally, NAFTA represents the prototype of Adversarial Legalism.
Greenpeace NAFTA uses the NAFTA institutions in an adversarial mode with the
intention of forcing the national regimes to enforce their own laws and to help build
institutional capacity in a reactive manner. Thus, in NAFTA, Greenpeace is involved
in developing norms. In NAFTA, institutions are gradually defined on a case by case
basis. In addition, in NAFTA, Greenpeace is involved in developing a social
movement with local communities and developing environmental standards in
partnership with industry.
The second factor affecting variance is regulatory style. The EU bureaucratic
style encourages Greenpeace to collaborate with the regime and become adept at
using the appeal process within the bureaucracy to achieve organizational goals. The
NAFTA adversarial style encourages linkage politics which help form social
movements. In order to engage national courts and the NAFTA process, it is
imperative for Greenpeace to organize the community that was harmed by the action
of the state. It is also important to create a cross national coalition to participate in
the appeal. Thus, the NAFTA process in and of itself helps create a Greenpeace civil
society.
In addition, in NAFTA, while the bureaucracy is less important than the
courts in determining public policy, party politics and high pressure lobbying are
101
essential for political influence and the crafting of laws. Consequently, in NAFTA,
the inadvertent entangling of alliance with political parties or favorable
administrations is inevitable. Thus, Greenpeace tends to engage in more antagonistic
behavior with the Republican Party and less with the Democratic Party. The
previously mentioned scandal associated with financial gifts and exotic trips given
by Greenpeace-USA to public officials is unique to NAFTA and was never intended
to be part of Greenpeace’s “public face”. In contrast with NAFTA and the EU,
MERCOSUR’s lack of regime capacity, encourages experimentation and
opportunism. Greenpeace MERCOSUR does not have a set strategy. Within
MERDOCUSR, Greenpeace tries to put out fires by engaging in a variety of
inconsistent strategies.
102
CHAPTER FOUR
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH
Friends-of-the-Earth International is central to the purpose of this project
because its organizational structure, a loose confederation, presents the best
opportunity to trace meaningful variations across regimes. Given that FoE’s
International governing style tends to promote general values rather than dictate
particular methods or specific organizational cores, regional adaption to the different
rules of the game is easier for FoE affiliates than for most other centrally controlled
organizations. (See table 4.1 for a summary of these differences). Along this line,
this chapter seeks to explain how the three RTAs, by developing different
opportunity structures through their regulatory institutions and laws, led to the
variations in independence, style of activism, type of leadership and patterns of
strategic engagement. Furthermore, in comparing FoE to Greenpeace, this chapter
will ultimately suggest that when the organizational core is less established and more
open to adaptability, and when civil society is financially and organizationally
dependent, a regime with substantial bureaucratic capacity could exert more
influence on the organization’s style of activism and would be more likely to co-opt
and absorb its civil society.
In the following sections, I will briefly explain the history, culture and
structure of FoE-International and its regional affiliates. I will compare and contrast
FoE MERCOSUR, EU, and NAFTA based on organizational structure, indicators of
103
independence, variations in patterns of activism and engagement of the different
regimes.

Table 4.1: Summary of Findings

Name FoE - MERCOSUR FoE - EU FoE - NAFTA
Regime type Retreatist Bureaucratic
legalism
Adversarial legalism
Level of
independence
Highly independent Captured Somewhat independent
Style of activism opportunistic,
antagonistic, reactive
Formal,
collaborative,
proactive
Formal, somewhat
antagonistic, mixed (reactive
and proactive)
Type of
leadership
Open, activist,
grassroots
Closed,
professional,
bureaucratic
Closed, professional,
corporate, with some
grassroots activism
Pattern of
strategic
engagement
Non-engagement,
seeks other regimes to
engage
Plays by the book,
Cooperative,
collusive
Two level engagement:
1) adversarial-grassroots
2) collaborative, formal

Origins of Friends of the Earth
Friends-of-the-Earth (FoE) was established as a result of a feud between
members of the Sierra Club in the United States. In 1969, after serving seventeen
years as the club executive director, David Brower became embroiled in several
disputes over environmental issues, commitment to the organization, his managerial
style and budgeting. After resigning, Brower announced that the new organization
would become everything that the Sierra Club was not. According to his vision, FoE
would be international instead of national; decentralized and federalized instead of
104
being bureaucratic like the Sierra Club; and the organization would be far more
anarchic.
Consequently, FOE has offices in more countries than any other NGO. FoE
attempts to take on every environmental issue. FOE’s funding comes from a variety
of sources, such as charitable foundations, donations and government grants where
available. Because of its large size and organizational structure, FOE has been able
to effectively take on environmental problems that other NGOs were unable to do.
The success of the organization has been attributed to its world wide proliferation.
The governance structure of Friends of the Earth is different from that of
other organizations. While most NGOs are centrally governed, FOE is more like a
confederation. In a confederation the individual offices exercise maximum
independence from their central office. The individual chapters are bound to the
organization by name and reputation, but are otherwise independent. Unlike
Greenpeace and WWF which recruit local activists by sending central office people
to train and enroll new members, FOE does not send out missionaries to set up
offices but rather waits for local organization to apply for membership. People
contact FOE in order to apply for membership based on FOE’s goals and reputation.
Groups that apply must be approved by the central organization based on certain
requirements. However, new groups do not have to become the mirror image of other
FOE offices as Diversity is valued and allowed.
105
Politics, Style of Activism and Organizational Structure
FoE’s style of activism is regime and state centered. It targets the regimes
because FoE considers the greatest harm or good that can come to the environment
to be because of activities and actions enacted by the regimes. Thus, FOE’s political
activities involve engaging the regime in every possible manner that is available. For
example, FOE actively lobbies state officials and state representatives; tries to affect
elections; attempts to advance its own policies; puts direct pressure on governments
using, media, public demonstrations and a host of internal and external legal and
corporate sources to force the state to comply with environmental laws and
directives. Consistent with these principles, FoE would appeal to any local, national,
International or corporate-private institutions which possess the capacity to exert
influence on the state. In some states where the regulatory regime is based on
adversarial legalism, the courts could be employed to force the state to acquiesce.
However, in bureaucratic regulatory regimes a host of bureaucratic entanglements
can be used to force state action. Finally, when the regime is absent and the
bureaucracy is retreatist, FOE often appeals to local communities, international
organizations or corporate boards that can directly or indirectly pressure state action.
While the above stated political options imply a variation of strategies utilized in
fulfilling the same goal, the result of FoE’s institutional flexibility correspondingly
exposes its chapters to greater vulnerability to the powerful pressures exerted by the
regime. Thus, in the absent of a top down, inflexible and dictated organizational
core, FoE chapters are free to creatively engage different regulatory regimes within
106
the regimes’ opportunity structures with the direct purpose of gaining greater success
in achieving their organizational goals. In doing so, civil society, inevitably is more
open to adapt to the culture of political engagement and style of activism associated
with the regime. Consequently, there is a high likelihood that other characteristics of
the FoE’s chapters would be impacted, specifically their level of independence.
Additionally, it is likely that regime impact may affect the unintended result of
shaping the character and culture of individual chapters leading to substantial cross-
regime variations.
In the following section, I will describe how the MERCOSUR regime’s lack
of institutional capacity creates a wide opportunity structure for FoE to employ a
variety of strategies aimed at stopping the degradation of the environment while
maintaining institutional independence.
FoE - MERCOSUR
Retreatist Bureaucracy, Strong Civil Society
They (FoE Europe) believe in their governments. They believe they
can negotiate and reach accords with their governments. They believe
that their governments are giving good faith effort. We (FOE
MERCOSUR) do not give our governments the benefit of the doubt,
nor to any government of any type… They (regimes) lie and cheat
and fix the numbers… We are like FoE in Eastern Europe; we do not
trust regimes to enforce the law.

- Petra Marzolini, former President of Friends of the Earth Argentina

The above quote by Petra Marzolini former president of FoE Argentina
(2009) represents the attitude and the style of activism that characterizes the four
107
FoE organizations that have evolved in the MERCOSUR states. FoE responded to
the retreatist bureaucracy and to the vacuum in environmental legislation and
enforcement across MERCOSUR by refusing to engage the RTA institutions, and by
working primarily with local communities, international regimes, and corporate
institutions to sabotage private and public projects that are harmful to the
environment. Thus, by refusing to trust the regime and by working to circumvent it,
FoE has become the ultimate political outsider boosting its level of independence
vis-à-vis the regime. Consequently, FoE is reactive, antagonistic, and deeply
involved in the promotion of both local and regional environmental movement.
None-the-less, unlike Greenpeace, FoE does not have a formal strategy which
includes civil disobedience or a two-level activism. While FoE occasionally engages
in street demonstrations or sit-ins, it does not employ these tactics regularly or as a
primary method of getting its volunteers involved. Although, its leaders, (Marzolini,
Ortiz, Selvatica, 2009) claim that, in comparison to Greenpeace, FoE does not
practice antagonistic aggressive style of activism, FoE-MERCOSUR is, none-the-
less, highly independent and operates on the cutting edge of anti-capitalistic, and
anti-corporate radical ideology. In the following sections, I will probe how the
opportunity structures created by MERCOSUR’s lack of institutional capacity
contribute to the unique pattern of FoE’s activism, its methods of engaging the
regime, and its style of activism, organization and leadership.
108
Indicators of Independence: Organizational Structure, Leadership
and Self Perception
The evolution of FoE in MERCOSUR led to the establishment of four
distinct affiliates, one in each of the MERCOSUR countries. Consistent with FoE’s
loose confederation style each of these affiliates gave themselves unique names that
reflect the character of the host community and the main environmental goals of the
local social movement. Accordingly, FoE Paraguay is called Sobrevivencia or
“survival” while FoE Uruguay is called REDES (referring to a network of social
organization). The FoE organizations in the four MERCOSUR states display some
organizational variety. While FoE Uruguay and Paraguay consists of a single office
run by a network of volunteers, the Argentine and Brazil FoE offices represent a
federation representing different groups. In Argentina, the federation includes many
independent groups which vary in their level of militancy and self-perception. In
Brazil, the groups perceive themselves to be independent but are registered with the
government. FoE groups promote linkage of civil society across state lines but
maintain organizational independence and autonomy (FoE Argentina, Brazil,
Uruguay and Paraguay websites).
Leadership
Unlike the FoE organization in NAFTA and the EU, the FoE-in-
MERCOSUR chapters are run by volunteers. These organizations are open and
promote volunteers to leadership positions. Accordingly, these volunteers do not
receive financial remuneration and generally hold regular jobs and careers. For
109
example, Natalia Selvatica, the current FoE Water issues Campaign coordinator is a
full time graphic designer. Carla her assistant is a full time English teacher. They
hand design the campaign literature for the office. The FoE office in Buenos Aires is
disheveled and rundown. It is poorly funded and located in a working class
neighborhood while serving both as a political headquarters and as community
center. Promoting FoE as a community centered-people’s social movement is aided
by the fact that FOE-MERCOSUR organizations do not have a legal team nor
employ any lawyers. Maria Ortiz of REDES explains that the legal system in the
MERCOSUR states lacks the capacity to enforce environmental law and does not
grant standing to civil society to sue (Ortiz, 2009). As a result, there is no need to
hire experts, a fact that allows an open door for volunteers to perform all the office
tasks based on their area of expertise. FoE’s leaders do not accept government jobs
nor do they run for office. Thus, they avoid the type of revolving door activities
which jeopardize the independence of many European and North American
organizations.
Variation in Issues and Structure
The four FoE organizations within MERCOSUR promote different agendas
that are unique to the environmental conditions that afflict their respective states.
Friends of the Earth Argentina, for example, lists its campaigns as, water-wetlands,
inland fisheries, dams, mining, human and environmental rights particularly in the
area of climate change. Friends of the Earth Brazil concentrates its main campaigns
on issues that include, the Amazon deforestation, eco-financing, forest management,
110
certification of products, and sustainable development. In a somewhat different
emphasis, FoE Paraguay, or Sobrevivencia, concentrates mainly on the
environmental issues of indigenous, peasants and marginalized urban communities
living in poverty (FOE Paraguay, 2009). Sobrevivencia helps recovery and
conservation of the environment as well as to defend and promote cultural values and
ways of life. Their programs include sustainable agriculture, land use, education, and
providing technical and legal support to the indigenous populations in the region.
The group takes aspects of FOE international common campaigns, but most of its
campaigns are geared toward Paraguayan issues. REDES-Uruguay, promotes similar
environmental issues to that of FoE Argentina, specifically concentrating on anti-
nuclear, anti-paper mills and anti-privatization of water.
In addition, FoE-MERCOSRUR organizations, despite their variations, share
many similarities in terms of self-perception, funding and tendency to promote
linkage and collaboration with sister organizations across state lines. FoE-Argentina
for example, is a federation of NGOs from different regions of the country. Because
of FOE-Argentina’s structure, some of its associated groups are more militant than
others. The Website describes the organization as an independent and activist (FOE-
Argentina’s website). The organization provides a list of articles, photos and media
denouncing the national government and corporations, for loss of biodiversity, and
the damages brought about by mining and deforestation. In addition, there is wide
coverage of the on-going fight with the Botnia Corporation and the government of
Uruguay over the paper mill issue (see Greenpeace Chapter). Being a federation of
111
related organizations, the website and related literature of the Argentina chapter take
strong positions on a variety of subjects including human rights, politics,
environmental racism, women’s rights and indigenous rights. Consistent with its
affiliation with human rights groups, the website promotes a strong denouncement of
the government of Peru accusing them of genocide of indigenous populations, and a
denouncement of the political coup in Honduras.
Furthermore, the attitude of independence and of being an outsider
organization is reflected in interviews with FoE-MERCOSUR’s leadership as well as
its website and literature. Each of the leaders of REDES, and FoE Argentina refer to
themselves as militant and anti-capitalistic, as Marzolini has stated: “I worked to stop
the greedy neo-liberal corporations” (Marzolini, 2009). Each of the FOE-
MERCOSUR websites emphasizes their refusal to take donations from government
or corporate sources. “It would be very problematic if I lived off government
donations. Although not every action by NGO needs to be resistant to the
government, we do not want the government to expect us to support things that we
do not want to support” (Marzolini, 2009). Reiterating Marzolini’s sentiment,
Selvatica has stated: “We do not receive any government donations at the national or
regional level. Our funding comes from FoE International funding” (Selvatica,
2009). The strong attitude against government and corporate funding was further
echoed by REDES Uruguay. REDES leaders explained that the organization only
receives funds from local individual donations and from FOE International. FoE-
MERCOSUR’s leaders were surprised that any FoE organization would agree to
112
accept government funding and felt that it would cost the organization in
independence. FoE-Brazil and Paraguay have expressed similar attitudes.
As stated earlier, beyond self-perception and its open organizational
structure, FoE MERCOSUR’s reputation, style of activism, press releases and
interviews indicate a high level of independence. The test of these indicators of
independence will be presented in the following section. FoE- MERCOSUR’s
perception is that the RTA regime is absent and does not create space for civil
society to engage it. FoE’s leaders also perceive the national government as lacking
in capacity to legislate and enforce the law (Ortiz, Selvatica, Marzolini, 2009). As a
result, FoE primarily engages in reactive antagonistic style of activism with the
intention of employing a variety of outsider activism to stop government and
corporate projects which are anti-environmental. Consistent with this style of
activism, FoE issues press releases and statements to the media commenting on the
environmental policies of the national and RTA regime. Table 4.2 compares the
percentages of positive and negative FoE generated media vis-à-vis the regime.

Table 4.2: FoE: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 2 0 2 0 0 1 1
Qualified praise 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 0 0 3
Denounce 0 0 1 8 4 1 2 1 3 3 3 5 6 2 10
Sample Size: 65 Praise: 14% Qualified Praise: 11% Denounce 75%
113
Friends-of-the-Earth, in its press releases and interviews to the media,
consistently denounces the national regimes far more often than it praises regime
initiatives. In fact, even when FOE praised the national regimes, many times, they
added qualifications suggesting that on a material level, the regime usually does not
enforce compliance or that the regime is ultimately irrelevant in the environmental
arena. FOE considers every South American regime, regardless of whether it is
MERCOSUR or the national regimes of its member states, as lacking in capacity and
too corrupt to enforce even the best intended legislations. The other interesting
development shown in the above table is that there was an increase in the level of
denouncement around the time of the rise of left wing regimes around the year 2002.
The leftward trend in Latin America associated with the elections of Nestor
Kirschner in Argentina, Lula in Brazil and Vasquez in Uruguay seemed to have been
a disappointment for environmentalists. Thus, the initial careful praise, quickly
reverted to an even higher level of denouncement. This trend suggests that FoE
maintained its independence and ability to be critical of left leaning regimes as well.
Such a trend also supports the contention of FoE’s leadership that the national
regimes lack capacity in the environmental arena. Consistent with the above
observation it appears that most of the denouncements reflect stated disappointment
with the new governments. Finally, it should be noted that there are very few items
of denouncement leveled directly at MERCOSUR; rather the majority of the
denouncements are leveled at the national regimes. FOE, just like the rest of civil
society, almost completely ignores MERCOSUR as an institution. Beyond stating
114
that it lacks capacity and its environmental policies do not go beyond declarations,
the relationship between NGOs and MERCOSUR amounts to non-engagement.
In addition to press releases and interviews, FoE-MERCOSUR engages in a
variety of other types of activism ranging from street demonstrations and community
organizing to constructive political engagement with a wide range of local, national
and international regimes. The following table compares and contrasts the percentage
of FoE engaging in highly independent activism with that of somewhat independent
and collusive behavior between the years 1994-2009.

Table 4.3: FoE: Activism 1994-2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Highly
independent
0 3 2 2 3 2 1 5 2 1 5 1 4 1 5
Somewhat
independent
0 0 0 0 2 0 3 3 1 1 0 1 1 1 2
Collusive 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1
Sample Size: 58 Level 1: 64% Level 2: 26% Level 3: 10%

The relatively high level of highly independent activities reflects the disparity
between the few highly publicized cases of collaboration between FOE and the RTA
or national government, and the fact that most of the time FOE engages local and
international regimes as opposed to the national or RTA regimes. While, I did not
find any examples of FOE appealing to national courts, national bureaucracies or
RTA institutions, there are several examples in which FOE appealed to the World
115
Bank, the WTO, or the International Development Bank. This is attributed to the
general attitude of FOE that national and RTA institutions are corrupt, retreatist or
lack capacity. Although FOE does not often engage in civil disobedience, or any type
of violence, its activism is highly independent and can be politically located outside
the system simply because it does not recognize the ability of the system to work.
In addition to FoE’s activism as reflected by its style of communicating with
the media and its environmental campaigns, FoE’s reputation in the community is
another important indicator for evaluating the organization’s level of independence.
The next table evaluates FoE’s reputation in the community by comparing the
percentage of media items referring to the organization as “Activist” as opposed to
“Watchdog” or “Collusive”.

Table 4.4: Reputation in the Community

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 0 2 1 4 1 1 2 2 2 4 2 3 3 2 4
Watchdog 0 0 0 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 2 2 5
Collusive 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Sample Size: 64 Activist: 51.5% Watchdog: 48.5% Collusive: 0

FOE was usually referred to as a “watchdog organization” when it engaged in
the type of activism that was intended to force the government to enforce their own
laws or when they performed some kind of scientific research and submitted it to the
government or to the media. In contrast, FOE was referred to as “activists” when
116
they made threats against the governments, when they participated in demonstrations
or when they took their cases to the international tribunals when they could not
achieve their goals in the RTA or national tribunals. The table above shows no
reference to FoE as collusive. It shows a slightly higher percentage (51.5%) of
references to FoE as an activist group rather than as a watchdog group (48.5%).
Thus, slightly over half of the media articles perceive FoE as a complete outsider,
while none consider it as a complete insider. In order to further deepen the
understanding of FoE’s relationship with the MERCOSUR regime, the next section
probes the organization’s Pattern of engagement and style of activism.
FoE and MERCOSUR - A Patterns of Regime Engagement and Activism
In the MERCOSUR states, FoE’s style of engagement consists of attempting
to stop anti-environmental projects from hurting the community and the
environment. Although FoE is willing to work with national and local governments,
its main political method is to organize local communities to file complaints with
international regimes and international funding agencies and banks in order to derail
government and corporate projects. FoE’s style of activism in MERCOSUR is
mostly reactive and antagonistic toward any regime and any corporation. The
organization’s public face represents, fairly accurately, what happens behind the
scenes. Thus, FoE may be thought of as the ultimate independent outsider fighting in
the trenches of civil society. In attempting to stop bad projects from going into
affect, several of FoE Argentina’s and REDES-Uruguay’s leaders suggested the
following process: “We identify the environmental problem. We then speak with the
117
community that is directly involved. Then we work with the provincial government
and then with the national government. Once a law is passed however, it generally
gets vetoed by the President or is not implemented. We end up having to implement
the law by going to international funding boards or international regimes to either
deny local corporations their funding or to force the national government to
implement the law” (Selvatica, 2009). The following are several examples that
illustrate the use of this process of political engagement: In 2008, in order to derail a
dangerous oil exploration project initiated by the REPSOL and SHELL corporations
FoE appealed to the OECD governing board. However, the process started by
agitating the local community and acting as their representatives in the OECD
meeting. The national government in this particular case was completely
circumvented; instead, FoE went directly to the International regime (Selvatica,
2009). Between 2005 and 2008, Petra Marzolini a former leader of FoE, engaged in
a campaign to stop the building of a dam, in the Entre Rios province in Argentina.
This dam had been previously approved by the national regime. Marzolini recalled
the following process: This dam was funded by a Union of North American
Corporation, and two American developers (Marzolini, 2009). First she worked on
educating and agitating the local community against the project. She and other
volunteers gathered in clubs, schools and colleges and taught people about the
problem. Then she approached the authorities in the community, the local state
government. She pressured them to sign a statement against the dam project. She
went to the local courts to try to stop the project. She then introduced a petition drive
118
against the dam. As a result of Marzolini’s work, the Entre Rio’s provincial
government created a commission to study the issue of the dam. Petra participated in
the commission in the city of Parana, the capital of the Entre Rios province. At the
end, in complete opposition to the national government, Marzolini pushed the
provincial government to pass a law banning the construction of the dam. Finally a
constitutional convention was called and after a campaign by several NGOs, as of
2008, the prohibition is part of the provincial constitution. In this particular
campaign, no international regimes were involved because the dam was stopped
before it reached the funding level. Similarly, FoE Paraguay appealed to the
international Development Bank (IDB) and to the World Bank in order to derail a
dam project that was hurting the health of local native communities. FoE organized
the community to testify against the dam, managed to get the bank to send
representatives to study the problem and ultimately stopped the funding and
consequently the construction of the dam. Again, the governments of Paraguay and
MERCOSUR were ignored and circumvented in the process.
Another example involves the 2004-2007 campaign against the construction
of the Botnia paper mill project. In that project, FoE Uruguay and FoE Argentina
jointly appealed to the funding institutions, (IDB, World Bank), in order to stop the
project in its tracks. The second line of attack was to represent the local population
in a lawsuit against the government of Uruguay to the “Permanent People Tribunal”
in Vienna. While this international opinion court does not have enforcement
mechanisms, its judgment can embarrass the losing side and perhaps force it to
119
reconsider its policies. Using the same style of engagement, in 2007, FOE Brazil
attended the IDB meeting in Miami and asked to deny funding to projects that harm
the Amazon. In the same year, FOE lobbied the World Bank to rescind a loan to beef
exporters from Brazil. In addition, FOE Brazil issued an Amicus Curia to the WTO
court in a case dealing with the import of treaded tires from the EU to Brazil. FOE
wanted to stop the import. In 2008, FOE put 20 European corporations on trial for
human rights violations in Latin America. The trial was in front of the People
Tribunal and also did not have more than a propaganda effect.
The second element in FoE’s political engagement is its wide use of coalition
building and linkage politics. In most of its campaigns, FoE links up with other FoE
organizations in MERCOSUR and with other organizations on the local and cross
national levels. Thus, the campaign against Botnia showed that FoE Uruguay was
willing to risk its reputation in Uruguay by linking with FoE Argentina and
supporting the Argentine government’s side in the conflict. This suggests that
REDES working relations with its own national government was less important than
supporting its sister organization across national lines for what the organization
thought was the right stand to take. While on rare occasions, FoE Uruguay works
with the government to achieve common projects such as the joint campaign earlier
in the decade to ban the privatization of water, overall FoE MERCOSUR is more
successful at blocking bad projects by going outside the system than at promoting
good environmental projects.
120
Summary of FoE-MERCOSUR
For the most part, FOE-MERCOSUR has been more successful in derailing
“bad” projects than in developing proactive initiatives. FOE has been particularly
adept at using international tribunals and international banks to circumvent
government anti-environmental projects and to deny funding to dangerous projects.
FOE methods include using research and education to organize local communities
against a project; then representing the community by lobbying local governments,
international regimes, and on a few occasions, national regimes. While FOE is highly
political in attempting to force the regime to enforce environmental standards, in
recognizing that MERCOSUR and its member states lack institutional capacity, FOE
uses a political style of non-engagement. Although, FOE media and press releases
are mostly antagonistic or skeptical at best toward the national regimes’ and
MERCOSUR’s initiatives, its campaigns for the most part engage local communities
and international bodies.
In summary, the lack of regime capacity allows FoE MERCOSUR wide
opportunity structures to define its operational style. As a result, FoE-MERCOSUR
displays a greater level of independence and outsider style of activism. Furthermore,
FoE maintains economic independence in each of the MERCOSUR states. Finally,
FoE-MERCOSUR is opportunistic in its style of engagement. In addition, the
organization, by displaying an open and informal structure and style, helps promote a
close relationship with local communities and volunteers. FoE’s public face and
self-perception of independence closely matches its reputation in the community,
121
style of activism and pattern of engagement even in its daily “behind the scenes”
activities. The above stated relative consistency is well reflected in the behaviors of
the various chapter leaders, down to the activists and volunteers in rural
neighborhoods. In the next section, this project will examine how the EU regulatory
bureaucracy impact FoE-EU’s independence, and style of activism.
FoE – EU
Bureaucratic Legalism: Weak Civil Society
The FoE-EU organization is profoundly different than its MERCOSUR
counterpart. FoE-EU has adjusted its organizational structure and behavior to the EU
opportunity structure. Its organization, personnel, self-perception and reputation
suggest that FoE-EU has substantially strayed from the model of independent civil
society. In fact, given its type of activism and the pattern with which it engages the
regime, FoE-EU should be considered a Semi-Governmental Organization or SGO
rather than an NGO. The research revealed the following findings: FoE- EU’s
website and campaign literature do not use the word independent to portray the
organization. Both the FoE Website and the EU yearly budget indicate that FoE- EU
receives EU funding for its research and operation; much of that research is geared
toward supporting the regime’s initiatives. In fact, EU funding accounts for a higher
portion of FoE’s budget than that of WWF. Although, FoE promotes volunteerism
most of its campaigns are geared towards lobbying, promoting legislation and
working within and in collaboration with the EU regime. Consistent with these
observations, the following section will review how the EU bureaucracy helped
122
shape FoE-EU’s organizational structure, type of leadership, and self-perception.
Thus, FoE-EU’s style of activism is collaborative, regime friendly, engaging, closed
bureaucratic and formal. Finally, FoE-EU was criticized by the media, more than any
other organization, for not fulfilling its role as a watchdog and using the public
money to consistently support the EU position.
Indicators of Independence
Organizational Structure, Leadership and Self Perception
FOE-EU’s primary goal is the promotion of sustainable societies on the local,
national, regional and global levels. FOE-EU is interested in global topics and not
just issues specific to the EU. In addition, FOE-EU fights to protect the earth from
further deterioration and attempts to repair damage already done to the environment.
It campaigns to preserves the earth’s ecological, cultural and ethnic diversity. Thus,
it is not just an environmental organization but also a civil and human rights
organization, fighting against environmental racism and against poverty. Due to its
large size and networking capabilities, FOE-EU is able to attend to issues that
concern the entire gamut of the environmental agenda as well as related issues.
Furthermore, FOE works to increase public participation and democratic decision
making, doing so by influencing European and EU policy and by raising public
awareness on environmental issues. It promotes the organization’s agenda through
the media and by disseminating information via its campaigns concentrating on a
wide range of issues.
123
Additionally, FoE-EU supports the network of organizations associated with
it by advising them, helping with coordination in the European and EU policy-
making venues, and by sharing knowledge, skills, and resources. FoE enables people
to participate in its campaigns through local activism, activist groups, national and
regional organizations in 30 European countries. In addition, FOE-EU maintains
several organizations that scrutinize as watchdogs the works of the banking industry,
the chemical industry, the use of EU funding, and the behavior of private and public
corporations.
Organizational Funding and Structure
In contrast with FoE-MERCOSUR, FoE-EU is very regime dependent for
funding its research and operations (FoE-EU Website). At the bottom of the front
page of the website, FOE lists and thanks the major sources of its funding for the
fiscal year 2008-2009. The following sources are acknowledged in this order: The
EU Commission, EU Commission’s Director General for the Environment, EU’s
Director General for Employment and Social Affairs, EU Director General for
Development, the German Ministry of the Environment, and the Dutch Ministry of
the Environment. After the above list, FOE lists another list of private and public
foundations responsible for its funding and at the very end FOE International. FoE-
EU adheres to the EU rules for transparency and public disclosure. Since 1994, the
percentage of its funding coming directly from the EU budget, accounts for the
majority of its annual budget and as a percentage of the organizational budget,
regime funding, accounts for a higher percentage than any other environmental
124
organization (EU-annual budgets). Much of this funding is geared toward research
that is intended to educate the public about the regime’s environmental efforts as
well as toward common projects in which the EU and FoE collaborate on.
FOE-EU, maintains the following organizational structure: It employs a
Director, assistant Director, Head of Fundraising, Communication officer, and
directors for lobbying and for each of the different campaigns and network
development. FoE-EU is registered with the EU-NGO registry and is licensed to
operate in Brussels. FoE-EU’s organizational structure, thus, is bureaucratic and
geared toward working with the EU regime. As a result, FoE EU’s employees are
professional bureaucrats, and FoE-EU does not promote volunteers to leadership or
lobbying positions.
Self-Perception
The FOE website and related campaign literature indicate an active and
activist self-perception. However, it also indicates that a substantial portion of its
budget comes from the EU Commission and its related offices. In addition, its
second largest donors include several European governments, and several private and
public organizations. Furthermore, The FOE EU website and campaign literature
does not use the word independent in describing the primary identity of the
organization. FoE’s websites only uses the word “independent” once in association
with partnering with the EU, and in scrutinizing and allocating funding for different
projects. Thus, FoE-EU’s conceptualization of what an independent style activism is,
contrasts sharply with that of truly outsider organizations. FoE-EU sees its role as
125
that of giving independent advice to the regime, conducting honest research,
scrutinizing the allocation of regime funds and the implementation of the regime’s
laws. As an internal watchdog, FoE appears comfortable as being an additional layer
of scrutiny within the existing bureaucracy.
As mentioned in the previous sections, FoE-EU engages in a variety of
activities such as issuing press releases, interviews and comments to the media, as
well as lobbying, legislating, conducting research, and scrutinizing the application of
laws. The following section will analyze several indicators of organizational
independence that are linked with FoE-style of activism. The following table
compares FoE-EU use of the media to project either a critical stance or a supportive
stance toward the EU.

Table 4.5: Organizational Behavior: FoE Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-
2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 1 1 1 3 2 4 5 4 4 5 2 2 1 2 1
Qualified praise 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 2 2 0
Denounce 1 1 3 3 5 1 5 1 5 5 3 8 2 4 1
Sample Size: 95 Praise: 40% Qualified Praise: 9.5% Denounce: 50.5%

FOE-EU rarely issues actual denouncements of the EU regime, rather, the
organization criticizes or shows disappointment at particular policy choices that fall
short of goals. Thus, the language is generally not harsh in tone. On the opposite
side, when it comes to praise, the vocabulary is generally more effusive. Press
126
releases issued by FoE as well as interviews to the media generally utter the
following words when referring to the EU regime: “welcomes the initiative”,
“enthusiastic support”, “joint statement with the EU”, “praises the EU”. In the
middle category, FoE uses the words guarded support, or qualified support. Since
1994, out of a sample of 95 media items FoE issued 38 praises accounting for 40
percent, 48 denouncements or criticisms accounting for 50.5 percent, and 9 qualified
praises accounting for 9.5 percent of the sample. Thus, the ratio between negative
press releases and positive press releases was almost 1:1. Considering that FoE is an
environmental NGO whose job is to be critical and challenge the regime, it appears
that FoE is rather timid and is supportive of the regime about half of the time. In
comparing this data to FoE-MERCOSUR’s level of regime criticism (75 percent),
FoE-EU demonstrates a lower level of independence and a higher level of insider
behavior. The next table measures another type of organizational behavior. It
evaluates FoE’s style of activism on an ordinal scale ranging from highly
independent to collusive activities.

Table 4.6: Behavior Part 2: Type of Activism

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
1 0 0 0 0 0 2 3 4 1 0 0 1 1 1 0
2 1 3 7 4 9 7 6 12 6 6 9 11 8 8 7
3 0 0 2 3 2 5 6 4 4 5 4 4 1 5 4
Sample Size: 166 Level 1: 7.8% Level 2: 62.7% Level 3: 29.5%
127
Table 4.6 suggests that FoE’s quantity of activism appears to grow over time
as the institutionalization of the EU increases. In addition, the accession of Eastern
and Central European states, by increasing the size of the Community, also increased
the amount of FoE’s activities. Overall, the amount of “outsider” activism, which
includes demonstrations, civil disobedience, sabotage, and appeal to outsider
institutions not associated with the EU, is rather small. It almost completely
disappeared after 2001, by which time the EU had incorporated FOE into its
bureaucracy by appointing members to legislative and quasi-legislative committees
and international panels associated with the EU. Furthermore, the funding of FOE by
the EU, commencing in 2001, increased the level of “insider” type collusive
behavior as well as performance of the role of internal watchdog. The percentage of
the type of activities related to the engagement of the legislature through lobbying,
launched complaints to force national regimes to abide by EU law particularly in the
East, as well as collaborating with the EU through various means, far exceeds the
level of grassroots activism involving the local community. Thus, in the EU, FOE is
a formal, closed and collusive organization that does not seem to involve the
community to a large extent. The contention that the EU is a remote, heavily
bureaucratic regime that makes policy far away from the public behind closed doors
seems to infect some of the organizations that work with the regime. A substantial
amount of FOE activism seems to involve mastering the different bureaucratic levels
of the EU in order to use them to support the EU in enforcement and compliance
matters. FOE is well adept at launching formal complaints to the Commission, to the
128
Ombudsman, to The Committee of the Regions, the public and administrative
agencies, and the Parliament. In addition to organizational behavior, this section
evaluates FoE’s reputation in the community as another indicator of independence.
The next table compares and contrasts references to FoE-EU in the media.

Table 4.7: Reputation

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 0 0 0 3 1 2 3 5 1 0 1 0 0 2 0
Watchdog 0 1 1 1 2 4 4 9 4 2 13 12 7 3 3
Collusive 0 0 0 1 2 2 1 3 4 3 0 0 1 5 3
Sample Size: 109 Activist:16.5% Watchdog: 69% Collusive: 23%

In contrast with Greenpeace, FoE demonstrates a more significant variation
in its reputation across regimes. Due to FoE’s confederate structure and the
autonomy of its regional and national offices, it is possible to discern a substantial
difference between the reputation of FoE- EU and FoE-MERCOSUR. In addition,
the reputation of FoE-EU has varied as a result of EU reforms commencing in 2001.
These reforms led to changes in the funding of the organization. After 2001, over
half of FoE-EU budget was directly provided by the EU regime (FoE-EU website).
In addition, another substantial percentage of its funding came from the budget of
several national governments. Thus, the portion of FoE-EU’s budget coming from
private donations became a smaller part of its overall funding. Even the financial
backing from FoE-International and from private foundations indirectly comes from
129
donations by various regimes mostly in Europe (Rapid, 1998, AP April 22, 2001,
IPS, 2005, Western Daily press, July 2007, Adam Smith Institute 2007).
Furthermore, as early as 1998, the EU began increasing its bureaucratic
proximity to and collaboration with FoE as well as other amenable NGOs.
Consequently, the media has become more skeptic of FoE’s independence. In 1998,
the media widely covered a meeting between the FoE-EU and EU Commissioner,
Ritt Bjergaard, in which the commissioner clearly stated that FoE and other specified
NGOs are on the same side, and that the role of FoE was to help the EU implement
common policies objectives vis-à-vis the states. After the changes in funding policy
in 2001, a series of exposes were published accusing the EU and FoE of being allies.
The general accusation was that public money and tax payers’ money was being
wasted because the EU was paying FoE to lobby the EU. Ultimately, the accusation
was that FoE could not possibly be independent, and that it is part of the EU regime.
In another series of revelations from 2006-2008, FOE was accused of working in
collusion with the EU and being a lap dog watchdog whose job was to carry out the
EU message and educate the public about EU programs. The substantial amount of
media items after 2001 referring to FoE as a watchdog was usually associated with
FoE implementing EU policies against the national governments. After 2001, the
amount of media items referring to FoE as an activist organization has declined to
almost zero. FoE’s reputation in the past few years has generally been as an internal
watchdog, working mostly in EU offices behind closed doors as an EU designated
public advocate. The type of grassroots activism in Paraguay representing indigenous
130
populations against an all powerful industry is not associated with the image of FoE-
EU. FoE-EU’s image is that of a closed collusive, captured and formal organization.
The next section will analyze how the EU’s narrow opportunity structures
impact the pattern of FoE-EU’s engagement of the regime.
FoE and the EU - A Patterns of Regime Engagement
The following pattern of engagement suggests that FoE is collaborative, non-
combative and friendly toward the EU-regime. Furthermore, in contrast with FoE’s
MERCOSUR, FoE-EU prefers to engage the regime on every level and is in general
support of the regime initiatives. In the EU, FoE accepts implicitly that the regime is
capable of enacting and implementing environmental projects. FoE’s role is to assist
the regime rather than force the regime to enforce compliance. The examples and
discussion below will further suggest that FoE rarely if ever takes on the regime
itself. FoE’s main targets are European states and industry. Thus it would appear that
FoE is quite satisfied with the general environmental policy progress in Europe.
FoE acts as an internal watchdog in scrutinizing and partnering with the EU
institutions and bureaucracy. In many ways FoE has become an additional
bureaucratic layer, whose primary function is to assist in the efficiency of
enforcement of environmental law. More than any other organization, the EU
entrusts FoE to perform government related duties such as scrutinizing and allocating
EU funding toward different projects. By performing the duties of the regime’s
bureaucracy, FoE on many levels, has been co-opted, captured and became part of
the regime. The following are a few examples that illustrate how FoE is entrusted to
131
perform the regime’s duties: In 2001, the EU decided to extend funding to FoE,
WWF and several other environmental groups (AP June 22, 2001). By putting FoE
on the payroll, the EU has been able to change FoE’s orientation from that of an
external to an internal watchdog. In addition, the action will upgrade FoE’s ability to
assist the EU to enforce compliance of EU environmental policy in the EAST.
Funding which were already available before would now be tripled, and the EU will
assign specific tasks for FoE offices in the East. The Environmental minister of the
EU announced, “Environmental organizations play a vital role in policy shaping,
implementation and evaluation”. This announcement was another affirmation that
the EU considered some of its NGOs as captured part of the administration.
Additionally, FoE aids the regime in enforcing the law by sitting on
government policy boards, and by using the regime’s bureaucracy to enforce
environmental regulations against recalcitrant states. FoE assists the EU in
harmonizing EU legislation in the new Eastern European states. FoE supports regime
centralization. FoE leaders often get appointed to various international policy boards
representing the EU overseas. The following examples illustrate these patterns of
engagement: Toward the end of 1995, FoE was able to use the EU process to force
an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) to slow down the construction of high speed
trains in Europe. Using the same procedure, FoE challenged the construction of
England’s motorway. FoE has hired a special transport consultant to lobby the EU
Commission on the matter.
132
In April, 2000 FoE was able to lobby the EU regulatory committee to
maintain its ban on GMOs. The prevention of importation of GMO foodstuffs
became FoE’s longest campaign. A few days later, FoE lobbied the Parliament to
impose strict control on GMOs pending safety inspection (Press Association). In
July, FoE was able to lobby the Commission to ban the pesticide Lindane from use
in agriculture throughout the EC.
The next example illustrates the process used by FoE to advance policy
through the EU bureaucracy. The following occurred in 2001, and it represents the
opening salvo in the struggle between FoE and the European chemical industry. The
first action was an appeal by FoE to the EU Council after the Commission’s
environmental director backed down on tough policy against the chemical industry.
The chemical lobby’s successful campaign to weaken EU policy led to industry
victory on the Commission level, but there are many different levels to the EU
bureaucracy, and FoE was well adept at taking the fight to different branches of the
bureaucracy. One agency which welcomes FoE appeals is the Ombudsman. In
March, FoE won a major victory at the Ombudsman level. The Ombudsman known
as the citizens’ watchdog forced the EU Commission to abide by its own laws and to
give FoE full information on each state’s track record of complying with EU
environmental harmonization standards (Press Association, March 20, 2001).
In 2001, in one of the clearest instances wherein the EU and its NGOs was
entering into closer collaboration and collusion, was the establishment of EU-US
Consultative Forum. This Forum was given the opportunity to recommend real
133
regulatory changes to the EU biotechnology policy. The Commission appointed
Ruud Lubbers to chair the Forum; Lubbers is a former President of WWF. In
addition, a second EU member of the Forum was Dan Leskien, an attorney
specializing in intellectual property rights and a member and advisor to Friends of
the Earth EU. The EU appointed another member of FoE to the governance and
science committee. Of the ten EU delegates to the twenty members Forum, civil
society leaders had a substantial representation (Rapid, 2000). By late November,
the Forum reported its policy recommendation to the President of the EU
Commission.
During the 2002 convention which introduced changed to the EU Treaty, FoE
representatives pushed for a strengthened and centralized EU and a strengthened
European Court of Justice (EU Observer, 2002). In 2002, FoE worked with the
Green Party of Ireland submitting close to 100 complaints against Irish
environmental record to the EU Commission. In June, 2003, the EU issued new
environmental rules making it a crime for farming that hurts biodiversity. The new
rules would give special weight to input by FoE in determining what a biodiversity
crime is. Thus, FoE and other NGOs would be treated as experts by the regime in
considering law enforcement and compliance matters.
In addition, FoE works as an EU collusive partner on many projects by using
the regime funds to conduct research and public relations campaigns for the purpose
of educating the public and raising support for EU legislation. The following are
several examples that suggest a collusive relationship between FoE and the EU:
134
During 1994, the newly launched EU decided to meet with the major NGOs of
Europe in order to coordinate future joint activities on mutually agreeable agenda.
FoE was one of the groups and a special EU official was appointed to meet with the
FoE. In 1995, as the accession of Eastern Europe advanced, FoE in alliance with the
governments of France and Germany staged a forum in Bulgaria in order to help the
EU Council of Ministers to pressure Bulgaria to shut down its nuclear reactor as a
condition of joining the EU.
In 1996, FoE in a joint collaboration with the EU, has issued EU provided
pollution kits to citizens in order to measure pollution in Scotland. The results which
exceeded EU standards were reported to the government of Scotland and to the
Commission. In April 1998, The EU Commission supported FoE in its complaint
against the British government chemical sewer policy. Later on in July, FoE took the
British government to the High Court in England for violation of EU laws on
Genetically Modified Food Stuffs (The Guardian, 1998). The REACH legislation
regulating the chemical industry is a prime example of the high level of cooperation
between the regime and FoE. In December 1998, the EU announced a clear message
of its intended future relationship with its favored NGOs. As the report on the
enlargement of the EU was submitted, Ritt Bjerregaard, a member of the
Commission in charge of the EU enlargement and accession, spoke to FoE and
announced that it would be the NGOs’ role to use EU funds to monitor, supervise
and enforce compliance in Eastern Europe with EU regulations. “In the existing
Member states, NGOs play the role of intermediaries between the public and the
135
administration. The NGOs help giving information on the environment to the public
and help by providing the administration of the EU with the necessary feedback, this
is exactly what is required in the candidate countries…I appreciate that we can
increase our mutual understanding on our common goals” (Rapid, 1998). In early,
2001, Tony Juniper praised the Commission for being open to take a large amount of
complaints from FoE against EU states.
Moreover, from 2004-2007, the REACH campaign, which enacted legislation
intended to regulate the chemical industry, provided one of the clearest examples of
the cooperation between FoE and the EU. While the EU Commission and its
Parliament struggled to negotiate the law with the Chemical industry, the EU
entrusted its FoE partner to use EU funding for the purpose of conducting research
and for publicly campaigning in support of the impending legislation. After the
legislation passed, the EU continued to fund FoE’s campaigning geared towards
explaining and educating the public about the new law. This was just one example
that showed how FoE had virtually become a government public relations
organization. The FoE-EU collaboration with the regime continued during the 2005
campaign to enact the Aarhus Convention. The purpose of Aarhus was to give NGOs
more power to participate in environmental decision making, as well as access to the
courts, and this was in the process of final ratification. FoE commenced a public
campaign educating the citizens about their rights and urging support for the
Convention (IPS 2005). The FoE campaign was funded and commissioned by the
136
EU. In 2008, FoE praised the EU for proposing an ambitious climate strategy. FoE
issued press releases to educate the public about the EU policy (FoE-EU).
Additionally, FoE-EU partners with the EU as an ally on international boards.
In that capacity, FoE deflects criticism of the EU and supports its position
internationally. FoE took the EU side and produced research and media campaign
against the World Trade Organization’s position regarding the banning of
Genetically Modified food stuffs. FoE also fought for the EU right of sovereignty in
testimony to the WTO. FoE supported the EU by advising it to ignore the WTO
decisions. FoE also tested wild rice and other farm products and submitted the
finding to the EU Commission as a way to support the EU argument against the U.S.
Criticism of FoE’s style of engagement
The EU style of soft-lobbying as well as its public financing of political
campaigns promotes a type of soft engagement by FoE lobbyists. This type of
engagement encourages the use of bureaucrats and scientists rather than high-
pressure lobbyists similar to the NAFTA model. FoE’s lobbying style as well as its
perceived close relationship with the EU came under intense scrutiny in a series of
revelations. In July, 2002, a series of articles started appearing in various, European
and non-European media exposing the EU “capturing” and “taking over” NGO
agenda. The first, of these articles appeared in the Wall Street Journal, (2002) in
referring to the funding of NGO the news paper stated that “some pieces of the EU
pie are less sweet”. It criticized the absurdity of funding organizations that were
critical of the EU in the past and expecting them to remain independent and critical.
137
On October 29, 2005, another major article featured in the Herald Tribune, accused
FoE of using “soft” lobbying tactics within the Commission because it is funded by
the Commission (Herald Tribune, 2005). The article questioned the concept of
“being paid to lobby the organization that pays you”. One of the examples given to
illustrate this concept was what the article considered as American gunship lobbying,
in which lobbyists threaten members of Congress. FoE does not use any hand
twisting or hard tactics. The article contends that European NGOs consider that to be
a wrong approach. FoE prefers compromise to confrontation. The problem with
lobbying is that while in the U.S., administrations come and go, EU bureaucrats stay
on until retirement. Burning bridges is not a good idea. In addition, the line between
bureaucrats and lobbyists in the EU is blurred because NGOs are also represented in
different agencies and are funded by the same agencies they lobby. On July 24, 2007,
yet another piece was written in the Western Daily Press, accusing the EU of misuse
of money (2007). It ridiculed the concept of participatory democracy and
independent civil society, claiming that when the EU funds its own civil society
lobbyists, civil society is not longer independent, and the lobbying is ineffective. The
media also criticized the quality of legislation when those who push for the
legislation are “insiders”. “The EU uses such buddies, supposedly independent, as
Friends of the Earth to discuss issues like (you guessed it) climate change. Yet
Friends of the Earth is subsidized to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds a
year by the EU which, in turn, lobbies the EU on its pet subjects” (Western Daily
Press 2007). The above criticism as well as previously presented evidence further
138
illustrates an organization that has lost touch with its grass roots origins and has
chosen marriage with the regime as a way to augment its influence inside the
bureaucracy. The evidence further suggests a high degree of captured behavior on
the part of the EU based civil society that is related to the EU style of regulatory
regime. In the next section, this project will analyze the manner in which the
regulatory style of Adversarial Legalism, exemplified by NAFTA, creates
opportunity structures that shapes the patterns of behavior for FoE in North America.
FoE-NAFTA: Adversarial Legalism a “Two-level” Pattern of Engagement
FoE-NAFTA’s style of activism and pattern of engagement is impacted by a
tension between two sometimes contradictory elements of the NAFTA regime. On
the one hand, NAFTA’s regulatory style is adversarial and legalistic and its method
of harmonizing environmental standards is gradual and reactive. This factor led FoE,
which generally opposed NAFTA, to engage the regime in a reactive, antagonistic
manner. Thus, by organizing the legal campaigns in order to force the states to
develop and enforce environmental standards ultimately resulted in deeply
connecting FoE-NAFTA with local communities as well as with cross-national
linked organizations. On the other hand, NAFTA’s style of high pressure money-
centered lobbying resulted in FoE employing well connected lawyers who often had
experience working for the regime. This led to the development of an elitist, closed
and formal organization and ultimately to a distance between FoE leadership and its
grassroots.
139
In addition to high pressure lobbying, FoE NAFTA uses the NAFTA regime
as an instrument to enforce environmental law. FoE also uses the American court
system to enforce American environmental laws. As a result, FoE-NAFTA works
closely with local communities and organizes town hall meetings in order to foment
participation in its legal campaigns. Unlike, FoE MERCOSUR that does not employ
a significant legal team and appeals mostly to international funding agencies, FoE in
NAFTA finds the regime sufficiently institutionalized to engage its political
processes. Additionally, whereas FoE-EU is mainly cooperative and friendly toward
its RTA regime, FoE NAFTA is simultaneously formal, engaging yet at the same
time adversarial and antagonistic toward the regime.
As a result of the revolving door activities and the temptation arising from
close proximity to the regime, FoE-NAFTA organizations participate in the political
process and take sides in the political debate. In the U.S and Canada, FoE has
crossed the line between civil society and the regime on a few occasions. FoE in the
U.S. has participated in the Democratic party-politics by endorsing and campaigning
for and against candidates. Similarly, in Canada, FoE has shown preference and
support for the Liberal party. In both countries FoE has participated and sat on quasi-
legislative forums, councils and commissions. FoE Canada and FoE U.S.
participated in joint projects and campaigned with their respective governments. The
following section will review the evolution of FoE-NAFTA’s organizational
structure, leadership and self-perception.
140
Organizational Structure, Leadership and Self-Perception
FoE-U.S was established in 1969 in San Francisco and became the original
founding member of Friends of the Earth International. Its website lists its major
accomplishments, including: the elimination of billions in taxpayer subsidies to
corporate polluters; reforming the World Bank to address environmental and human
rights concerns; stopping over 150 dam and water projects world wide; winning
landmark regulations of strip mines and oil tankers; and banning international
whaling.
The FoE website, annual reports and campaign literature emphasize its
legislative work and constructive lobbying while engaging the U.S. government, the
World Bank, state and city governments in the process of developing positive and
constructive environmental programs. In addition, FoE is involved in a legal
campaign using American Courts and the NAFTA courts to challenge the regime in
areas where they fail to enforce the laws. The third type of activism is working with
corporations and pressuring them to improve practices, and educating the community
on environmental consciousness.
The president of FoE U.S. is Brent Blackwelder. He has been an
environmental advocate and leader of FoE for 40 years (FoE U.S. Website).
President Brent Blackwelder served as an environmental advocate for 30 years,
founded the Environmental Policy Institute and worked on many environmental
projects such as saving rivers and reforming the World Bank. His main responsibility
is to represent FoE in Washington DC and on national and international panels and
141
commissions. In addition to the President, FoE employs 20 additional paid staff
members who work on important campaigns and on financial matters. FoE staff is
professional, highly educated with degrees mostly from MIT, Stanford and other top
colleges. Their background for the most part is in science, community organization,
progressive NGOs and other non-profit and public service related associations (FoE
Website). Furthermore, FoE U.S. has a board of directors with a corporate like
structure. The CEO, Jayne Chase has a background in environmental education and
in founding non-profit education and environmental organizations. She has
participated in and sat on policy making commissions created by former President
Clinton. The other members of the Board of Directors each has a background in
environmental and social justice, lobbying and legal advocacy. Some of them have
backgrounds in corporate-leadership. All are educated in elite American universities
(FoE Website).
Funding Sources
FoE publishes detailed annual reports on its funding, revenues and
expenditures. A summary of the annual reports include the following: 67 percent of
funding was raised by foundations, 29 percent of funding from membership fees and
gifts, and four percent from other sources. No funding from the U.S. government or
any other regimes was reported. The foundations responsible for the funding of FoE
are mostly family foundations such as the Crosby Family Foundation. None of the
Foundations are funded by the U.S. government or by tax payers (FoE U.S Website).
142
FoE-Canada has the same corporate organization as its American counterpart.
It has a board of directors with a President, treasurer, and 4 other directors. In
addition, it has a staff, which includes a CEO, Senior Program Manager of the Water
Campaign, Program Development Director, Environmental Justice Director, and an
administrator. According to David Brooks, the founding President of FoE Canada,
FoE-Canada was founded to be an exclusive group whose membership is open only
to environmental leadership and staff from the different regional provinces of
Canada. It was not open for membership to individuals. In addition, FoE Canada was
opened with heavy support from government funding making it possible for the
organization to fund its activities. That funding was phased out between, 1993-1995.
FoE-Canada is currently funded by private donations, foundations and by FoE
International. FoE-Canada is a federal style bureaucracy representing the leadership
of the provincial FoE organizations (FOE web).
FoE-Mexico is a very different organization than its counterparts in Canada
and the United States. FoE Mexico is a small radical and militant organization
located in the state of Chiapas, called Otros Mundos Chiapas. Otros Mundos was
established in 2007 and only joined FoE in 2008. This is not, however, an illegal or
violent organization, as the militancy it advocates for is within the acceptable
margins of legality. It is a local grassroots organization working against free trade
and capitalism and for empowering the people of Chiapas. Otros Mundos is the most
“outsider” organization within the FoE network. Its methods are different than those
of the other FoE organizations. According to Gustavo Castro, one of the founders,
143
Otros Mundos was established to provide educational awareness and empowerment
against capitalism in Mexico (Otros Mundos Website). Despite national variations,
FoE-NAFTA, through its cross-national linkage politics and common engagement of
the RTA institutions, has developed a common style of activism and political
engagement throughout the North American RTA.
In summary, FoE-NAFTA’s self-perception is that of an independent
organization that is antagonistic to the regime. However, FoE’s style of activism
seems to reflect the tensions and contradiction associated with the NAFTA regime.
This project reveals that when FoE works to force the NAFTA states to enforce
compliance, FoE has developed deep connections with local communities and
fomented an independent social movement. Yet, its formal political engagement vis-
à-vis the RTA regime often leads to captured behavior resulting in entangling
political alliances with the ruling parties, engaging in revolving door activities, and
accepting remuneration for service on government boards.
The next section will examine additional independence indicators such as,
organizational behavior and reputation. The first table examines FoE-NAFTA’s
attitude toward the regime by comparing the polarity between regime praises and
denouncements.
144
Table 4.8: Organizational Behavior: FoE Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-
2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Qualified praise 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Denounce 8 0 0 5 0 5 2 12 4 5 1 3 3 2 1
Sample Size: 57 Praise: 8.7% Qualified Praise: 1.8% Denounce 89.5%

FoE does not generally praise the government and every time it did, the
media noted that it was a rare praise. However, FoE denounced or heavily criticized
the regime 20 times during the 1990s and 31 times during the conservative
administrations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico since 2001. All together,
denouncement amounted to 89.5 percent of the sample. The most vocal criticism
came during the 1990s, specifically in 1994 which was the year NAFTA was
implemented and began to manifest some environmental and trade problems. The
debate over the Kyoto Protocol, the WTO, Central -American Free Trade Agreement
and FTAA led to spikes in denouncements in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Overall,
the ratio between denouncements and praises demonstrates antagonism, distance and
independence of civil society vis-à-vis the RTA. The next table examines other
organizational types of activism.
145
Table 4.9: Behavior part 2: Activism

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Highly
Independent
0 1 0 0 0 2 2 3 0 2 1 1 0 0 0
Somewhat
independent
16 7 4 14 8 6 16 17 12 10 2 17 8 9 5
Collusive 1 0 0 0 0 2 7 1 2 1 0 1 0 1 0
Sample Size: 179 Level 1: 6.7 % Level 2: 84.4% Level 3: 9%

Most of FoE-NAFTA’s activities fall into the somewhat independent
category. Out of a sample of 179 media items, there were 151(84.4 percent)
references to lobbying, legislative activities including testimony to Congress and
submitting research and studies to the regime. FoE also filed several lawsuits in the
national courts in the U.S. and Canada and filed submissions to the NAFTA courts
against the U.S., Canada, Mexico and NAFTA. In comparison with these activities
there were very few “outsider” activities. The only exception was that of Otros
Mundos Mexico which only joined FOE in 2008. FoE rarely organized or
participated in “outsider” behavior such as sabotage, civil disobedience,
demonstrations, boycotts or appeals to outside international bodies against NAFTA.
FoE preferred to engage constructively with the regime and with corporations to
achieve its goals; however, there were a few notable exceptions: FoE participated in
somewhat violent demonstrations in Seattle against the WTO in 1999, in Quebec in
2001 and in Cancun in 2003. Some of these demonstrations targeted the FTAA and
146
other attempts to expand free trade. Overall FoE activists participated in 12 highly
independent activities.
Similarly, FoE generally did not participate in collusive activities. FoE did
not receive funding from the U.S. or Mexican governments. The financial support
from the Canadian government was phased out completely by 1995. There were few
examples of joint activities between the regime and FoE. There were, however, some
exceptions to FoE’s moderately independent type of activism. In 2000, FoE departed
from its previous policy and not only endorsed but also campaigned for and donated
money in the primary and the general elections to the ruling party’s nominee Al
Gore. On a few other occasions FoE officials served on quasi-legislative boards on
behalf of the Clinton administration and participated in joint campaigns with the
Canadian government. In addition to FoE’s behavior, this project examines its
reputation in the community as an indicator of independence.

Table 4.10: FoE NAFTA: Reputation

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 1 3 1 0 1 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 1 0
Watchdog 9 8 3 12 7 5 16 14 13 11 2 16 8 10 7
Collusive 1 0 0 0 0 2 7 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
Sample Size: 168 Activist: 8.3% Watchdog: 84% Collusive: 7.7%
147
The overwhelming majority of the media references to FoE NAFTA are that
of a watchdog organization, a lobby or a pressure group. Out of a sample of 168
there were 141 (84 percent) references to FoE being a watchdog or a lobby group in
the media from 1994-2008, compared with only 14 (8.3 percent) references to FoE as
an activist group and 13 ( 7.7 percent) to collusive behavior. FoE’s reputation as a
watchdog organization is associated with FoE’s main type of activism in NAFTA.
The majority of FoE’s activism is related to lobbying, testifying in committees,
drafting laws, working with private corporations to establish better practices and
sitting on advisory boards. FoE rarely participates in any truly “outsider” activities.
FoE-NAFTA has mastered the use of the courts both national and regional (NAFTA)
to enforce compliance with national and international environmental laws. FoE is
highly respected in the NAFTA states as an environmental watchdog organization
and its leaders are always welcomed by government and industry.
There are however, several interesting trends manifested in the reputation
table. First, there is a spike in references to FoE as a collusive organization in the
year 2000. This is associated with FoE crossing the political line and violating its
own statement of purpose concerning avoidance of political alliances with political
parties and with the regime. In 1999 and particularly in 2000, FoE had accepted
more prominent appointments from the regime and had held candidate forums,
opting to endorse Senator Bradley in the primaries and Vice-President Gore in the
general elections. In addition, FoE campaigned for Gore, ran ads on his behalf and
ran ads against the republican candidate George Bush. The alignment with the ruling
148
party and its candidate raised many eyebrows in the media. It was viewed as an
unusual variation from the normal type of activism FoE was known for. FoE for a
while was even supportive of the third party candidate Ralph Nader, but changed its
mind and campaigned intensely for Al Gore, particularly in those states where Nader
became a viable threat to Gore. Thus, FoE political entanglement with the regime
was intended to guarantee victory for a compromise candidate rather than sticking
with the ideological outsider.
Furthermore, there is a slight increase in references to FoE in the early years
of the Bush administration in comparison with some of the years of the Clinton
administration. FoE increased its activism in the early Bush years in opposition to
several Bush initiatives. The spikes in references occurred in 1994 during the
aftermath of NAFTA debates when NAFTA was beginning to take shape; the second
spike occurred from 2001-2003 during the debates on the Central American Free
Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and FTAA. Each time there was an initiative hostile to
the environment, the increase in legislative activism on behalf of the environmental
NGOs led to an increase in media references. From 2005-2007, FoE Canada initiated
a legal campaign against Canada regarding its lack of compliance with the Kyoto
Protocol. The rise in activism in Canada during the last few years is also related to
the rise to power of ultra right, environmentally hostile Prime Minister Harper. Thus,
the amount of references is generally associated with the sense of threat from the
regime. It is also associated with the level of closeness to the regime. The Clinton
administration’s friendliness with FoE led to more low keyed activism. In Contrast
149
with President Bush, President Clinton did not initiate legislation that was deemed
threatening to the environment. Consequently, during the 1990s, FoE did not engage
in as many campaigns against the regime as it did during the Bush years.
The next section will examine, how NAFTA’s regulatory style helps shape
FoE’s pattern of regulatory engagement.
FoE and NAFTA: A Pattern of Political Engagement
As been mentioned before, the NAFTA regime represents a shallow,
intergovernmental integration whose method of harmonizing environmental law is
gradual and reactive. It allows the NAFTA courts and the national courts in the
member states to define and enforce environmental law. Furthermore, the NAFTA
regime provides ample opportunities for members of civil society to engage its
institutions. However, the engagement of the NAFTA institutions by members of
civil society, consistent with the American style of high-pressure lobbying, as well as
the regime reliance on the expertise of “favored” environmental groups in helping to
craft and enforce environmental law, requires a high level of professionalism,
connection and prestige. As a result, Friends-of the-Earth within NAFTA has
adapted to the rules of the regime and engages it in two primary methods: 1) In order
to conduct the appeal to the NAFTA courts as well as to the national courts where
available, FoE engages in linkage politics through coalition with its sister
organizations in each of the three member states. Furthermore, in order to gain
access to the courts FoE activists and lawyers organize local communities by
attending town hall meetings and by promoting grass roots activism. In that capacity,
150
FoE acts as an open organization with strong connections to the local community.
The following examples illustrate the above patterns of activism: The Devil’s lake
case involving a conflict between Canada and the United States represents a classical
example in which FoE-NAFTA sued the U.S in the NAFTA courts in an attempt to
stop the construction of an outlet to the lake. During the process of appeal to the
CEC, FoE lawyers and community activists organized the community that was
affected by the damage to the lake to participate in filing the appeal. In March, 2006,
FOE Canada and U.S. began a series of submissions and corrections to the CEC
against the creation of an outlet to Devil’s lake in North Dakota. They accused the
Bush administration of flouting international law. The outlet had the potential to
adversely affect communities on the Canadian side of the border. In June of 2006,
NAFTA dismissed the submission and requested corrections. The process of
submissions and corrections would end up taking several years. In early 2007,
NAFTA’s CEC responded to a submission by FoE and other Canadian American and
Mexican NGOs reporting that Canada’s government is lax in enforcing anti pollution
laws. Canada was ordered to enforce the law. The joint American and Canadian
submission in the Devil’s lake matter continued on, with the CEC and the NGOs
going back and forth with resubmissions.
However, as with Greenpeace but to a far larger degree, FoE’s leadership
engages the regime by conforming to the regime’s rule of engagement. FoE leaders
and congressional liaisons are high powered lawyers and lobbyists. Many of them
are involved in revolving door arrangements between the government, civil society
151
and at times the corporate world. At times, the overly cozy relationship between FoE
and the regime tempts FoE to cross the line between activism and governance.
Consequently, FoE leaders have served on government boards and were remunerated
for their efforts. Furthermore, at times, FoE has crossed the line and violated its
neutrality by engaging in entangling alliances with the regime and with certain
political parties. While overall, FoE activism within NAFTA fall along the lines of
watchdog activism, its independence has been compromised through occasional
collusive behavior. The following examples illustrate the above patterns of political
engagement: In 1999, FoE made a rare and first foray into national politics by
endorsing and campaigning for Bill Bradley, a New Jersey Senator running for
President. This stunned Al Gore his opponent because he made a strong effort to get
the FoE endorsement. These meetings, between the Vice President and an
environmental NGO, are suggestive of collusive behavior between the state and civil
society (CNN September 29). Eventually FoE endorsed candidate Gore over Bush,
and campaigned for and donated money to its favored candidate. By the end of 2007,
FoE was again taking sides in the approaching U.S. elections. FoE was running ads
on television against Senator Clinton and in favor of candidate Barak Obama. FoE
NAFTA is more active and assertive against conservative regimes and more
collusive and friendly toward liberal regimes. (see table 4.9 and 4.10).
In Canada, FoE engages in similar political activities by supporting the
Liberal party and by joining government political initiatives. In 2002, FoE and the
Canadian environmental ministry launched a joint new initiative called GELCO,
152
Green Electricity Leaders’ Coalition of Ontario. The initiative intends to recognize
and reward companies that opt for green, and cleaner sources of power.
In its second capacity, FoE’s organizational style and engagement is formal,
and closed. Consistent with the previously discussed tension, FoE displays another
tension within its own politics. While persistently antagonistic toward free trade as
well as neo-liberal capitalism, FoE often engaged the regime and even fought to
defend the regime from attempts by the Canadian government to weaken the
regime’s capacity to enforce environmental regulation. On the morning of NAFTA’s
inception in early 1994, FoE, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club initiate a law suit in
the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Trade
Representative. The purpose of the lawsuit was to determine whether NEPA applied
to NAFTA. In other words, FOE wanted to determine whether a national
environmental law can supersede an international treaty. FOE et al. wanted to force
an environmental impact statement (EIS) to determine if NAFTA might be imposing
a dangerous burden on the environment. The lawsuit had the potential of weakening
the executive ability to negotiate international treaties and agreements. The courts
sided with the President and determined that international agreements negotiated by
the president supersede NEPA. Contrary to the above examples, the following
pattern emerged: In their testimonies FoE leaders have taken a strong position
against the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT). They felt that GATT
had the potential of weakening national and international agreements on the
environment including pro-environmental NAFTA provisions. During 1998, a new
153
international treaty was taking place. This was the MAI agreement, standing for
Multinational Agreement on Investment, which was intended to protect investors
from trade discrimination. FoE and other groups fought in Congress against the
Treaty because it had the potential of allowing foreign investors to sue in domestic
and NAFTA courts against trade discrimination.
Conclusion: Friends-of-the-Earth, Organizational Variances
When comparing the indicators of civil society’s independence it appears
that, FoE-in-MERCOSUR displayed greater organization independence than in
NAFTA and in the in the EU. Furthermore, when comparing NAFTA and
MERCOSUR, the results suggested that MERCOSUR promoted greater
independence in two categories, reputation and behavior. Finally, when comparing
bureaucratic legalism (EU) with Adversarial Legalism (NAFTA), the results suggest
that in the two categories of behavior (press release and activism), the EU promoted
less independent civil society than NAFTA. Overall, these results suggest that
regulatory regimes have a considerable impact on organizational independence when
civil society does not have strong international unitary governance and tightly
controlled organizational core.
Thus, Friends-of-the-Earth’s type of activism, consisting of organizational
structure, and pattern of engagement, suggest a tendency to vary across regime by
adapting its style of operation to the opportunity structures created by the regime.
More specifically, FoE-in-MERCOSUR’s reputation falls mainly in the Activist
category (51.5%). In addition, its highly independent behavior (64%) and level of
154
regime denouncement (75%), suggest that FoE either does not engage the regime or
is hostile to the regime. FoE’s relatively low level of collusive behavior vis-à-vis the
regime suggests a high degree of independence. In contrast, FoE’s degree of
reputation in the EU falls mainly in the watchdog category (69%) but also shows a
relatively high degree of reputation for collusion (23%). FoE-EU behavior also
consists of a relatively high degree of praise for the regime (40%) as well as a high
degree of colluding with the regime (29.5%). The contrast in the behavior of FoE
between these two regimes, suggests that FoE-EU is less independent and more
friendly to its regime than FoE in MERCOSUR. FoE-NAFTA’s reputation and
behavior generally falls into the watchdog and somewhat independent category
(84%). However, its formal denouncement of the regime is the highest of the three
case studies (89%). The above paradox suggests that this relatively mild watchdog
organization whose main activities consist of monitoring and enforcing the law, is at
its formal level hostile to the purpose of the regime while willing to work within the
system to gain political clout. Furthermore, the above mentioned paradox helps shed
light on some of the previously mentioned tensions associated within NAFTA and
consequently within FoE in NAFTA. None-the-less, the above indicators of
independence, suggests that FoE-EU is the least independent and FoE-MERCOSUR
is the most independent, placing FoE-NAFTA somewhere in the middle.
In terms of organizational structure and pattern of engagement, the research
suggests the following cross-regime variation: FoE-MERCOSUR is an open
organization whose activists are volunteers. These grassroots volunteers’ area of
155
expertise is purely coincidental and unrelated to the positions in which they end up
serving in the organization. It is more reflective of the volunteer’s regular daytime
jobs. FoE in MERCOSUR is antagonistic toward the regime and is a political
outsider. In contrast, FoE-EU is the ultimate insider, employing bureaucrats to assist
the EU to enforce its laws. FoE-EU acts as another layer in the EU bureaucracy. FoE
NAFTA, responds to the regime’s opportunity structure through a two level style of
activism. On the one hand, FoE-NAFTA is reactive and antagonistic. It hates free
trade and works with grassroots and local communities to force the regime and its
state to enforce the law. On its formal level, FoE-NAFTA engages the regime and
entangles alliance with political parties.
Consistent with the above results, FoE tends to display a greater level of
adaption to the regimes. The reason for FoE’s flexibility is mainly associated with
organizational level contingencies. These contingencies include, a loosely coupled
organizational core as dictated by the organizational structure of FoE-International,
relatively high resource dependence, and a relatively high organizational
dependence. Thus, FoE International’s confederate style regime enunciates general
values but does not dictate the manner in which these values must be followed. As a
result, the rather general directive that the role of FoE is to utilize various political
means to force the regime to enforce its own rules contributes to organizational
dependence on the regime’s style of regulations. In MERCOSUR, it means that FoE
needs to work with local communities and international corporate as well as
institutions of governance to force the MERCOSUR states to enforce environmental
156
standards. In the EU, FoE’s operation reflects the EU’s bureaucratic system resulting
in a recursive relationship. In fact, FoE in the EU resembles a reflective mirror of the
standards and values promoted by the regime. Consequently, FoE-EU is bureaucratic
in its style and personnel. Similarly, in NAFTA, FoE reflects the corporate and
financially embedded style of lobbying and engaging the regime. This also explains
why FoE’s personnel in MERCOSUR tends to consist of volunteers, while FoE-EU
personnel tends to consist of bureaucrats and FoE-in-NAFTA’s personnel tend to
consist of high powered lawyers and lobbyists. The cultural behavior and pattern of
political engagement of Friends-of-the-Earth chapters deeply reflect the values and
attitude of the surrounding regime. In contrast with Greenpeace and WWF whose
organizational level contingencies insulate them to varying degrees from the impact
of the norms and values of the regime, FoE’s willingness to accept the regime’s
funding, norms and institutional program subject it to a greater degree of adaptation
and reflection of the regime’s within the organization.
157
Table 4.11: Friends of the Earth Data: Reputation

Reputation
Location Collusive Watchdog Activist
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
0
(0%)
(0%)
31
(48.44%)
(13.03%)
33
(51.56%)
(48.53%)
64
(100%)
(18.60%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
13
(7.60%)
(34.21%)
141
(82.46%)
(59.24%)
17
(9.94%)
(25.00%)
171
(100%)
(49.71%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
25
(22.94%)
(65.79%)
66
(60.55%)
(27.73%)
18
(16.51%)
(26.47%)
109
(100%)
(31.69%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
38
(11.05%)
(100%)
238
(69.19%)
(100%)
68
(19.77%)
(100%)
344
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 74.03, df = 4, p < .0001 (test of independence)

Table 4.12: Friends of the Earth Data: Behavior

Behavior
Location Collusive
Somewhat
Independent Independent
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
6
(10.34%)
(8.45%)
15
(25.86%)
(5.56%)
37
(63.79%)
(59.68%)
58
(100%)
(14.93%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
16
(8.94%)
(22.54%)
151
(84.36%)
(55.93%)
12
(6.70%)
(19.35%)
179
(100%)
(44.42%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
49
(29.52%)
(69.01%)
104
(62.65%)
(38.52%)
13
(7.83%)
(20.97%)
166
(100%)
(41.19%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
71
(17.62%)
(100%)
270
(67.00%)
(100%)
62
(15.38%)
(100%)
403
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 149.176, df = 4, p < .0001 (test of independence)
158
Table 4.13: Friends of the Earth Data: Press Releases Polarity

Praise vs. Denouncement
Location Praise
Qualified
Praise Denouncement
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
9
(13.85%)
(17.31%)
7
(10.77%)
(41.18%)
49
(75.38%)
(33.11%)
65
(100%)
(29.95%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
5
(8.77%)
(9.62%)
1
(1.75%)
(5.88%)
51
(89.47%)
(34.46%)
57
(100%)
(26.27%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
38
(40.00%)
(73.08%)
9
(9.47%)
(52.94%)
48
(50.53%)
(32.43%)
95
(100%)
(43.78%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
52
(23.96%)
(100%)
17
(7.83%)
(100%)
148
(68.20%)
(100%)
217
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 30.816, df = 4, p < .001 (test of independence)

The failure of the chi-square test of fitness did not suggest that there are
regular patterns or correlations between regimes and civil society. As previously
mentioned, the contingent intervening variable that mediate the affect of the regime
suggest that what we have here is a complex interaction rather than a causal
relationship.
159
CHAPTER FIVE
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND
WWF International is a federation. Thus, its control over its affiliate
organizations is looser than the unitary system of Greenpeace, but tighter than the
confederate style of Friends-of-the-Earth. Consistent with its international
organizational structure, WWF affiliate organizations enjoy some leeway to define
their own style of activism. Furthermore, within the WWF system there are three
types of structural organizations: There are national offices, program offices and
regional offices. National offices form their own agenda and operating style.
Consequently, they are likely to display the greatest amount of adaptation to the
regulatory style of the regime in which they operate. Program offices do not operate
independently and take orders from regional offices that oversee an entire area. Thus,
they tend to maintain the style of activism dictated by their supervising regional
office. While considering the likelihood and implications of cross regime variances
on the WWF type of activism, it is important to note the following organizational
constraints: WWF-Argentina and WWF-Brazil are national offices representing
significant independence from WWF-International. WWF-USA is a regional office
and oversees several other program offices including WWF-Mexico. WWF-EU is
also a regional office that oversees the entire EU. A second important variable
affecting WWF’s type of activism is the organization’s general orientation towards
conservative collaboration with business, industry and the regime. Given its non-
militant and cooperative style, as well as its tendency toward resource dependence,
160
WWF regional variances that can be attributed to the interaction between regulatory
regimes and social organizations are subtle yet important. (See table 5.1 for a
summary of these differences). To develop these findings, this chapter seeks to
explain how the three regulatory regimes, by developing different opportunity
structures through their institutions and laws, are involved in complex and recursive
interface with the WWF organizations.
In the following sections, I will briefly explain the history, culture and
structure of WWF-International and its regional organizations. I will analyze and
compare WWF within MERCOSUR, with WWF- EU and WWF within NAFTA
based on independence indicators, and variations in its methods of engaging the three
regimes.

Table 5.1: Summary of Findings

Name WWF - MERCOSUR WWF - EU WWF - NAFTA
Regime Type Retreatist Bureaucratic legalism Adversarial legalism
Level of
independence
Somewhat
independent
Captured: by the
regime
Extremely captured:
By the regime and by the
corporate world
Style of
activism
Opportunistic,
collaborative
Formal, collaborative,
proactive, collusive
Formal, collaborative,
reverential toward authority,
compromising
Type of
leadership
Open, somewhat
activist, professional
Closed, professional,
bureaucratic
Closed, professional,
corporate, revolving door
emphasis on hiring political
and corporate superstars.
Pattern of
strategic
engagement
Non-engagement,
seeks other regimes
and corporations to
engage
Plays by the book,
cooperative, collusive,
supportive of the
regime. “Insider”
Engaging, collaborative
with allies with the regime
and industry, “Insider”
161
World Wildlife Fund: Historical Review
World Wildlife Fund was established, in 1961, in order to serve as a counter-
hegemonic reaction against the modernization projects and the direct foreign
investment that were deemed to be destructive to the ecology in the developing
world. The group chose the name “World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an International
Foundation for Saving of The World’s Wildlife and Wild Places”. Although the
original purpose of WWF, at its establishment, was fund raising, WWF has grown
into a full-fledged transnational environmental activist group. Its central office is in
Gland Switzerland, and a secondary central office opened in the United States.
Currently, WWF is made up of offices in twenty-seven countries in all five
continents. In addition to fund raising, WWF has thousands of other projects
throughout the world. These include building fences around forests reserves,
purchasing ecologically sensitive areas and conserving them, providing trucks, and
weapons to anti-poaching forces, and empowering local communities to help with
conservation. WWF relies on contributions from individuals as well as grants from
foundations and corporations. Finally, WWF has evolved from an organization that
raises funds to an organization that is directly involved in the community by working
on environmental conservation. WWF has also evolved from an organization
concerned mostly with wildlife to more diverse environmental concerns, among
these are: pollution, climate change, economic development and sustainability.
Consequently, each WWF office currently has two levels of operations, fund raising
and actual work on conservation in the field.
162
Transnational Organizational Structure and Political strategy
WWF is organized into geographical regions. The regions that possess unique
environmental needs include Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia, North America
and the Pacific. WWF coordinates programs designed to develop projects that
address the particular needs of wildlife within each of these geographical areas.
Thus, the WWF office develops policies and projects targeting the five zones.
WWF has established lead offices that coordinate conservation activities in
the developing world. While conservation efforts take place in Europe and North
America, WWF pays special attention to developing countries in Africa, Asia and
Latin America. WWF-U.S. acts as the lead office for Latin America, and WWF
International in Switzerland acts as the lead office for Asia and Africa. All projects
in the developing world are administered through these offices. Local WWF chapters
which wish to support conservation efforts in the developing world contribute part of
their funds to these offices. For example, the lottery revenue from the Netherlands
funds part of the operation of WWF Argentina. However in such instances, local
WWF chapters must still work through one of the lead offices. This ensures that any
actions are well integrated into other WWF efforts in the region.
While projects in the Third World are administered through one of the two
lead offices, the overall programs undertaken in Latin America, Africa, and Asia are
supervised by WWF-wide committees. These committees are made up of
representatives from a number of WWF offices. They meet a few times a year and,
while not responsible for setting strict policies, formulate the general orientation of
163
WWF programs. The transnational character of these committees complicates the
process of formulating programs. Often people from different countries hold varying
conception of goals and strategies of how to pursue wildlife conservation. However,
this diversity provides a more informed sensitivity and understanding of local
environmental and cultural differences. Finally, consistent with the WWF governing
structure, the next section will analyze the degree to which MERCOSUR’s
regulatory regime exerts influence on the style of activism of the WWF chapters
within its realm.
WWF in MERCOSUR
Retreatist Bureaucracy, Strong Civil Society
WWF in MERCOSUR has a formal style of activism and a relatively closed
organization. It does not use volunteers. It hires professional scientists and fund-
raisers. It seeks collaboration and cooperation with International Corporations and
financial institutions. It is also cooperative and moderate in its approach to activism
vis-à-vis the regime. Consistent with its international profile, WWF is not an activist
organization in the militant style of FoE or Greenpeace. However, the organization’s
relative wealth, its ability to secure non-governmental funding, and its tendency to
avoid any funding from MERCOSUR or its member states, has contributed to
WWF’s ability to maintain a great degree of independence and to control its agenda.
In addition, in contrast with other WWF organizations throughout the world, that lost
their independence to their respective regimes due to the lure of money, or the
increase in prestige and influence, WWF’s perception that both MERCOSUR and its
164
member states lack regulatory capacity, contributed to an independent agenda and a
relatively high level of activism and independence.
WWF national organizations in the MERCOSUR states of Argentina and
Brazil display a similar style of activism. Both organizations work directly with local
communities to conserve and protect the environment. While in both countries,
WWF seeks to work in collaboration with the government through common
legislation, and common projects, WWF-Brazil has been able to engage in more
common projects due to the increase in institutionalization through proactive, pro-
environmental legislation. In Argentina, however, institutions are more lacking or are
more retreatist than the Brazilian ones. Therefore, WWF-Argentina has engaged
primarily in collaborative work with local communities, provincial and city
governments, local and global corporations, and with international finance
institutions. None-the-less, even in the Brazilian case, WWF controls the agenda by
providing its own finances. Thus, in contrast with many other WWF organizations
which were captured by their respective regimes, WWF in MERCOSUR is not only
immune to a regime take over, but is also able to replace the absent regime and take
over regulatory enforcement in a powerful and similar style reminiscent of the
Greenpeace organization.
On a final note, the WWF organizations in MERCOSUR, being national
offices, exert a comparatively high level of independence vis-à-vis their international
organizations. While not as independent as individual Friends-of-the-Earth offices,
WWF in MERCOSUR is not coerced by a top down organization core to the extent
165
that Greenpeace is, and, thus, it is able to adapt to working with different regulatory
regimes. The next section will elaborate on the impact MERCOSUR has on the
organizational structure, self-perception and style of activism of its WWF chapters.
Organizational Self-Perception, Structure and Personnel
In the MERCOSUR states there are two major WWF offices, one in Brazil
and one in Argentina. These offices are considered national offices. They are
different from the WWF offices in Chile, Bolivia and Colombia which are program
offices. The national offices are autonomous and while full members of WWF
international are allowed to pursue local campaigns, run their own affairs and raise
funds locally. In contrast with WWF in MERCOSUR, the above mentioned program
offices are run directly by WWF-USA and receive all their funds from the central
office. In addition, program offices run programs that are conceived by the central
office in Washington D.C.
Additionally, Argentina and Brazil have several WWF offices located in
sensitive areas throughout the countries. These local offices direct the local
campaigns that are planned by the central office. The WWF organization in
Argentina consists of three offices. The main office that coordinates the campaigns
as well as fund raising and communications is located in Buenos Aires. The other
two offices are located where the important conservation campaigns are taking place.
WWF Argentina consists of 50 full time employees; 40 of them are biologists and
agronomical engineers. The other ten are full time professionals working in
communications and fund raising. WWF uses almost no volunteers and does not
166
have a program to encourage participation by volunteers. The central office has only
two volunteers that help with phone banking and other minor communications
(Heinrich, 2009). In Heinrich’s own words: “Volunteers were more common 30
years ago when I was a volunteer. We changed that to paid personnel. It is more
effective at the end. If you want to get results you have to pay people full time
because volunteers donate their time if they can, but it is limited. We feel that by
paying people we helped stabilize the organization” (Heinrich, 2009).
In addition, the Argentina office has five directors. Each director is in charge
of a different policy area or campaign. One of them runs the mission campaign,
another the marine protection campaign and others deal with fundraising and
politics. Heinrich himself started as a volunteer, but then he moved on to college and
graduate school studying business. He worked for many years in marketing for a
major Corporation. Only a year ago, he decided to quit the corporate world and come
back to work on fund raising and communications for WWF. He is able to use his
skills from the business world to raise funds and communicate with the corporate
world and with the government on behalf of WWF.
In terms of self-perception, similarly to Greenpeace and FoE in
MERCOSUR, WWF enjoys a great deal of independence not as a goal but rather as a
result of the retreatist regulatory capacity in MERCOSUR. Heinrich feels that
MERCOSUR has no legal or bureaucratic capacity but he wishes that it had more
capacity. “Environmental problems are so great that if the regional government and
the national government had more institutional capacity, we would be able to do our
167
work which is conservation and lobbying for legislation, while they do their work
which is enforcement and compliance” (Heinrich, 2009).
Furthermore on the issue of self-perception, Heinrich, and other WWF
employees insist that they are not like Greenpeace or FoE, “our kind of activism is
very technical. We are professionals using technical language. We work on
conservation in the field and on sustainability. We do not do much denouncing… We
do denounce but that is not our style… We work behind the scenes with local
communities and corporations” (Heinrich, 2009). In addition, WWF perceives itself
more as a watchdog organization than as an activist organization.
Regarding the issue of funding and independence, Heinrich and other
members of his office were very adamant, that they do not receive any money from
MERCOSUR or the National or local government of Argentina. They are a national
office and can do their own fundraising. They prefer to fundraise from local private
donations, foreign government and international banks and corporations. Heinrich
maintains that although WWF is a moderate organization it maintains independence
from the regime. WWF-Brazil’s website echoes the same perception and maintains
the same type of funding sources.
In addition, WWF’s style of activism does not necessitate the hiring of legal
teams for the purpose of adversarial style litigation. Their typical operations are low
keyed and collaborative. WWF works on several campaigns with local communities,
missions and villages, conserving biodiversity and working on forestry sustainability.
They purchased environmentally sensitive areas and worked to conserve and save
168
them until they were ready to become national parks. At that point WWF donated
them to the state as national parks ready to be run by the government. Thus, their
campaigns generally involve managing environmental projects. In addition to
organizational structure, fundraising and personnel, WWF’s style of activism
consists of issuing press releases and interviews to the media in the MERCOSUR
states. The next section analyzes several indicators of organizational independence,
which includes WWF’s reputation, press release and interviews and style of
activism.

Table 5.2: Organizational Behavior: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009
by WWF

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 2 1 1 3 0 0
Qualified praise 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Denounce 1 2 1 3 1 4 3 1 0 1 1 0 5 2 2
Sample Size: 40 Praise: 27.5% Qualified Praise: 5% Denounce: 67.5%

This table demonstrates a steady level of criticism and denouncement of the
governments’ environmental records by WWF. However, there are two examples of
press releases that praise the Brazilian government for new positive initiatives. The
first one was in 1998 during the Cardozo initiative and the second one was in 2002
and 2003 during the honeymoon with the Lula administration and its initiatives. In
addition, the “praise” in 1998 included support for the Menem administration in
Argentina for joining the Kyoto Protocol. In both cases, there is an initial
169
reassessment and eventual disappointment with their policies several years later
which involves a new round of criticism, disappointment and denouncement. These
media items demonstrate a general level of independence from the regime.
Consistent with WWF’s relatively moderate approach, its level of regime praise,
although not as high as that of other organizations, suggests a comparatively less
hostile approach toward the regime. The next indicator of independence measures a
different aspect of organizational behavior. The following table compares and
contrasts the type of activism displayed by the WWF organizations in MERCOSUR.

Table 5.3: Organizational Behavior: Type of Activism

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Highly
independent
2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
Somewhat
independent
0 4 1 1 0 1 2 0 1 1 3 1 2 1 1
Collusive 0 0 0 1 3 1 0 1 1 3 1 4 2 0 0
Sample Size: 42 Level 1: 14.3% Level 2: 45.2% Level 3: 40.5 %

Table 5.3 represents the level of organizational behavior ranging from highly
independent “outsider” behavior to collusive insider behavior by WWF. While
WWF’s political activities and type of activism generally do not fall into the
category of complete “outsiders”, the majority of their activism does not fall into the
“insider” categories either. From the interviews with WWF leadership, their website
and their literature, it is clear that WWF would like to engage the governments with
170
which they are involved, in a collaborative and positive manner, similar to the way
they engage private industry. However, the lack of institutionalization in the
MERCOSUR states, and particularly in Argentina, leads WWF to pursue a more
outsider behavior by working with international organizations and local communities
and only partially engaging the national regime or the RTA.
There are two important examples of an increase in collusive or
collaborative-partnership between WWF Brazil and the Brazilian government. The
examples are in 1998, after President Cardozo announced his environmental
initiative, and from 2003-2005 when President Lula announced his environmental
program. In both these cases, although the program represents a joint collaboration
between private business, the NGO and the government, the funding for the program
came from WWF through it fundraising activities from private donors. Thus, the
organization’s fundraising capacity, lessens the control over its agenda by the
government. WWF’s joint projects with the Lula administration were criticized by
nationalists as NGO-colonialism taking over the government, and in contrast, by
other civil society organizations as not going far enough and as being too controlled
by the regime. Thus, to the extent that WWF was able to maintain it independence,
while engaging in collaboration, is subject to interpretation and debate. None-the-
less, when comparing these types of collaborative activities with similar regime-
funded activism in Europe and NAFTA, it seems that the WWF in MERCOSUR is
able to exert greater control over its agenda. The next table analyzes WWF’s
reputation in the MERCOSUR based media.
171

Table 5.4: WWF: Reputation in the Community

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
Watchdog 1 2 1 0 4 2 3 2 1 1 6 1 3 2 2
Collusive 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0
Sample size: 44 Activist: 11.4% Watchdog: 70.5% Collusive: 18%

Table 5.4 suggests that the majority of the media items and stories (70.5%)
referred to WWF as a “watchdog” organization. There is a general increase in the
amount of media referring to WWF as a watchdog organization after 1997, and again
after 2002, which appear to coincide with the pick up in WWF activism in Brazil.
Moreover, the most common references to WWF in each of the MERCOSUR
countries was the words, “Moderate”, “Well-Respected Professionals”, “Watchdog”,
“Conservative”, “Experts and Scientists” and “Conservation Organization”. These
references corroborated WWF’s own leadership perception that they are different
and have a more “technical and pragmatic” type of activism (Heinrich, 2009).
However, it does not necessarily mean that the media perceives WWF to be captured
by the regime either. Thus, WWF’s collaboration with the Lula administration in the
ARPA Amazon conservation project, a joint WWF, World Bank and government
project, paradoxically led to a perception by the majority of the media that WWF
was independent and that it was the government that was captured by the
organization. Moreover, several articles followed the story by referring to WWF as
172
“conservative” and “colonialist” organization attempting to take over the country.
The idea was, that ‘the hand that gives is the hand that controls’ the agenda. Thus,
WWF was perceived for the most part as independent of the regime and was rarely
referred to as collusive with the regime. WWF was also rarely referred to as an
outsider activist. Unlike Greenpeace, WWF welcomes corporate donations and does
not engage in public demonstrations. In the next section, I analyze WWF’s pattern of
political engagement which contributes to the organization’s relative independence
vis-à-vis the MERCOSUR regime.
Pattern of Engagement: Independence Without Confrontation
The main issue that needs to be considered when comparing WWF-in-
MERCOSUR’s pattern of political engagement with that of other WWF offices, is
the extent to which WWF International’s federal system immunizes its
organizational core from being susceptible to regulatory pressure and as a result to
cross regime adaptation and variation. Thus, the original expectation was that
individual WWF national or regional chapters should be less likely to vary then those
of Friends-of-the-Earth but more likely to vary than those of Greenpeace. When
examining WWF-in-MERCOSUR, it is first essential to note its pattern of
engagement that does not vary, appear common to all WWF chapters, and therefore
immune to variance. Then, it is essential to look at areas of variance in the pattern of
engagement that is specific to WWF-in-MERCOSUR and is most likely associated
with the regulatory regime of MERCOSUR.
173
Consistent with the above inquiry, WWF-in-MERCOSUR engages in the
following political activities in a manner that does not vary across regimes: WWF
engages in collaborative work with local and international corporations with the
purpose of helping them improve environmental practices, and engage in promoting
common projects, and donate funds to WWF. Jan Heinrich, WWF spokesperson in
Argentina felt that the organization’s behavior during the famous paper mill crisis
exemplifies its moderate, technocratic and collaborative approach. Jan Heinrich, in
his interview, explained that WWF-Argentina did not take a position on the paper
mill issue in Uruguay because he felt it was mostly a symbolic battle focusing on the
wrong offender. He felt that Botnia was not the worst paper mill corporation in
Argentina. It was one of the least polluting in comparison with five other paper mills
currently in operation. Thus, he felt that there was no scientific reason to attack
Botnia in particular (Heinrich 2009).
In addition, WWF engages in a two-level operation consisting of fundraising,
lobbying and participating in legislation on the first level while purchasing tracts of
environmentally sensitive land and working with local communities to conserve it on
the second level. As a result, there are two types of typical WWF activists,
professional fundraisers or scientists in the main offices, and conservationists in the
countryside. WWF’s moderate and collaborative style generally means that WWF
chapters are not likely to hire lawyers and engage in aggressive litigation or to
involve street activists and engage in civil disobedience. The above engagement
patterns do not distinguish WWF-in-MERCOSUR from its counter parts in other
174
regions. The following examples illustrate areas in which WWF’s pattern of
engagement does not vary across regimes: In June, 1994, Bank of America donated
1.7 million dollars to WWF Brazil for conservation efforts in the Amazon region and
for establishing more of an institutional presence in Brazil (Business wire, 1994). In
1997, WWF participated in the Rio+5 conference which was attended by 500
environmental activists as well and government and corporate leaders, discussing
issues of sustainable development that were earlier discussed in the 1992 Rio
summit. That conference was boycotted by Greenpeace and heavily criticized by
FoE for involving too many government and corporate leaders. In 2002, HSBC, a
leading international bank, donated 35 million British Pounds to WWF Brazil for
Amazon conservation efforts. This led to a joint collaboration with the government
of Brazil. By August, 2002 President Cardoso announced the creation of the largest
national reserve in the Amazon in a partnership with WWF Brazil.
In contrast with the above examples, the following patterns of engagement
are unique to WWF-in-MERCOSUR and are attributed to MERCOSUR and its
member states’ lack of bureaucratic regulatory capacity: WWF does not engage the
MERCOSUR level regime because it perceives that regime to be lacking in
enforcement capacity and in interest in involving civil society in discussions
(Heinrich, 2009). As a result of similar weakness in the national regimes, WWF
mainly engages local communities and private industry. WWF does not work with
the Argentine court or legal system. There is no effective enforcement of
environmental law nor is there capacity for the courts to intervene in environmental
175
matters. Given that the executive branch is not environmentally friendly and does not
have the capacity to enforce the law, WWF mostly works with the Argentine
Congress. WWF works on developing legislation to help conserve nature. There are
two major examples of legislation that was sponsored by WWF. The recent fishing
crisis led to WWF denouncing the fish and wildlife secretary forcing him to quit. As
a result, WWF lobbied Congress to pass a sustainable fishing law. Another law that
WWF worked on was one intended to conserve glaciers in the south. However, that
law was vetoed by President Cristina Kirschner. WWF is currently working with
Congress on a law that would be more palatable to the President (Heinrich, 2009).
In contrast with American style lobbying that is prevalent in NAFTA and
involves aggressive fund raising, in MERCOSUR, WWF engages in a different style
of lobbying. WWF lobbies Congress by talking with environmentally friendly
legislators. WWF does not use money to donate to their campaigns; they do not have
the funds for this. All legislative work is done by persuasion and education.
However, the members of Congress that work with WWF are perceived as
environmentally friendly and become associated with WWF (Heinrich, 2009).
It should be noted, that the above examples of legislative work constitutes an
exception to the rule. In Argentina, Heinrich feels that the national government
suffers from lack of institutionalization and inability or lack of interest in enforcing
the law; for example, there are no environmental police officers enforcing the law.
WWF never approaches the Environmental Ministry because “[they] are very weak”.
“The Department of the Environment does not have a legal team nor does it have a
176
bureaucracy” (Heinrich, 2009). Generally, when WWF investigates a project that
harms the environment such as the SALTA oil and gas pipeline, they generally
approach the Secretary of Energy in charge of the project; then they go to the local
government and the police. However, as is often the case, when these actions
produce no results, WWF approaches the Corporation that operates the project.
Consequently, WWF finds itself acting instead of the regime and becoming the sole
law enforcement agency. However, unlike Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth which
are hostile to capitalism, WWF enforces environmental standards by working
directly with private industry. In the case of the SALTA gas pipeline, WWF teamed
up with Greenpeace. According to Heinrich, Greenpeace demonstrated and went to
the media, denouncing the company and the government. At the same time WWF
played the “good guy” and approached the company explaining the problem and
suggesting ways to approach the pipeline in a more sustainable way. Thus, each
group operated according to its style of activism (Heinrich, 2009).
The consequences of the organization’s independent ability to secure funds
from outside the MERCOSUR area, and also avoid accepting any funds from
regional or national regimes in MERCOSUR, result in WWF having an ability in
Argentina and Brazil to maintain an unusually high level of independence. This
independence manifests itself in the following ways: in Argentina, WWF negotiates
and purchases land for conservation without having to coordinate its work with the
regime. Thus, WWF is able to run the conservation efforts independent of regime
supervision and regulations. In Brazil, a country whose capacity and concern for the
177
environment has grown in recent years, WWF collaborates with the regime on joint
projects. However, unlike similar joint collaborations in Europe or North America,
because WWF and its international donors control the funds, sensitive mega-projects
in the Amazon basin are run by WWF leaving the regime as the junior partner. In
each of these cases, WWF not only becomes the main enforcer of environmental
compliance but it acts as an alternative to the regime by completely taking over the
tasks that would normally be administered by the interior ministry or the
environmental ministry. Consequently, the main criticism of WWF in MERCOSUR
is not that it is a captured organization but rather that it has become like a state
within a state or a powerful colonialist organization who is taking over South
America. The following examples illustrate the nature of WWF’s independent
collaboration with the regime: In April, 1998, WWF and the World Bank entered
into an alliance to help the Brazilian government conserve 25 million hectares of
forest land. However, in signing the decree, President Cardoso explained that “"This
does not mean yielding our sovereignty." He stated: "It means Brazil, which has the
responsibility to preserve its forests and territory, is open to international experiences
and welcomes the participation of international organizations in this, our process”.
(BBC 1998) Thus, the main concern is not that WWF would be captured by the
Brazilian regime but rather that the Brazilian regime might be captured by the World
Bank and WWF. In 2003, WWF, the Brazilian government and the World Bank
launched ARPA, a forest conservation partnership program, to save the Amazon
biodiversity. This was conceived by WWF and former President Cardoso. This was
178
another example of a collusive project run by the government, international banks
and WWF. By June 2004, WWF gave the first funding for the program to President
Lula. In 2005, WWF’s collaboration with the Lula Administration reached new
heights. Later the same year, WWF Brazil contributed additional 3.3 million dollars
through ARPA to the government conservation efforts (PR Newswire, 2005). By the
end of the year, Brazil’s Electropaulo, an electric company, signed on with the
program and gave WWF more money toward the ARPA conservation plan. In 2007,
several major nationalist politicians as well as left leaning environmentalists accused
WWF and its international corporate affiliation of colonialism and trying to take the
Amazon region away from Brazil (New York Times, 2007).
The above examples illustrate the manner in which WWF-in-MERCOSUR is
different from its international sister organizations. While its public face promotes a
sense of collaboration and moderation, in its day to day operations, it exerts
independence and influence. As a result, WWF-in-MERCOSUR is able to issue a
relatively high level of regime denouncement and avoid the reputation of being
perceived as a captured organization. The next section will reveal how WWF-EU
adapts to the regime’s regulatory style, resulting in a pattern of engagement that
suggests far less independence.
WWF-EU
Bureaucratic Legalism: Captured Civil Society
The WWF-EU Policy Office perceives itself as a professional organization
that works to coordinate and facilitate both industry and civil society within the EU
179
in the engagement of the EU-regime and its bureaucracy. The WWF-EU Website
emphasizes collaborative work with the regime and industry as a way to achieve
clout and influence. As a result, WWF almost never engages in “outsider” behavior.
It is the ultimate political insider. WWF is friendly and cooperative with the EU
regime. WWF lobbyists work behind the scenes and persuade legislators to vote for
environmental legislation. WWF campaigns are geared toward supporting the EU’s
legislative agenda.
Unlike FoE-EU and Greenpeace-EU whose main style of activism involves
helping the EU to enforce compliance by using the bureaucracy against recalcitrant
national regimes, WWF prefers to expose and embarrass the EU states and private
industry into cooperating with environmental harmonization. More than any other
organization, WWF enjoys close relationship with the EU regime. WWF receives a
substantial amount of funding from the EU budget and is entrusted to dispense EU
funding for government projects. WWF research is funded by the EU and is intended
to support rather than oppose EU initiatives. Members of WWF enjoy a revolving
door relationship with the EU. The EU’s former and current leaders regularly
become WWF lobbyists and later return to EU leadership. Former and current EU
officials and national leaders serve on the WWF board, and WWF leaders serve on
EU policy making committees. WWF-EU is mostly a captured organization and has
become yet another SGO-Semi-Governmental Organization. Just like FoE-EU,
WWF-EU responded to the narrow opportunity structure provided by the EU
180
regulatory regime and became another layer of bureaucracy absorbed by the regime.
As an organization, WWF style of activism is formal, closed, and highly collusive.
Organizational Self-Perception, Structure and Personnel
The WWF EU policy office helps support the WWF mission to stop
degradation of the planet’s natural environment. According to WWF mission
statement, “The EU policy office contributes to the achievement of WWF global
mission by leading the WWF network to shape EU policies impacting both the
European and global environment” (WWF Website). Thus, the EU policy office does
not just represent EU environmental issues but rather a global impact perspective.
According to the website, the EU office was established because the EU is
responsible for approximately 80 percent of environmental laws in the European
continent.
Self-Perception and style of activism
WWF maintains that it does not oppose free trade, nor does it attempt to
reverse the world to a previous less developed era. In addition, it does not attempt to
prevent developing nations in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world from
achieving modernity. WWF’s goal is to reduce the human footprint in the world,
slow down climate change and achieve sustainable industries and communities.
WWF does that by convincing governments and other political bodies to adopt,
enforce, and strengthen their environmental policies. WWF policy work involves the
following elements: research and analysis, policy formulation, building relationship
by engaging regimes and corporations, lobbying and campaigning.
181
WWF European Policy Office has a staff of 30 paid professionals. It is
funded by the WWF network, the EU Commission, private and corporate donors. In
the 2007-2008 budget years, approximately 60 percent of the budget came from
WWF International, 13 percent from foundations, 12 percent from private industry,
10 percent from the EU Commission, and five Percent from other sources. However,
WWF’s International funding is also derived from government and corporate
donations which include the World Bank, the EU and the governments of Germany
and the Netherlands (WWF-EU website). WWF-EU statement included in the EU
funding for the environment website, maintains that WWF has for many years been
involved in helping the EU design, divide and spend environmental funds in order to
support enforcement and implementation (EU-Funding for the Environment
Website).
WWF personnel are paid professionals. Its governing system reflects WWF-
International governing structure and the EU rules. WWF-EU maintains a program
for volunteers to participate in international conservation projects. However, WWF-
EU is not a grassroots organization and volunteers are not promoted to engage in any
legislative or bureaucratic activity.
The EU policy office links WWF to the European national organization
network and to the EU legislative and policy making cycles and bureaucratic levels.
Thus, the EU office creates a regional civil society linked together. Working group
specialists are engaged in, raising regional funds, European neighborhoods policy,
development aid, climate and energy. These networks bring together WWF experts
182
from inside and outside of Europe. These specialists working in Brussels take the
working group recommendations and feed them into the EU policy-making
processes.
WWF-EU credits its progressive partners for success in achieving policy
goals. It credits the EU for working jointly with WWF to distribute development aid
throughout the world. In addition, forging alliances with progressive industrial
groups have helped the WWF, to achieve breakthroughs in environmental policy and
compliance. In addition, the WWF European Policy Office cooperates and works
with other NGOs to achieve policy goals. These groups which started with the “gang
of four” are now known as the “Green 10”. Among the Green 10 are FOE-Europe
and Greenpeace Europe. WWF coordinates common policy goals with the entire EU
civil society (WWF website).
In summary, WWF considers its form of activism in the EU to be that of
helping strengthen and implement the EU directives and policy regulations. Thus,
WWF-EU does not demonstrate organizational independence. It is collaborative and
collusive with the EU bureaucracy. Because its funding and leadership are heavily
intertwined with the EU institutional structure, there is substantial doubt concerning
the organization’s ability to maintain distinct behavior from that of the EU regime.
The next section will analyze WWF-EU base on several indicators of independence.

183
Table 5.5: Organizational Behavior: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 0 0 2 3 0 0 0 5 2 3 1 1 0 1 5
Qualified praise 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0
Denounce 5 3 3 2 4 2 1 5 4 8 8 12 2 6 6
Sample Size: 99 Praise: 23.2% Qualified Praise: 5.05% Denounce: 71.7%

The WWF-EU Unit issues more press releases than most organizations. In
fact, the use of the media in the form of press releases, or interviews is a significant
part of WWF’s style of activism. Unlike, FoE and Greenpeace which use the EU
bureaucracy to aid the EU in enforcing compliance against recalcitrant states and
private industry, WWF uses the media for the purpose of educating the public and
impacting the quality of discourse on the environment. Consistent with these
principles, table 5.5 demonstrates that WWF generally denounces or criticizes the
EU more often than it praises it. The pattern of denouncement or criticism is
correlated with major WWF campaigns or EU legislative accomplishments. Thus,
years in which major environmental milestones took place, WWF followed a pattern
of initially praising the EU for beginning the positive process, showing alarm and
disappointment in the middle of the process when the EU showed some retreat, and
finally either criticizing or issuing a qualified praise at the end of the process
depending on the results. The major campaigns that demonstrated spikes in press-
releases included some of the following: the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol
(1996-1999), the long and arduous campaign to pass the REACH legislation on
184
chemical regulations (2003-2007), the Tuna fishing campaigns, the campaign to
slowdown climate change, and the campaign to eliminate energy wasting light bulbs.
In each of these campaigns with the exception of the light bulb legislation, WWF
praised the EU at the beginning of the campaign, criticized signs that the EU was
retreating due to industry pressure, and either criticized or denounced the final
results. In addition to its relationship with the media, WWF engages in a variety of
other types of activism. WWF’s main types of activism involves lobbying and
developing legislation in committees, publishing both independent and EU
sponsored research, and engaging in joint education campaigns intended to support
the EU legislative agenda or prod it to engage in environmentally sustainable agenda.
The following table analyzes WWF-EU’s type of activism.

Table 5.6: Organizational Behavior: Level of Activism

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Highly
independent
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
Somewhat
independendent
2 5 3 10 5 3 10 6 2 8 12 16 3 11 9
Collusive 1 2 2 8 2 1 3 3 1 2 1 3 2 3 2
Sample Size: 146 Level 1: 3.4% Level 2: 72% Level 3: 24.6%
185
WWF almost never demonstrates the type of “outsider” highly independent
activism. WWF does not demonstrate against or sabotages nuclear plants or dirty
coal mines. It does not appeal to any international banks or regimes in order to
enforce international environmental standards against the EU or against its member
states. During international conferences, WWF always takes the EU side against
other regimes. Thus, most of WWF activism falls into the “somewhat independent”
category. In addition, WWF participates in EU initiated legislation by: 1) issuing
press releases encouraging the EU to stand up to industry and the U.S and pass the
most far reaching legislation, 2) lobbying and working behind the scenes to write the
best possible legislation, 3) developing a community wide campaign to support the
legislation by publishing research, media campaigns, interviews and collecting
petitions, 4) issuing press releases attacking the opponents of the campaign, 5)
jointly with the EU educating the public about the merits of the impending EU
legislation. As part of its “somewhat independent” activism WWF exposes and even
sometimes files complaints against states that fall behind in adhering to regulations.
Spikes in “somewhat independent” activism generally followed years in which major
initiatives had taken place. Such initiatives were the Kyoto protocol in the late 1990s,
the campaign and passage of the REACH legislation, the fishing regulation, climate
change follow up to the Kyoto Protocol, and the most recent campaign to eliminate
energy wasting incandescent light bulbs.
In addition, WWF has engaged in several campaigns and activities in
conjunction with EU governing institutions; these fell under the “collusive” category.
186
Furthermore, WWF appeared in joint campaigns with the EU and also led public
education campaigns on behalf of EU initiatives. WWF also conducted several
research studies funded by and on behalf of the EU. Overall, WWF activism falls
more within the watchdog and collusive categories than within the outsider
categories. Thus, the area in which WWF-EU parts way with WWF-in MERCOSUR
is in its lower percentage of highly independent behavior. The next table analyzes an
additional indicator of independence which is their reputation in the community.

Table 5.7: WWF-EU: Reputation

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 1 0 0
Watchdog 1 5 3 8 6 6 6 16 10 15 17 18 5 11 17
Collusive 0 0 1 3 0 0 2 2 1 2 0 3 1 2 1
Sample Size: 170 Activist: 4.7% Watchdog: 84.7% Collusive: 10.6%

Since 80 percent of environmental legislation is promulgated through the EU
and not by national regimes, and since a significant portion of WWF’s work involves
exposing national regimes that do not comply with EU standards, WWF has become
mostly a Brussels based lobbying organization that works closely with the EU on
common goals. Hence, the media for the most part has rarely if ever referred to
WWF as an activist organization. WWF is mostly considered as an insider watchdog
organization. Moreover, from the year 2001-2008, a series of articles by various
newspapers criticized WWF for being captured by the EU and for being paid to
187
lobby and support the EU. Commencing in 2007, a series of articles referred to
WWF as being “heavily funded” by the EU and as a partner with the EU (Western
Daily Press 2007). Although, WWF has referred to itself in the WWF website as
“independent” (WWF website), the media has never used that term in referring to
WWF. Many of the media items referring to WWF-EU emphasize the joint work,
education and research in which WWF collaborates with the EU. Thus, in the EU,
WWF-EU displays many of the same tendencies that were discussed in conjunction
with FoE-EU. While WWF-EU does not appear to significantly differ in the
categories of independence from WWF in MERCOSUR, its patterns of political
engagement of the EU regime show a more marked departure from that of its
MERCOSUR counterparts.
Pattern of Engagement: Collaboration and Collusion
WWF-EU and its affiliated national and program offices in Europe conducts
its operation in a friendly, collaborative partnership with the EU regime. WWF
lobbyists are bureaucrats and scientists who work behind the scenes and persuade
legislators to vote for environmental legislation. WWF’s campaigns are intended to
support EU legislation and not to attack the EU or force it to pass laws or regulations
the EU is not interested in. The following are several examples that illustrate the
close relationship between WWF and the EU: The first example relates to the role
WWF was assigned in assisting the EU to enforce environmental law in Eastern
Europe. In 1998, during the Cardiff Summit, EU leaders were informed of
environmental concerns associated with accession. In February, WWF requested the
188
EU to boost funding for environmental structural funds. Some of these funds would
be used to support ecological improvement in Eastern Europe. As the accession of
Eastern European countries into the EU was nearing, a convention of civil society of
accession countries was meeting in Brussels. The October 28
th
meeting, called for
guidelines to decommission Eastern European nuclear plants as a condition of
accession. WWF and other NGOs met under the EU Enlargement Watch Convention
and were given authority to help shape EU’s public policy. By December 1
st
as the
report on the enlargement of the EU was submitted, Ritt Bjerregaard a member of the
Commission in charge of the EU enlargement and accession, spoke to WWF and
other NGOs and announced that it would be the NGOs role to use EU funds to
monitor, supervise and enforce compliance in Eastern Europe with EU regulations.
“In the existing Member states, NGOs play the role of intermediaries between the
public and the administration. The NGOs help by giving information on the
environment to the public and help by providing the administration of the EU with
the necessary feedback, this is exactly what is required in the candidate countries…I
appreciate that we can increase our mutual understanding on our common goals”
(Rapid, 1998).
However, sometimes the collaboration between the EU and WWF appears to
go too far and appears to have become overly collusive. The following example
illustrates this contention: On May 29, 2000, The London Guardian wrote a
devastating piece against the WWF (The Guardian, 2000). It claimed that a major
corruption was covered up by the European Commission, WWF, big business, World
189
Bank and the IMF. The EU Commission, apparently paid 200,000 pounds to WWF
for a research study on forest logging and then paid extra to delete certain names.
After receiving the study, the EU deleted even more names to cover up the scandal.
WWF’s response to the article was that there should be a moratorium on all logging
pending investigation. This scandal brought the issue of independence between the
WWF and the EU into question.
The campaign to regulate the chemical industry known as REACH was not
unique but serves as a good example of WWF’s style of engagement. In that
campaign the EU and WWF worked as partners. While the EU was writing up the
legislation with the help of WWF’s science experts, WWF engaged in a public
campaign intended to shore up the EU citizenry’s support for the REACH law and
against the Chemical industry. This type of joint partnership appears to be in
operation every time a joint EU-WWF initiative is launched. Once the law is passed,
WWF generally works to educate the public and convince them about the merits of
the legislation. The following is an example of the role played by the WWF in the
REACH legislation: Commencing in 2003, the campaign of the decade started taking
shape. The campaign’s goal was to pass the REACH law, which was intended to
regulate and register every chemical sold in Europe based on its poisonous attributes.
This struggle took place on every level of the EU institutional structure. The
chemical industry was able to match WWF and a coalition of NGOs in lobbying the
Commission and the Parliament, and in the states. The industry was also represented
on various boards and agencies including the “Regions”.
190
On January 27, 2003, the EU Commission hosted a conference on
environmental governance and civil society. The purpose of the conference which
included WWF and other NGOs was to ensure a wide participation of civil society to
help enforce environmental legislation and promote new legislation throughout the
EU (Rapid 2003). The Commission emphasized the sharing of responsibility as well
as administration of environmental policy between the Commission and the “Green
Eight”. The green eight include Greenpeace, WWF and FoE. The Commission
wanted and hoped that part of the role of civil society would be to educate the public
and change the culture about EU environmental law. The Commission wanted civil
society to be equal participants in enforcement and compliance of environmental
law.
As the battle over the REACH chemical regulation law continued, WWF
launched a campaign to persuade the citizens to support the REACH law and to
oppose the chemical industry. Part of the campaign included a media campaign, the
release of gruesome studies on the affects of chemicals, and also working with a
large coalition including women’s groups and civil rights groups (The Independent
June 2003). WWF asked for children, politicians and celebrities to submit to a blood
test and publicized the toxin levels in human blood. In addition, WWF publicized
research showing babies born with mixed gender attributes because of hormone
disrupting chemicals. By early November several Commission members and top
politicians began to submit to the blood tests; the results horrified the public, and
seemed to demonstrate that EU citizens were toxic, chemical factories. In 2005, the
191
REACH campaign went on in full force, as celebrities, politicians and ordinary
people began to submit to blood tests all over Europe to see if they were
contaminated. WWF released another study in January, stating that our bodies are
becoming toxic chemical dumps (ANSA English media service). In Italy alone, 18
public figures including actors and directors stood in the street to be tested. This
research for the education campaign was performed by WWF but commissioned and
paid for by the EU. Some people were discovered to have 27 different chemicals in
their blood including a chemical used to soften plastic in babies’ toys, which can
cause hormonal blocking symptoms. On May 28, 2005, WWF released a film called
“Turn Baby Boys into Girls”. This was yet another salvo in the REACH campaign
war (The Express). On June 1, 2007 the REACH law went into affect, and on June
20, WWF formally ended the chemicals campaign and moved towards enforcement
(Chemical Week, 2007).
Thus, WWF has become the communication and education agency for the
EU regime. In contrast with WWF-in MERCOSUR, which maintains a greater level
of independence by initiating the legislation, by funding both the project, and by
ending up directing the actual administration of the project, WWF-EU merely acts as
an extension of the bureaucracy by supporting the work of an already efficient and
tightly regulated system. In the EU, the bureaucracy works on the crafting and
enforcing of the legislation. WWF’s role is to assist and monitor the effort.
Furthermore, as an extension of the EU bureaucracy, WWF members receive
coveted appointments to prestigious boards in which they help craft legislation. In
192
many cases, these appointments involve a revolving door activity in which members
of WWF move back and forth from government position to civil society and back to
the government. In 2000, the EU appointed Ruud Lubers, the former President of
WWF, to chair the EU-US Biotechnology Forum. The Forum would recommend
legislation on biotechnological matters to the Commission (Rapid, 2000). In
addition, Ruud Lubers was the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
In summary, WWF-EU engages the EU’s bureaucracy on all its levels by
serving on committees, and assisting the passage of legislation and the enforcement
of directives. Unlike WWF-MERCOSUR, which avoids regime funds and becomes
the prime enforcer of legislative compliance, WWF-EU acts more in assisting and
monitoring, using the regime’s funds and accepting the regimes’ leadership in the
environmental arena. The next section will evaluate the impact NAFTA exerts on the
behavior of its WWF organizations.
WWF-in NAFTA
Captured by Money and Influence
WWF-in NAFTA represents a case in which a civil society, while
maintaining its organizational core and sticking to a fairly uniform standard of
political engagement, has lost the ability to maintain a healthy distance from its
lobbying targets and as a result has been captured by the both the political regime
and by the organization’s corporate allies. In doing so, WWF has become too timid
to even engage the regime using the regime’s own adversarial methods. Instead,
WWF in NAFTA has gone even further than WWF-EU in allying itself with the
193
regime and with the corporate elite to the point that it serves both as a layer of the
executive bureaucracy and as a link between government and industry.
To further illustrate the above contention, it would be useful to cite a recent
interview in which Carter Roberts the CEO of WWF criticized the old strategy of
hiring scientists and lawyers for the purpose of lawsuits and research. The current
strategy, according to Roberts, is to engage both government and industry in order to
achieve more moderate results as an insider player within the NAFTA bureaucracy
(January 09, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton). Consequently, WWF has become a
favorite civil society for both Republican and Democratic administrations. When
other NGOs were shunned by the Bush administration WWF was hailed as an
example of a civil society that the government can work with. Furthermore, WWF’s
leadership has been co-opted by the regime and has consequently advocated for a
milder environmental agenda. WWF supported the adoption of most free trade
agreements and does not see a contradiction between free trade and the environment.
As a result of WWF- in-NAFTA’s change in political strategy, its main
function in recent years has been to perform conservation projects on behalf of the
executive bureaucracy and to soften the negative image of the corporate elite. While
engaging in joint projects with the regime and helping corporations to improve
sustainable practices is the essence of WWF’s organizational core, there is a not so
subtle difference in the manner in which WWF-in MERCOSUR performs the same
type of activities with that of WWF-in NAFTA. In MERCOSUR WWF approaches
and pressures legislators, community activists and corporate leaders in order to
194
persuade them to sign on to WWF’s agenda. Furthermore, WWF-in MERCOSUR
uses its independently raised funds to control the direction of and the manner in
which projects are administered. In contrast, in NAFTA, WWF is substantially
funded by the regime and by the corporations and as a result is assigned tasks
without having substantial influence on public policy. The next section will further
elaborate on WWF’s organizational structure, personnel and self-perception.
Organizational Self-Perception, Structure, Funding and Personnel
WWF-NAFTA consists of two national offices one in Canada and the other
in the United States as well as one program office in Mexico that is coordinated by
the U.S. office. As WWF-USA President Carter Roberts has discussed in recent
interviews, changes in WWF-USA strategy that have taken place throughout the
years, have come to reflect on the evolution of the organization’s self-perception. In
the 1970s, WWF used to go to court and participate in demonstrations but since the
1990s WWF has been engaged in more collaborative work with business and
government. President Roberts felt that it was important to understand the market
and engage in market strategy. WWF USA’s organizational self-perception perceives
independence to be associated not with outsider activism, but rather to develop from
the reputation of being an organization which is known for submitting honest and
objective scientific reports that are not biased by ideology or politics. Furthermore,
the WWF website, its campaign literature, and press release, indicate a collaborative
and collusive partnership with business and government. Thus, being known not as
an antagonist activist organization, WWF-in-NAFTA achieves clout through
195
collaboration with the regime and with the corporate world. It attempts to achieve
better practice from the inside and through moderate activism. WWF staff and
executives and members of the board have served in both Republican and
Democratic administrations as lobbyists and as top members of their respective
administrations. WWF allows a revolving door for its staff. This revolving door
applies to both government and industry.
Organizational Structure and Personnel
WWF-U.S. has a President and a corporate style board of directors. The
leaders of the board hail from the science, conservation and business communities.
The board members are elected for three year terms. The membership of the board
reflects a broad range of scientific as well as business and corporate expertise.
Notable members of the board include, Chairman Bruce Babbit, a former governor
and cabinet member in the Clinton administration, Vice Chairman Lawrence Linden,
an advisory director to Goldman Sachs, Vice chairman, Jared Diamond, a Geography
Professor at UCLA, Treasurer Roger Sant a chairman and founder of AES
Corporation. Other notable board members reflect a prominent background from
various corporate and government positions and include: Fabiola Arredondo, a
managing partner in Siempre Energy holdings, Pamela Daley, Senior Vice President
of General Electric, Robert Litterman of Goldman Sachs, and Thomas Tusher a
former COO of Levi Strauss. In addition, there are several museum curators and
university professors on the board. Throughout the years, staff members, executives
and lobbyists at WWF were appointed to powerful corporate and government
196
positions, and prominent politicians and corporate executives became leaders of
WWF. The relationship between WWF, the regime and the corporate world is very
close and akin to a partnership or a revolving door. Thus, WWF leadership can serve
as a spring board to government and corporate leadership and vice versa. The
following examples confirm this trend. William Reilly a former WWF President
went on to become EPA chief under President George HW Bush and later returned
to the WWF as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Thomas Kean a Republican
governor of New Jersey also served as a director in WWF-U.S. In addition, other
WWF leaders in Canada and the United States have served in various executive
positions in their respective governments before and after their service in WWF.
Kathryn Fuller a long term President of WWF served in the U.S. Justice department
and later on as an executive in Alcoa. The situation in Canada is similar. Ministers
and leaders in various provinces as well as the federal government ended up leading
WWF and lobbying the same government offices which they recently left. Former
Prime Minister John Turner is one example of a government leader who later became
a WWF-Canada director, and lobbied the regime on behalf of WWF.
In addition, the WWF U.S. governance structure includes a National Council
in charge of voting on policy and electing the leadership. It has an executive team
that is in charge of the actual operations of WWF. The team includes, former
members of the Clinton administration as well as former appointees to government
policy boards, scientists and college professors and former employees of various
corporations. The executive board has extensive experience in conservation works as
197
well as politics and finance. They graduated from, and have often taught in, some of
the top universities in the country and display the highest standards of professional
leadership. In addition, WWF relies on a team of the top experts and scientists in the
fields of Biology and Environmental Science (WWF-Web).
Partnerships
WWF showcases its corporate connections which help its conservation
efforts. The corporate partners include some of the most important names in the
industry. These are corporations that help WWF work on sustainable practice.
Toyota, Walmart, IKEA, Alianz and HSBC are some of the names. WWF also has
strong government partnership and receives substantial funding from the U.S.
government for its conservation work. USAID collaborates and supports WWF
activities as well as entrusts WWF to spend and administer American foreign aid
through WWF conservation and field work. The WWF Website boasts a government
relations approach, where the primary aim is collaboration and partnership.
WWF Canada has the same organizational structure as its American
counterpart. It has a corporate style board of directors and an executive staff that
takes care of carrying out organizational policies. The members of the board are
volunteers who serve four year terms. The board’s role is to manage and oversee the
business and affairs of the organization including strategic planning, policy
formulation, risk management, organizational management and capacity, fundraising
support, and communications. It is accountable to the stakeholders. No board
member receives financial remuneration.
198
Staff and Personnel
President Gerald Butts has a background in government. He was the principal
Secretary to Premier Dalton McGuinty of Ontario. He worked directly with the
Premier and the Cabinet on implementing the government’s agenda. The Board
members include Director John Turner who is a partner in a corporation and a former
Prime Minister of Canada. Chairwoman Patricia Koval is partner in Torys LLP.
Director Daryl Aitken is President of Dashboard Communications. The rest of the
directors have backgrounds in corporate industry, some in academics and a few are
community organizers.
Other staff and volunteers
WWF has openings for various paid staff positions, such as manager of donor
relations. They require experience with fund raising and background in finance and
management. WWF has a suggestion for volunteer activities that would lead to
fundraising. They suggest an organized bake sale, shore cleanup project, sharing and
participating in a photo contest, and organizing holiday parties and garage sale.
WWF also asked the public to participate in the Earth hour action of 2009 as well as
a CN tower community climb. WWF encourages people to form groups that
conserve energy voluntarily. There is however, no coordinated effort to manage a
regular army of volunteers that would participate in WWF activism. WWF has an
online store that sells WWF products. WWF Canada has an online electronic
newsletter.
199
Funding
WWF-USA and WWF-Canada receive government funding and awards that
make up a substantial portion of their budget. The rest of their budget comes from
corporate and individual donations. The following represents the most recent
accounts of the funding sources of the WWF chapters in NAFTA. In the fiscal year
2008, WWF-U.S revenues were $196.5 million. Revenues grew by 22 percent from
the previous year. The sources of funding came from the following contributions:
$85.7 million came from supporters such as individual donors. Individual donors
included member dues and donations. $26.1 million came from government awards.
$19.3 million came from foundations. $14.6 million came from other WWF network
organizations including WWF-International. $10.1 million came from corporations.
There were $40.1 million from other contributions such as from the media. Thus,
individual and WWF contributions came to a little over half of the contributions
which make for a healthy and positive cash flow within the organization; this
distribution makes WWF somewhat dependent on the finance and agenda of
government and corporations (WWF U.S. website). Contrary to the above data,
WWF-Canada’s accounts suggest greater organizational independence. WWF-
Canada has annual revenues of $26.7 million and more than 100 staff working in
seven offices around the country and in Cuba (2008 annual report, WWF Canada).
WWF-Canada receives 65.7 percent of its funding from individual donations and
member dues; 7.2 percent from corporations, 12.4 percent from foundations, 1.1
percent from non-profit organizations, 2.9 percent from the government, 1.7 percent
200
from WWF International and affiliates, 5.6 percent from sales of its products, and 3.4
percent from investments. Thus, WWF Canada’s corporate and government
donations are significantly smaller than that of the WWF USA.
WWF-Mexico
WWF-Mexico was established in Mexico City 1968. In 1990 it established
offices in other parts of Mexico. It currently has presence in the states of Oaxaca,
Chihuahua, Michoacán, in the desert and the Gulf of California. WWF-Mexico is not
an autonomous national office but rather a program office funded by outside sources.
As a result, WWF-Mexico does not develop autonomous policy. WWF-Mexico
carries out conservation programs established by WWF International and by WWF-
U.S.-its regional office. WWF-Mexico concentrates on the conservation of forests,
freshwater, marine life and the protection of endangered species. Furthermore,
WWF-Mexico conducts field-work.
In summary, owing to its corporate culture, resource dependence and the
need to engage the regime as well as private industry within the opportunity
structures established by the regime, WWF-in NAFTA has developed a closed,
formal and collusive organizational style. In contrast with the WWF-EU’s
bureaucrats and with the mixture of former volunteers and field organizers of
MERCOSUR, WWF-in-NAFTA promotes ivy educated corporate and political
“superstars” to represents the organization’s case deep within the embracing arms of
the North American political elite. The following section will analyze WWF-in
NAFTA’s degree of independence base on several indicators.
201
Table 5.8: Organizational Behavior: Regime Praise and Denouncement 1994-2009

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Praise 3 3 1 2 1 0 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
Qualified praise 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
Denounce 1 1 2 4 1 3 5 3 4 0 0 3 2 1 3
Sample size: 50
Percentage of Praise items: 30%
Percentage of Qualified Praise items: 4%
Percentage of denouncement items: 66%

Overall, based on table 5.8, WWF-in-NAFTA appears to praise the
government about one third of the time and criticize or denounce it two thirds of the
time. The level of criticism substantially increased during and after the year 2000.
During that time secret meetings between the U.S., Canada and Mexico revealed that
there were collaborative efforts on the part of the regime to weaken NAFTA’s
Environmental Side Agreements and the authority of the CEC. Canada was accused
of leading the efforts because a substantial number of submissions were directed
against Canada, and as a result, embarrassing to the Canadian regime. The
substantial increase in lawsuits under NAFTA’s chapter 11 by foreign corporations
intended to weaken NAFTAs environmental regimes, also led to disappointment on
the part of WWF and increased criticism of NAFTA after the turn of the century. In
addition, anger toward the Bush administration and in Canada against the Harper
administration led to an increase in criticism. Overall, while WWF praises the
regime more often than its environmental brethrens, the fact that it denounces the
regime 70 percent of the time indicates that it still retains a critical watchdog role and
202
has not been completely appropriated by the government. None-the-less, it also
appears, that WWF is very careful with its denouncements and that the regime needs
to cross a substantial threshold of anti-environmental record before WWF would
criticize it. In addition to press releases and interviews, WWF engages in a variety of
other types of activism that could be measured for their independence. The following
table will evaluate WWF’s independence based on its behavior and interaction with
the regime.

Table 5.9: Organizational Behavior: Level of Activism

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Highly
independent
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Somewhat
independent
11 11 14 15 5 8 12 11 9 3 7 4 3 2 7
Collusive 3 4 3 6 5 3 4 5 2 3 1 3 2 2 3
Sample Size: 171
Percentage of highly independent activism: 0
Percentage of somewhat independent activism: 71.2%
Percentage of collusive activism: 28.9%

Over 71 percent of WWF activism falls into the somewhat independent
category. WWF lobbies the Congress, the EPA and various departments. WWF-
NAFTA’s main activities in these engagements involved supporting environmental
legislations and helping to craft better legislation. In addition, WWF engaged the
regime in attempts to weaken or stop anti-environmental initiatives. On a few
occasions, WWF either threatened or went ahead with a legal challenge to the
203
American and Canadian regimes. WWF participated in a few submissions to
NAFTA along with other NGOs from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. WWF’s
primary activism involved engaging national and local regimes to support and
facilitate its conservation work. WWF engages corporations proactively to modify
policies to help them achieve sustainable and environmentally friendly production.
WWF main work is conservation of wildlife and flora. Conservation is an expensive
endeavor, leading to substantial resource dependency on the part of WWF. Thus, as
a result of the need for corporate and government sponsorship to help pay for
conservation efforts and to facilitate the purchase of land for conservation, WWF
ends up engaging the regime in a friendly and collusive manner.
WWF NAFTA engages in substantially higher percentage of collusive
activities than its environmental counterparts. WWF serves on policy making bodies
and quasi-legislative bodies which are appointed by the regime and draw salaries.
WWF is entrusted with government funding, not only to perform its conservation
projects but also to administer funds through USAID agency. Thus, WWF handles
government funds and promotes the government policies throughout the world, in a
manner that suggest that it is an additional layer of the administration’s bureaucracy.
In addition, WWF executives and lobbyists participate in revolving-door activities
with various government agencies. The WWF board is closely consulted, when the
regime formulates environmental policy. On various occasions members of the
regime, like trade representatives Barshevsky and Robert Zoelick, who later became
President of the World Bank, have boasted while testifying to congress that they
204
have consulted with WWF (Federal News Services December 13, 2000). This was
done in order to deflect criticism aimed at their anti-environmental policies.
WWF-in-NAFTA has not engaged in any highly independent highly
“outsider behavior”. WWF conscious choice to closely engage the political and the
corporate world in order to achieve greater clout suggests that it is not an
independent civil society but rather engages in civil society corporatism. Thus, WWF
has been captured by the regime. WWF purchased its clout in exchange for
compromise and by avoiding pressuring the regime for far reaching environmental
reform. WWF works on incremental and marginal change and on alleviating rather
than stopping bad environmental policies. In addition to organizational behavior,
WWF’s level of independence can be measured by its reputation in the community.
The following table will examine this indicator.

Table 5.10: WWF-NAFTA: Reputation

Year 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Activist 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
Watchdog 6 3 10 8 5 8 11 11 11 5 5 4 3 5 9
Collusive 2 3 2 4 5 3 4 5 2 2 1 4 0 2 2
Sample size: 147
Percentage of Activist items: 1.9%
Percentage of Watchdog items: 70.7%
Percentage of Collusive items: 27.9%

In comparison to other organizations and to its affiliates in Europe and Latin
America, WWF NAFTA has one of the lowest percentages of media items referring
205
to it as an activist organization. To a large extent this trend is associated with policy
decisions by its board, during the presidencies of Kathryn Fuller and Carter Roberts,
to increase clout and improve success in conservation projects through partnership
with national and local governments as well as with corporations. Consistent with
this change in direction, WWF has avoided participation in public demonstrations or
suing the regime in the national or NAFTA courts. Thus, references to WWF
NAFTA as a watchdog or a lobbyist accounted for 70.7 percent of its activities,
which suggests that the media and public still perceives WWF as an objective
organization that monitors and pressures the regime to enforce the environmental
law. However, the relatively high percentage (27.9 percent) of media items referring
to WWF NAFTA as a collusive organization was associated with media criticism of
the high number of government officials that moved on to become WWF executives
and board members and vice versa. The media was particularly concerned about
several WWF board members and executives that found jobs in high level
bureaucracy and influential positions in the Clinton and even the Bush
administrations. William Reilly a WWF President went on to become EPA chief
under President George HW Bush and later returned to the WWF as Chairman of the
Board of Directors. Thomas Kean a Republican governor of New Jersey also served
as a director in WWF-U.S. In addition, other WWF leaders in Canada and the United
States served in various executive positions in their respective governments before
and after their service in WWF. Kathryn Fuller a long term President of WWF
served in the U.S. Justice department and later on accepted a position as an executive
206
in Alcoa. In addition, Bruce Babbitt a Clinton era Secretary of the Interior is
currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of WWF-U.S. The situation in
Canada is similar. Ministers and leaders in various provinces as well as in the federal
government ended up leading WWF and lobbying the same government offices
which they recently left. Former Prime Minister John Turner in particular serves as
an example of a high government official who became a WWF-Canada director.
The media, although deeply respectful of WWF’s achievement in the area of
conservation and in developing a partnership with government and industry,
occasionally raised an eyebrow when WWF’s relationship with the government
became so close as to prevent WWF from taking an independent position against
dangerous government initiatives. WWF found itself lobbying its own previous
leaders on the other side of the political and bureaucratic isle, particularly when
WWF leaders ended up leading the various bureaucracies that make environmental
policy. As early as 1995, Bronwyn Drainie, a Canadian Globe and Mail journalist,
wrote an aticle related to the criticism of WWF’s work in Canada. According to
Bronwyn’s review, Elaine Dewar, a Canadian journalist, accused WWF of being
caught in a government web so tight as to be called not an NGO but a “private-
governmental organization”. According to the story, WWF’s use of Canadian
government funds and coordinating its activities with the Canadian government has
cost it its independence and its very existence as a civil society organization (Globe
and Mail, June 24, 1995). Dewar’s piece and various other stories throughout the
years have raised the issue that WWF has to a large extent merged with the regime
207
and with industry and has chosen the path of political Corporatism. The next section
will evaluate the pattern of recursive engagement between the NAFTA regime and
WWF.
Pattern of Political Engagement
In a corporatist regime certain special interests are incorporated into the
regime, and their political activities become intertwined with those of the regimes
bureaucracy. The process of incorporation gives the NGO permanent access to
power that is unencumbered by the tides and currents of public opinion or ideology.
However, clout is bought with compromise. Furthermore, unlike other non-
governmental interests that became incorporated to the regime, WWF has also
become incorporated into private industry. As a result, WWF’s unique style of
political engagement, in which a civil society operates as a permanent structure that
connects and mediates between the regime and private industry, appears to function
as the proverbial oil in the political machine. In that capacity, WWF’s main style of
operation serves to reduce political friction rather than to antagonize either the
regime or WWF’s corporate partners.
The above observation, however, is not solely a function of NAFTA’s
regulatory regime. WWF’s relationship with NAFTA is a result of a recursive
relationship brought upon by a complex interaction between a social organization
that is characterized by a relatively tightly coupled organizational core and a high
level of resource dependency, on one hand, and a regulatory regime characterized by
adversarial legalism and high pressure money centered lobbying on the other. Thus,
208
WWF type of activism involves large scale conservation projects requiring the
purchase and management of expensive real estate. Furthermore, WWF engages in
research, lobbying and participating in legislating and monitoring environmental
programs. Finally, WWF non-confrontational style of convincing the corporate
world to engage in environmentally sustainable practices, inevitably invites
opportunities for collusion. It is simply too difficult to monitor and pressure the same
institutions, whether they are governmental or corporate, that end up donating money
to WWF. In addition, because WWF is involved in, and perceived as an expert
“insider” on the two ends of the legislative process, crafting the bill and monitoring
enforcement, the regime, finds it easy to assign the task of conservation to WWF
instead of to the department of interior. Consequently, WWF by doing the work of
the regime finds it difficult to perform its duty as an external independent watchdog
or activist organization.
As a result of closely engaging both regime and industry, the culture and
structure of WWF evolved to fit in the formal political and corporate structure.
Consequently, WWF NAFTA displays a closed formal style of activism. WWF
personnel have engaged in a revolving door with government and industry.
Volunteers are either discouraged or do not have access to power and leadership
within the organization. WWF activism is mild and collaborative. The following
examples would illustrate some of the above stated patterns.
There appear to be a pattern in which WWF leaders and staff move through a
cycle of patronage, similar to a spoils system, in which they start working for the
209
government then move to WWF and then get hired by one of the corporations in
alliance with WWF. In many cases, WWF leaders start their career in industry,
proceed to WWF, then to government service and then back to industry. Throughout
1994, WWF testified several time in congressional hearings on the GATT
agreement. WWF was pushing a consensus position that GATT should add
environmental provisions similar to NAFTA. WWF President Kathryn Fuller was the
sole representative of the environmental community on the President’s advisory
Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. She was appointed by President
Clinton and helped negotiate GATT. Kathryn Fuller previously worked in the
Department of Justice (Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony,
February 3, 1994). Kathryn Fuller was a political insider in the Clinton
Administration. In April 1997, Kathryn Fuller President of WWF-USA explained the
decision to build partnership with government and industry and to become
collaborative rather than confrontational. President Fuller suggested that the mission
must drive the process. WWF mission is to conserve as much sensitive area as
possible and as many species as possible. In order to do that, WWF needs money,
cooperation and clout. “WWF’s effectiveness lies in forging durable solutions…
WWF looks for partners… WWF’s primary goal is to save life on earth”. (Katherine
Fuller, Federal News Service April 1997). In November 2002, Kathryn Fuller,
President of WWF and a former Justice Department official, was appointed to the
ALCOA board of Directors (Business Wire, 2001). In mid January 1998, William
Reilly, a former WWF President and EPA Administrator, was hired by the Royal
210
Caribbean Corporation to oversee their environmental efforts as one of their
Directors. In 1999, T.J Glauthier one of the top executives at WWF-USA was
appointed as Deputy Secretary of Energy by President Clinton. The Department of
Energy plays an important role in the environmental agenda of most NGOs. This
appointment increases the “insider” clout of WWF. Glauthier’s role in the
department would be to oversee environmental quality, management and Energy
Resources (FDCH Federal Department and Agency Documents March 19, 1999). In
1997, as part of an alliance with WWF, the Woolworth Corporation appointed
Cynthia Krasne as a Vice President of strategic planning. She is an executive at
WWF (PR Newswire, 1997).
The following examples suggest that WWF is lobbying for regime sponsored
projects, which in turn, the regime turns to WWF to run. In 1994, WWF testified to
congress about the operation and success of GEF-Global Environmental Facility, a
U.S. funded foreign aid program to promote environmental initiatives. WWF was
asking congress to renew the program and increase financing. In November 1997,
WWF began a biodiversity campaign to protect ecoregions. The campaign focused
on the waterways of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee as well as the Chihuahua
desert in Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. This campaign would be a joint
campaign of WWF, business groups and the U.S. and local governments (Greenwire
November 3, 1997). In February 2002, HSBC Corporation joined with WWF. It will
finance some of WWF conservation efforts. In April WWF announced that it would
start a campaign to conserve Northwest Nebraska. The effort would be financed by
211
corporations and government. It would require massive purchase of land by various
interests. WWF gave HSBC the coveted MSC certification noting that it was
environmentally responsible; this helped HSBC’s corporate image. WWF’s MSC
certification became an incredibly sought after label.
In some cases, WWF opposed the regime. However, because it was so rare,
such opposition was noted by analysts. While supporting the creation of NAFTA, as
well as other free trade agreements, WWF showed reluctance to come on board the
Central American Free Trade Agreement and back the administration
unconditionally. The administration was surprised by the opposition to the Central
American Free Trade Agreement. In considering strategies to overcome the
opposition, analyst William Krist explained that the problems was that “the world’s
most mainstream environmental group (WWF) which supported U.S. trade policy
throughout the NAFTA debate is opposed to CAFTA without environmental
provisions” (The Washington Times, October 19, 2005).
As previously mentioned, the proximity to government and industry is bought
with compromise. The following examples suggest that WWF often backs off on
important organizational principles suggesting a weakening of its organizational
core. In April, 2006, WWF agreed on a compromise with the legislature to take the
Florida Keys off the list of critical environmental areas after 30 years. In late May
that year, WWF split from other human rights and environmental groups and
remained neutral on President Bush’s immigration bill. On September 6, 2007,
WWF certified the world’s first tuna fishery in San Diego. The American Albacore
212
Fishing Association was certified by WWF. A few days later, Maryland established
an Oyster Advisory Commission chaired by a Bill Eichbaum a WWF Vice President.
The state of Maryland has been trying for several years to get the Oyster fishery
certified by the coveted MSC certification. By appointing an environmental insider,
Maryland felt that they would be strategically successful in achieving its goals.
The strong alliance between WWF, government and Industry, appears to be
substantially similar in Canada as well. During the 1990s, WWF developed a very
close relationship with the government of British Columbia. WWF hailed the
government’s establishment of the Chilko-Lake Park. WWF called it a model for
protected areas. The park was a model for consultative conservation in which the
government works with NGOs like WWF and the community to establish
conservation projects (Canada Newswire Jan 13, 1994). The park was a result of
multi-stakeholders negotiations among conservationists, native peoples, tourism
industry, forestry industry, ranchers and miners. In March, 1994, WWF praised Nova
Scotia’s protected areas plan. This was also an example of a representative system
of conservation in which WWF and a coalition of conservationists, government,
industry and the local community were involved. In March, 1995, WWF issued
support for a compromise with the government of British Columbia over the
protection of East Kootenay land use. WWF felt that the compromise was painful but
necessary to make the system work (Canada Newswire, 1995).
On June 24, 1995, a story appeared in the Globe and Mail attacking the
independence of WWF Canada. The story by Canadian journalist Elaine Dewar
213
claimed that WWF is not independent and is controlled by the Canadian government
and industry. According to the story, much of WWF activism involves spending the
government’s money on government projects. “The Canadian government, she found
is one of the world’s most active in this regard, doling out project money directly
from its $38 million Canada Fund to private groups” (Dewar 1995). Similarly, she
said that the Harmony Foundation is a business funded foundation that gives money
to WWF to conduct business funded projects. The author pointed out that WWF
suffers from lack of independence. The author further describes the situation in
Canada as being similar to that of the United States. WWF leaders are involved in a
revolving door moving from NGO to government and then to business related jobs.
In 1999, WWF in partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia
received a contribution of $2 million to help establish a new protected area in the
Yukon and Northwest Territories. The federal government along with WWF, First
Nations and the government of Yukon decided to move forward with the
conservation project. By 2000, Canadian companies took the lead in applying for the
WWF-FSC forest stewardship Council. Home Depot and other Canadian companies
realized that it was a smart business decision in addition to helping the environment.
By May, it was reported that Canadian companies were leading the world in earning
FSC certifications (National Post Canada, May 13, 2000).
The above examples represent a small sample of a regular pattern. The
pattern as has been mentioned before, involves a civil society that was willingly
214
captured by the lure of money and power while pointing out that on the margins, it is
still able to influence and improves environmental policy from the inside.
Chapter Conclusion
The World Wildlife Fund chapter suggests an interesting quandary related to
the interaction between regimes and civil society organization. When compared with
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, this project observed the following patterns:
Greenpeace demonstrated mild changes across regimes and Friends-of-the-Earth
revealed a pattern suggesting more independence with adversarial legalism and
retreatism and less independence when the organization interfaces with the EU’s
bureaucratic legalism. In contrast, WWF appears to display some independence in
the MERCOSUR regime, a substantially lower degree of independence in the EU,
and the least independence in NAFTA. In addition, the WWF chapter suggests
substantial cross-regime variations in the following categories: style of activism,
organizational structure and pattern of engagement. The pattern of WWF’s cross-
regime variations, however, implies that international governments interact with
social organizations in a recursive and contingent manner and not in a linear causal
fashion. This suggests that what exists here is not a direct linear relationship between
an independent variable (regime type) and a dependent variable (civil society), but
rather a set of complex mutual interactions.
Consistent with the above contention, it appears that WWF possesses certain
characteristics or organizational level variables that mediate the effects of regulatory
regime’s opportunity structures. Following this line of argument, WWF’s federal
215
International structure and its overall tighter control over the organizational core,
suggest that all WWF organizations will be resource dependent, attempt to raise
corporate and government funds, and leverage resources for the purpose of
conservation. Moreover, all WWF chapters will engage governments and
corporations in a relatively collaborative and friendly manner in order to improve
sustainable practices. Finally, unlike, FoE whose main goal is to use the regime’s
regulatory structure to enforce compliance, WWF rarely engages in aggressive
regulatory enforcement. WWF prefers negotiations, suggestions and a carrot strategy
rather than the stick approach. Thus, WWF offers its Forest Stewardship
Certification as well as pouring effusive praises on private industry as part of its
“carrot” approach. At the same time, WWF rarely goes beyond embarrassing
regimes and corporations as a way to cajole them to improve compliance. This
suggests that unlike Greenpeace and FoE, WWF never takes advantage of the
opportunity to engage the regulatory levels of the regimes. Therefore, WWF is less
impacted by the regime’s regulatory style except when it performs the regime’s
bureaucratic duties.
Consequently, WWF interaction with the MERCOSUR regime and its related
states is impacted by the retreatist bureaucracy and its lack of capacity. While WWF
still engages in leveraging resources and running conservation projects, the funds are
raised independent of the regime. As a result, WWF exerts greater influence in
designing and running conservation projects. Because lobbying and participating in
legislation does not involve significant fund raising and donations, the relationship
216
between the regime and WWF remains relatively distant. Thus, WWF-in-
MERCOSUR acts instead of the environmental bureaucracy by taking over its role.
Furthermore, it remains true to its purpose as a Non-Governmental-Organization.
In the EU, WWF, more than any other organization enjoys a close
relationship with the EU regime. EU bureaucrats and national leaders serve on the
WWF board. WWF receives a substantial amount of funding from the EU budget
and is entrusted to dispense EU funding for government projects. WWF’s research is
funded by the EU and is intended to support rather than oppose EU initiatives.
Members of WWF enjoy a revolving door policy with the EU. Correspondingly,
former and current leaders of the EU, become WWF lobbyists and later return to EU
leadership. WWF-EU is mostly a collusive or captured organization and has become
yet another SGO-Semi-Governmental Organization. As a result of interacting with
the EU bureaucracy, WWF adopted the EU bureaucratic and lobbying style.
Accordingly, WWF-EU works behind the scenes to support the EU legislative effort
and helps educate the public on the merit of the regime’s policy.
In contrast, with the EU, in NAFTA, WWF is not only funded by and is
involved in collusive collaborative behavior with the regime, but its type of activism
is also impacted by several other contingencies. Some of the regime’s contingencies
are the important influence of corporate-money on the political system, as well as the
influence of high pressure U.S. lobbying style. As a result of the proximity between
WWF and the regime, WWF engages in a formal-corporate style activism. WWF’s
hiring of prestigious regime and corporate insiders, lead to a greater distance
217
between the organization and grassroots activists. In addition, the above regime’s
contingency transformed WWF-NAFTA into a mediating or linking institutional
bridge between the regime and the corporate world as well as an extension of the
bureaucracy. In that capacity, WWF often helps its corporate allies to soften their
image in the public and helps compromise the impact of environmental regulations
on their daily operations. Finally, the contingencies impacting the behavior and
interaction between WWF and NAFTA, suggest a different and even less
independent style of activism from that of WWF-EU.

Cross tabulation and chi-square test of the three independence variables

Table 5.11: World Wildlife Fund Data: Reputation

Reputation
Location Collusive Watchdog Activist
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
8
(18.18%)
(11.94%)
31
(70.45%)
(11.11%)
5
(11.36%)
(33.33%)
44
(100%)
(12.19%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
41
(27.89%)
(61.19%)
104
(70.75%)
(37.28%)
2
(1.36%)
(13.33%)
147
(100%)
(40.72%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
18
(10.59%)
(26.87%)
144
(84.71%)
(51.61%)
8
(4.71%)
(53.33%)
170
(100%)
(47.09%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
67
(18.56%)
(100%)
279
(77.29%)
(100%)
15
(4.16%)
(100%)
361
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 23.399, df = 4, p < .0001 (test of independence)
218
Table 5.12: World Wildlife Fund Data: Behavior

Behavior
Location Collusive
Somewhat
Independent Independent
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
17
(40.48%)
(16.67%)
19
(45.24%)
(7.54%)
6
(14.29%)
(54.55%)
42
(100%)
(11.51%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
49
(27.68%)
(48.004%)
128
(72.32%)
(50.79%)
0
(0%)
(0%)
177
(100%)
(48.49%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
36
(24.66%)
(35.29%)
105
(71.92%)
(41.67%)
5
(3.42%)
(45.45%)
146
(100%)
(40.00%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
102
(27.95%)
(100%)
252
(69.04%)
(100%)
11
(3.01%)
(100%)
365
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 29.949, df = 4, p < .0001 (test of independence)

Table 5.13: World Wildlife Fund Data: Press Releases Polarity

Praise vs. Denouncement
Location Praise
Qualified
Praise Denouncement
Totals
(row %)
(column %)
MERCOSUR
(row%)
(col%)
11
(27.50%)
(22.45%)
2
(5.00%)
(22.22%)
27
(67.50%)
(20.61%)
40
(100%)
(21.16%)
NAFTA
(row%)
(col%)
15
(30.00%)
(30.61%)
2
(4.00%)
(22.22%)
33
(66.00%)
(25.19%)
50
(100%)
(26.46%)
EU
(row%)
(col%)
23
(23.23%)
(46.94%)
5
(5.05%)
(55.56%)
71
(71.72%)
(54.20%)
99
(100%)
(52.38%)
Totals
(row%)
(col%)
49
(25.93%)
(100%)
9
(4.76%)
(100%)
131
(69.31%)
(100%)
189
(100%)
(100%)
Chi-square = 0.899, df = 4, p =.9247 (test of independence)
219
CHAPTER SIX
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Since World War II, we have witnessed the growth of regional trade regimes
and the emergence of an international civil society, which consists of organizations
dedicated to activism within and across nation states. This confluence of
development raises fundamental questions about the relationship between
international regimes and civil society. These questions, in turn, have engendered
sharp disagreements among scholars. On one end of the continuum, some insist that
international activist organizations act independently of the underlying regime, as
these organizations are the consummate outsiders (Wapner, 1996; Lipschutz, 1996;
Hannan, 1998). Put differently, this view holds that organizational variables should
trump the effects of regimes. At the other end, others maintain that these
organizations should be highly adaptable to the regulatory environments, as these
organizations are best understood as opportunistic actors, seeking to leverage
whatever opportunities are afforded them (Barnard, 1938; Selznick, 1948;
Woodward, 1958; Skocpol, 1985). From this vantage point, regime attributes trump
organizational level variables.
This dissertation challenges both views. It finds that regimes do matter, but
their effect widely varies. As developed below, different types of regimes provide
distinct opportunity structures. At one extreme, regimes whose regulatory style is
characterized by bureaucratic retreatism, such as MERCOSUR, because of their lack
of institutional capacity and excessive corruption, tend to develop the widest
220
opportunity structures, which allow their civil society to actively define its unique
style of activism. On the other extreme, regimes whose regulatory style is
characterized by bureaucratic legalism, such as the European Union, tend to create
an organizational environment consisting of relatively narrow opportunity structures
with clearly institutionalized range of options for their civil society to engage the
regime.
This project also finds that organizations matter, although the patterns of the
data are not quite as clear and thus must be viewed with caution. Specifically,
organizations that are tightly coupled tend to have a greater probability for
independent activism and for less variability across regime in terms of their pattern
of strategic engagement. In contrast, organizations that are less tightly coupled tend
to display a higher range of variability across regimes and a greater probability for
less independent activism. Moreover, while organizations that are resource
dependent tend to be less independent, organizations that are not resource dependent
have a greater tendency to maintain independence from the regime.
In short, this dissertation finds that both regimes and organizations matter and
that understanding the complex interaction among these variables is critical to
understanding how civil society functions within and across national boundaries. The
remainder of this chapter elaborates these arguments by summarizing the key
findings, setting forth the relevant hypotheses, and laying out further avenues of
inquiry.
221
How Regimes Matter
This dissertation examined the behavior of three international organizations
within three regimes, MERCOSUR, the EU, and NAFTA, which significantly varied
in their regulatory style. As discussed in earlier chapters, MERCOSUR is an
example of bureaucratic retreatism, the EU represents the paradigm of bureaucratic
legalism, while NAFTA is an example of adversarial legalism. As seen in Table 6.1,
organizational behavior varied across the regimes, despite the fact that these
organizations differed across a wide range of attributes, including their internal
structure and dependence on external resources. Specifically, within MERCOSUR’s
bureaucratic retreatism, each of the organizations’ studied in this projects displayed a
pattern of strategic non-engagement with the regime. By not engaging the regime
and by not receiving any funding from the regime, each of the organizations that
were studied was able to maintain a relatively higher level of independence than they
would while operating within other regimes.
On the other extreme, within the European Union’s bureaucratic legalism,
narrow opportunity structures and greater pressure to adapt was associated with an
overall less independence displayed by the civil society organizations. Consistent
with the EU’s regulatory capacity and narrow opportunity structures, each of the
organizations studied, in an effort to remain politically relevant, chose to engage the
regime and “play-by-the book”. Indeed, the EU’s regulatory standards and its
consistent bureaucratic effort to harmonize norms within its member states and
across its regions leaves little or no space to act outside the system and still maintain
222
influence. Although, each of the organizations that were studied contained distinct
internal contingencies, which make them very different from one another, their
general patterns of behavior within MERCOSUR and within the EU demonstrated
less variability across organizations.
As a result, these findings suggest that while in bureaucratic retreatism
organizational level variables are more important than regime level variables, in
bureaucratic legalism, regime level variables tend to trump organizational level
variables in terms of shaping the organizational independence and pattern of
engagement. However, in departure from the relatively stable cross-organizational
pattern of engagement displayed within bureaucratic retreatism and bureaucratic
legalism, adversarial legalism seems to establish an organizational environment that
promotes a greater cross-organizational variability. Along the line of this
observation, the NAFTA related data revealed a wider range of patterns of
organizational behavior. On one extreme, Greenpeace maintained a high level of
independence while engaging in antagonistic style of activism vis-à-vis the regime.
On the other extreme, World wildlife fund became captured by the regime and
engaged in a collusive style of activism vis-à-vis the regime. The above set of
results, suggest that adversarial legalism’s opportunity structures, tend to create the
kind of organizational environment which leads to a real interaction between regime
level and organizational level variables. The resulting behavior of civil society
within adversarial legalism implies that while regime level variables create pressure
223
to adapt, organizational level variables are able to filter out and deflect that pressure
with varying degrees of success.

Table 6.1: Key Regime Findings and Hypotheses

Regime Type
Bureaucratic
Retreatism Adversarial Legalism Bureaucratic legalism
Greenpeace Non-Engagement Independent/
Antagonistic
Somewhat independent
Play-by-the-book
Friends of the
Earth
Non-Engagement Collaborative/
opportunistic
Collaborative
Play-by-the-book
World
Wildlife Fund
Non-Engagement Captured/
collusive
Captured
Play-by-the-book
Hypotheses If Bureaucratic
Retreatism, then
none-engagement
with greater
probability than
otherwise.
If Adversarial
Legalism, then most
variable with greater
probability than
otherwise
If Bureaucratic Legalism,
less independent, play by
the book with greater
probability than
otherwise

The patterns displayed in table 6.1 suggest the following hypotheses:
1) If Bureaucratic Retreatism, then non-engagement with greater probability
than otherwise.
2) If Bureaucratic Legalism, then “play-by-the-book”, collaborative if not
captured with greater probability than otherwise.
3) If Adversarial Legalism, then organizational behavior ranges from
independent/antagonistic to captured collusive resulting in a great
organizational variability with greater probability than otherwise.
224
How Organizations Matter
Although the patterns were less striking, the data also suggested that two key
organizational attributes matter in shaping the behavior of civil society: (1) the
degree of organizational coupling, meaning the degree to which organizational
governing institutional structure, historical legacy, and level of inertia tend to control
civil society’s organizational core and (2) the degree of resource dependence
meaning the extent to which the organization needs and is willing to receive funding
for its operations from the regime. Specifically, this dissertation examined three
organizations, Greenpeace, Friends-of-the-Earth, World Wildlife Fund. Overall,
Greenpeace International’s organizational core is tightly coupled due to its unitary
international governance, top-down decision making, and historical legacy which
orients the organization towards antagonistic style of activism. In addition,
Greenpeace’s resistance to accept regime and corporate resources as well as
resistance to entangling political alliances, make the organization resource
independent. In contrast, Friends-of-the-Earth’s confederate style of international
governance and willingness to accept regime’s funding, suggests that FoE’s
organizational core is loosely coupled and that its chapters tend to be somewhat
resource dependent. Finally, World Wildlife Fund’s federal structure of governance
creates a medium level of coupling. However, WWF’s large and expensive
conservation projects makes WWF highly resource dependent.
In terms of coupling, the organizations display the following patterns:
Greenpeace, which is the most tightly coupled organization, tends to range in its
225
behavior from non engagement of the MERCOSUR regime to
independent/opportunistic. However, even when it is least independent, when it
engages the EU, Greenpeace’s internal variables tends to shield it to a great extent
from the regime’s impact. As a result, Greenpeace generally displays a high
probability for independence. The above observation suggests that tight coupling
tends to filter out most of the impact of the regime level variables. Put differently, a
tightly coupled organizations tends to behave in a relatively similar manner across
regimes regardless of the differences among the regimes. Given the above stated
observation, it seems that for tightly coupled organizations, organization level
variables tend to trump the impact of regime level variables.
In contrast with Greenpeace’s pattern of strategic engagement, once the
coupling of the organizational core is slightly loosened, the regime level variables
seem to overcome organizational level variables. Thus, it does not seem to matter
whether the organization’s coupling is medium or loose. In either case, the
organization’s pattern of engagement would range from non-engagement to collusive
engagement, depending more on regime level variables than on organizational level
variables. More specifically, FoE and WWF tend to behave very similarly within the
EU, despite the observation that FoE is loosely coupled and WWF has a medium
level coupling. The analysis of this pattern of engagement, suggests, that
organizational coupling matters only at the tightest level of coupling. As summarized
in Table 6.2, this suggests the following hypotheses:
226
1) If loosely coupled, more variable across regimes, pattern of strategic
engagement ranges from non-engagement to captured with greater
probability than otherwise.
2) If tightly coupled, less variable across regimes, pattern of strategic
engagement ranges from independent/opportunistic to somewhat
collusive with greater probability than otherwise.

Table 6.2: Organizational Core Coupling

Organizations Coupled
Pattern of Strategic
Engagement Across Regimes
Greenpeace Tight From non-engagement to
independent opportunistic
Friends-of-the-Earth Loose From non-engagement to collusive
World Wildlife Fund Medium From non-engagement to collusive

In terms of resource dependence the following patterns emerge:
Organizations such as Greenpeace which are not resource dependent tend to display
the greatest level of independence. Thus, resource dependence tends to be most
important in explaining indicators of independence. Greenpeace’s consistent across-
regime refusal to accept government or corporate funding insulates the organization
to a great degree from demands to conform and adapt to regime level norms and
standards. Unlike Greenpeace, organizations, such as FoE, which tend to have
medium level resource dependence, are more susceptible to regime level pressure to
227
collaborate. As a result, FoE’s level of independence tends to range from highly
independent when it operates within regimes that do not fund their civil society, such
as MERCOSUR, to collaborative and even captured within regimes that provide
resources to their civil society. Finally, organizations that are highly resource
dependent, such as World Wildlife Fund, tend to display the least amount of
independence ranging from somewhat independent to captured and collusive. The
data suggested that WWF’s high resource dependence makes it most susceptible to
regime pressure. Consistent with the findings, resource independence helps
organizations shield themselves from regime level variables. In contrast, resource
dependence tends to increase the impact of regime level variables on organizational
independence. As summarized in Table 6.3, this pattern implies the following
hypotheses:
1) If highly resource dependent, then the organization will be relatively less
independent with greater probability than otherwise
2) If not resource dependent, then the organization will be relatively more
independent with greater probability than otherwise.
228
Table 6.3: Organizational Level Resource Dependence

Organizations Resource dependence
Level of Independence
Across Regimes
Greenpeace No Mostly highly Independent
Friends-of- the- Earth Medium Ranges from captured to
highly independent
World Wildlife Fund High Ranges from somewhat
independent to captured

How Regimes and Organizations Interact
The central point is that the broader debate presents a false dichotomy. Both
regimes and organizations matter. The resulting patterns are complex but suggest
several general hypotheses. Specifically, putting these findings and hypotheses
together suggests that the combination of bureaucratic retreatist regimes and
organizations that are most tightly coupled with low resource dependence would
most probably yield the most independent civil society organizations. By contrast by
combining bureaucratic legalism with less tight organizational core, there will be
least variations in strategic engagement. Thus, the data pattern suggest that variation
in resource dependence creates a greater susceptibility to regime level variables than
do variation of tightness in coupling, except for the highest level of coupling.
Finally, adversarial legalism, by showing the most variability across civil society
organizations suggests a regulatory space in which both organizational level and
regime level variables matter within the same regime.
229
Contributions to the Literature
This dissertation addresses a debate in the literature concerning the
relationship between regimes and civil society. The findings led to the development
of hypotheses that helped explain how regimes level variables and civil society
organization level interact and as a result affect the pattern of engagement and level
of independence of activist organizations. Apart from addressing the broad debate,
this research helped expand the theoretical knowledge within the State and Society
literature and bridge the gap between several subfields of political science. Indeed,
the debate as to whether regimes matter and how they matter has been the subject of
significant research within the subfields of Comparative Politics, International
Relations, and Organizational Studies.
Within Comparative Politics, I see the implication of this research as
expanding the state-in-society approach of Migdal (1997) and others. The
comparative literature seeks to converge between the previous assertions that the
state is all powerful in shaping its civil society with the opposite literature, which
asserts that society develops independent of the state. This dissertation expands the
convergence approach by expanding the theory to include the relationship between
international and regional regimes and civil society. It further adds to the literature
by going beyond the debate and explaining how the regime interacts with social
organizations.
Although not directly, this dissertation raises some issues, which became
rather salient within the subfield of International Relations. Specifically, the debate
230
between realists and globalists concerning the remaining importance of the state is
addressed in this project. By studying the interaction between international regimes
and social organizations, this project expanded the theoretical framework which
emphasized the important influence new types of post-statist regimes have on civil
society.
Within the civil society literature, this project, while rejecting some of
Wapner’s (1996) conclusions, which stated that civil society exists outside the realm
of the regime, added to and updated the theoretical explanation of how civil society
operates in the international arena. More recently, this project helps build upon
Duina’s (2006) embryonic research which sought to demonstrate a correlation
between regulatory codification on a regional level (RTAs) and the thickness of civil
society. Put differently, once Duina demonstrated that just like traditional states,
regional regimes correlate with a growth of civil society, it became necessary to
explain how these new regimes interact with civil society.
Within organizational studies, this project added empirical data to support the
research of Woodward (1958), Emerson (1962) and others that investigated the
conditions that contribute to variations within organizational behavior. In studying
some of these conditions across regional and international regimes, the dissertation
helped add external validity and added support to some of these organizational
theories.
Finally, while some of the contingent and complex interactions between
regulatory regimes and civil society were researched by other scholars such as
231
Kagan, Gunningham and Thornton (2003), much of the literature is still centered on
the state level. This project added to the literature by implying that similar contingent
interactions also occur in international regimes. In doing so the dissertation added
some external validity to the previous literature.
Implications
Understanding the dynamics involved in the interaction between regimes and
civil society is important for the following reasons: This project hopefully provides
some important tools to help evaluate the practical theoretical implications
concerning the impact which different regimes have on the independence of their
civil societies. These tools should help underline the conditions which may
contribute to independence or captured behavior within activist organizations.
Furthermore, the tools provided by this project can help identify which types of
regulatory regimes could create the type of organizational field that changes or
interferes in the pattern of strategic engagement of activist groups. From a practical
approach, activists who wish to join or establish social organizations may wish to
read this dissertation as an instructional guide. This guide would help activists design
their organizations in order to maximize political influence but minimize the kind of
adaption that would lead to compromising core values.
In addition, this projects helps evaluate the wider questions related to the
future of social movements and their role in affecting social policy. Throughout the
last two centuries, social movements, including the environmental movement, have
been on the cutting edge of forcing regimes to change social policy. The extent to
232
which effective bureaucracies can retard and limit the political edge, social support
and vibrancy of social movements, however, is subject to further inquiry.
Nonetheless, this project provided the initial inquiry into how regimes may have a
long term impact on the future of social movements.
Further Inquiry
In this particular project, while concentrating on indicators of independence,
patterns of engagement, and organizational structure, I left out several indicators of
civil society’s behavior. For one, research into linkage politics is essential in
evaluating how civil society behaves in supranational Regional Trade Associations.
Furthermore, research on the impact of regulatory regimes on the rise and decline of
social movements is equally important and naturally emanates from this project.
Furthermore, there are several quantitative studies that should be conducted and are
theoretically related to this dissertation. For one, I would like to study the impact of
international regimes/ civil society interactions on the dynamics contributing to the
ebb and flow of the issue attention cycles (Downs, 1972) of environmental and other
social policies.

233
References

Ackerman, Susan Rose. Controlling Environmental Policy: The Limits of Public Law
in Germany and the United States. 1995

Adam Smith Institute blog August 19, 2007 Sunday 4:00 PM EST Blog Review
324. WWW.Adamsmith.org

Barnard, CI. The Functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press. 1938.

BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, May 5, 1998, Tuesday, Part 5 Africa, Latin
America, and the Caribbean; BRAZIL. “Cardoso signs agreement to preserve
Amazon environment”

Business Wire correspondents , June 23, 1994, Thursday. “BANK OF AMERICA
DONATES $1.7 MILLION TO WORLD WILDLIFE FUND FOR BRAZILIAN
CONSERVATION PROGRAM”.

Chemical Business, Correspondents. “Greenpeace returns toxic waste to ICI”. Jan 4,
2001. WWW.ICIS.Com

Corbin LaRue, Lisa Kirby, Bill Stith, and Debra Weldon. “ The Environment Free
Trade and Hazardous Waste: a study of U.S-Mexico Border Environmental Problems
In Light of Free Trade Texas Wesleyan Law Review 183. Spring, 1994.
Dewar, Elaine. Globe and Mail June 24, 2008.

Duina, Francisco. The Social Construction of Free Trade: The European Union,
NAFTA, and MERCOSUR. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2006

Emerson, RM. Power-dependence relations. American Sociology Review 27:31-40.
(1962).

Fisher, Frank and Michael Black. 1995. Greening Environmental Policy: The
Politics of a Sustainable Future. New York: St. Martin Press.

Frankel, Jeffrey A. 1997. Regional Trading Blocks in The World Economic System.
Washington, DC: Institute of International Economics.

Greenwire correspondents. Greenwire, May 17, 1995

Hawke, Neil. 2002. Environmental policy implementation and enforcement.
Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
234

Glenn, H. Patrick. “Conflicting Laws in a Common Market? The NAFTA
Experiment.” Chicago-Kent Law Review 76(3):1789-819.

Hagopian, Frances. “Traditional Politics Against State Transformation in Brazil.” In
State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World
1994, edited by Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue, 37-65. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press. 1994.

Hannan. MT, Freeman J. Organizational Ecology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. 1989.

IPS Correspondents. “IMF/World Bank: Protests provoke fury and frustration” IPS,
October 3, 1994, WWW.IPS.ORG/Institutional

Ito, Takatoshi and Krueger, Anne O. 1997. Regionalism versus Multilateral Trade
Arrangements. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press.

Jones, Tom. 1997. "Globalization and The Environment: Main Issues". In OECD
Proceedings, Globalization and Environment Preliminary Perspectives. Paris,
France: OECD Publications.

Kagan, Robert A. 2001. Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Kagan, Robert A., William Gunningham and Dorothy Thornton. Shades of Green:
Business, Regulation, and Environment. Stanford, California: Stanford University
Press. 2003.

Kamienieckie, Sheldon, et al., editors. Flashpoints in Environmental Policymaking:
Controversies in Achieving Sustainability.

Kaimowitz, David. 1996. "The Political Economy of Environmental Policy Reform
in Latin America". In Modern Political Economy and Latin America. Jeffery
Frieden, Manuel Pastor Jr. and Michael Tomz. : Westview press.

Lamp, Bill. “EU treaty could block French nuclear tests.” UPI, September 6, 1995.

Lester, James P. Environmental Politics and Policy: Theories and Evidence, Second
Edition.

235
Lipschutz, Ronnie D. 1996. Global Civil Society and Global Environmental
Governance, The politics of Nature from Place to Planet. New York: State
University of New York Press:

Mazamamian, Daniel and Michael E. Kraft, eds. Toward Sustainable Communities:
Transition and Transformations in Environmental Policy.

McCormick, John. 2001. Environmental Policy in the European Union. New York,
New York: Palgrave publishing, St. Martin Press.

McCann, Michael W. Rights At Work "Pay Equity Reform And The Politics Of
Legal Mobilization"(The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London) 1994.

Migdal, Joel, Atul kohli, and Vivienne Shue. State Power and Social Forces:
Domination and Transformation in the Third World. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press. 1994.

Moore, Barrington. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and
Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
1966
NAFTA: Law and Business Review of the Americas -v6(2000).

O’Globo. “ Brazil health ministry upholds moratorium on GM products.” BBC
summary of world broadcasts, July 8, 2000.

Ohmae, Kenichi. 1995. The End of The Nation State, The Rise of Regional
Economies. New York: Free Press

Osava, Mario. Environment: “Eco-cops, a rare species in Latin America.” IPS, June
21, 2002.

Petroleum Economist Feb 15, 2000. WWW.Petroleumeconomist.com
Porrata-Doria, Rafael. MERCOSUR: The Common Market of the Southern Cone.
Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. 2004

Pastor, manuel, and Carol Wise. 1994. "The Origins of Mexico Free Trade Policy".
In Modern Political Economy and Latin America. Jeffery Frieden, Manuel Pastor Jr.
and Michael Tomz.: Westview press.

Prezworski, Adam, and Henry Teune. 1970. The Logic Of Comparative Social
Inquiry. New York: Wiley-Intescience, A Division, Of John Wiley & Sons.

236
RAPID, December 18, 2000, Press Release; IP: 00/1484
Rengger, N.J. "A City Which Sustains All Things? Communitarianism &
International Society, Millennium, Vol. 21, No.3,Winter 1992.

Roberts, Carter. January 09, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton.edu
Roett, Riordan. MERCOSUR: Regional Integration, World Markets. Boulder
Colorado: Lynn Reinner Publishers Inc. 1999.

Rohter, Larry.”In the Amazon: Conservation or Colonialism?” The New York
Times, July 27, 2007 Friday, Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; ANAVILHANAS
ECOLOGICAL STATION JOURNAL; p4.

Rosenbloom, David H. and Richard Schwartz. Theory and PracticeRegulatory
Enforcement. In The Handbook of Regulation and Administrative law.

Schiff, Maurice and L. Alan Winters. 2002. Regional Integration and Development.
Washington DC: Library of Congress, A co-publication of the World Bank and
Oxford University Press.

Selznick, P. Foundations of the theory of organizations. American Sociological
Review 13:25-35. 1948.

Selznick, P. TVA and the Grassroots. Berkeley, California: University of California
Press. 1949.

Scott, Alex. “Brussels Investigates Refrigerant Gases Standards Procedure.”
Chemical Week August 7, 2002.

Scott, Richard W., “Recent Development in Organizational Sociology,” Acta
Sociologica 36:63-48 (1993), http://WWW.jstor.org/pss/4200832

Shue, Vivienne. “ State Power and Social Organization in China.” In State Power
and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World 1994, edited
by Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue, 65-89. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press. 1994.

Skocpol, Theda. Introduction to Bringing the State Back In. edited by Peter B.
Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1985.

Thompson, E.P. 1982. "The Rule Of Law". In Marxism and Law. Piers Beirne and
Richard Quinney. New York, New York: John Wiley & Sons

237
US Fed News, Jan 24, 2008 “Ombudsman:”NGOs can help EU institutions do their
jobs better”. www.fnsg.com

Vig, Norman J. and Michael E. Kraft, eds. Environmental Policy: New Directions
for the Twenty-First Century, Sixth Edition.

Vogel, David. National Styles of Regulation : Environmental Policy in Great Britain
and the United States. 1986

Walton, J. and Willa Marie Bruce. Regulatory Negotiation: Learning from
Experience at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency”. In Mediating
Environmental Conflicts

Waltz, Kenneth L. "Globalization & Governance" (PS) Political Science & Politics,
Vol. XXXII, No. 4, December 1999

Waltzer, Michael. On Toleration. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
1997

Wapner, Paul. Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics. Albany, New York:
State University of New York Press. 1996.

Woodward, J. Western Daily Press July 24, 2007 Tuesday “EU makes bad use of
our money.” Management and Technology. Problems of Progress in Industry
Series No. 3. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1958.

Weidner, Helmut and Susan Rose Ackerman. Performance and Characteristics of
German Environmental Policy: overview and Expert Commentary from 14 countries.

Zarsky, Lyuba. “Stuck in the Mud?” Nation-states, Globalization, and Environment”
in OECD Proceedings 1997.

238

APPENDIX
CASE SELECTION AND REGULATORY REGIME INDICATORS
Regulatory regimes are the institutions of the state that are in charge of
developing policies and enforcing compliance with regime policies. In the Anglo-
American legal system, regulatory style evolved over a thousand years through
thousands of legal cases which make up the tort or civil law. While contemporary
omnibus legislation standardizing environmental and labor law have been complex
and detailed, the final decision as to exactly what the law means has always been
open to the court system to decide. Thus, the American regulatory system is by its
nature contentious, adversarial, open and fairly democratic. In contrast with the
American system, the European system is based on the ancient Roman civil law and
the more contemporary Napoleonic code. It is based on the idealistic notion that
codification and standardization can be legislated all at once by experts. Once put in
place the European system is ruled by a bureaucracy that decides the issues of
enforcement, compliance and adjudication. This is a hierarchical system consisting
of levels of bureaucratic officials whose decisions are rarely challenged outside the
realm of the bureaucracy. While the European system perfected the bureaucratic
style of regulation, in Latin America, the European traditions of legal culture were
imported by the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers with a lesser degree of success.
In addition to the major types of legal traditions and regulatory regimes, there
are several other aspects of regulations that affect the way civil society is structured.
239
It is important to note that when evaluating the ways in which regimes create
different opportunity structures for civil society to operate in, through their
regulatory methods, one must acknowledge that there are no pure or ideal types of
systems. The United States and NAFTA have moved somewhat into a less
adversarial and less legalistic bureaucracy experimenting with other hybrid methods
of regulations such as regulatory negotiation using mandatory mediation, arbitration
and dispute resolution methods. The EU with the MAASTRICHT Treaty and various
succeeding conventions such as the Aarhus convention that went into effect in 2007
and expanded the role of the EU Court of Justice, is not as purely bureaucratic as
Germany once was. Furthermore, bureaucratic retreatism and failure to enforce the
law in the MERCOSUR states require a more nuanced understanding of these
categories.
Another important aspect of the ways in which a bureaucracy can affect how
civil society organizes and acts, is bureaucratic culture. From a historical point of
view, one of the signs that medievalism ended and gave way to the modern era was
the rise of meritocratic bureaucracy. In contrast with the corrupt and capricious
application of the law during the Middle-Ages, the rise of the modern state and the
creation of bureaucracy signified a regular, predictable and efficient administration
of services. In considering how different regulatory regimes create different
opportunity structures for their civil society, it is not enough to merely analyze the
differences in legal and bureaucratic styles posed by adversarial legalism and
bureaucratic legalism. Beyond the formal regime, understanding the culture of the
240
bureaucracies produced by that regime is crucial to analyzing how opportunity
structures affect the behavior of civil society. The field literature has articulated
various typologies intended to evaluate how the culture of bureaucracies affects their
ability to enforce compliance and to work within civil society.
The different modes of bureaucratic behavior that have been described are:
judicial mode, legalism, unauthorized discretion, and retreatism (Muir 1977, Bardach
and Kagan 1995). On one extreme, some bureaucracies develop a mode of
unauthorized discretion. In that capacity, the activist bureaucrat operates in a culture
that completely ignores the rules and becomes totally results oriented. It is similar to
the policeman who cites innocent people who appear dangerous to her. The same
policeman sometimes acts leniently toward real offenders, which she deems to be
‘good’ members of society. This leads to corruption and to uneven enforcement of
the laws. These bureaucrats use the rule of law and a post hoc justification of their
behavior. They selectively choose which laws to enforce and which ones not to
enforce; this also delegitimizes the entire system. In order to control this kind of
behavior, law-makers specify absolute adherence to the law and sometimes forbid
discretion at all. This second mode is called Legalism, a mechanistic following of the
rules without caring about the goals or values of the bureaucracy. ‘Going by the
book’, helps creates a uniform application, but it also creates resentment, by
preventing individuals and interest groups from being included in the system.
Furthermore, this approach also infuriates business and industry because the law
appears rigid and substantially unfair.
241
The third mode of bureaucratic behavior is retreatism. Dynamically, this
mode of behavior not only avoids adherence and respect to formal rules, but rather
avoids caring for the goals of the bureaucracy itself. In fact, because of fear, timidity
or corruption, the retreatist bureaucrat avoids decision making of any kind. The
result is that the bureaucrat acts only for personal gain, thus becoming cynical,
avoiding all efforts, accepting bribes, procrastinating and postponing decision
making by invoking the excuse that the case is not ripe. Not surprisingly, this kind
of behavior tends to lead to an overall ineffectiveness in applying the rules.
The final bureaucratic mode of behavior, the one most preferred by the
scholars, is the judicial mode, wherein the bureaucrat sees herself as a judge. Thus,
the bureaucrat needs to be philosophically cognizant of the goals and principles of
the law and the bureaucracy, as these principles are considered more important than
the letter of the law; additionally, they constrain the bureaucrat’s state of mind as she
applies and develops rules. However, within this mode, while the letter of the laws is
not to be interpreted in a mechanistic fashion, the established laws are not ignored
with unauthorized discretion. The judicial mode is an effort to adhere to formal rule
by interpreting them broadly and not narrowly. The bureaucrat interprets the general
purpose of the rules and develops a wise policy.
Finally, in selecting MERCOSUR, NAFTA and the EU and the independent
variables, I chose three regulatory regimes that represent relatively, if not perfectly,
different styles of regulations. The dependent variables I selected are Greenpeace,
World Wildlife Fund, and Friends of the Earth. For the purpose of control, and
242
minimizing extraneous or unrelated variation, each of these organizations represents
environmental civil society, and each operates within the three regimes. Furthermore,
in order to address the issue of organizational core and adaptability, I deliberately
chose organizations that are governed differently. While, Greenpeace has a unitary
and centrally powerful international governing board, Friends of the Earth is a
confederation, and World Wildlife Fund is a Federation. Thus, individual
Greenpeace offices, because of their international top down command and control,
should display the most resistance in adapting to variance in regulatory regimes.
Correspondingly, Friends of the Earth, being a confederation should have the most
leeway to adapt and vary across regimes, and WWF should be somewhere in the
middle.
Method of Comparison
This project compares the organizational behavior of three NGOs,
Greenpeace, WWF, and Friends of the Earth in three Regional Trade Agreements
(RTA), MERCOSUR, NAFTA, and the EU. The comparative model I used for the
purpose of comparison in this project is the “most similar systems” design
(Przeowrski & Teune 1970). In this type of model it is essential to establish
equivalence between the three case studies and as much consistency on the
dependent variable level as possible. Thus, different outcomes will be traced to the
narrowest variations between the independent variables. Because the sizes of the
markets of the three RTAs are comparable, the economic ideology of neo-liberalism
is similar, and the year in which each of these regimes was established is almost
243
identical, it can be established that these regimes are comparable. The desire to open
the market, integrate the economy and harmonize environmental and labor laws also
establishes similarity between the regimes. Furthermore, the dependent variables
used in this comparison are the same. Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth
maintain national international and regional presence in every regime in the world.
Each of these NGOs has an international body that coordinates their efforts. Using
the same organization for the dependent variable further helps the model in
establishing comparative equivalence. This type of control helps eliminate other
extraneous independent variables.
Measurement and Indicators
Organizational independence is a multidimensional concept reflecting a host
of factors including organizational structure and personnel, self perception,
reputation, and behavior. As a result, I analyzed each of the selected organizations
from a variety of perspectives. This project looks at several indicators of
independence. I have conducted the following research and looked for indicators that
demonstrate independence or capture: traditional case studies, process tracing, and
comparative methods.
Structure and Personnel
Using organizational literature and websites, I sought to ascertain how the
organizations are structured and the background of key personnel. For example, is
the organization primarily funded by its members (suggesting independence), or by
government grants or categorical funds (suggesting resource dependence and thus
244
lack of ideational independence)? Do the leaders of the organization come from an
activist or “outside” background (suggesting independence) or from the government
(suggesting that the organization is part of a “revolving door” of government policy
groups)?
Reputation
Using content analysis of the media and blogs, I ascertained the reputation of
this organization and its activities. Some of the indicators I searched for are the
following media references to the organizations: Some of the common references
were “activists, “watchdogs” or “insiders” suggesting degrees of independence or
lack thereof. I ranked the reputation for independence on an ordinal scale in which
reputation for activism indicates the highest degree of independence and reputation
for being an “insider” organization represents being least independent or captured.
Self Perception
Using content analysis of websites, articles and blogs as well as elite
interviews and process tracing where available, I analyzed how the group perceives
itself. Some of the issues I raised involved the following questions: does the
organization present itself as working within the system or as an outsider catalyst for
change?
Behavior
Through document analysis of media and websites and process tracing
through interviews, I collected data on the organizations main activities. I compared
the type of activities conducted by the organization in each regime and the level of
245
confrontation with the government or cooperation with the government. I looked at
shifts in the activities over a given period of time. I noted the nature of the activities.
I looked at type of demonstration or public display of defiance as well as legal
campaign, education campaigns and lobbying. I used the following codes to evaluate
independence or capture:
1. Highly independent: Activities that are completely outside the system.
These include demonstrations, sit-ins, and possibly illegal activities. In
addition, these include any appeal to an outside body which the regime is
not a member of, in order to force the regime or industry to change its
ways
2. Somewhat independent: Activities that challenge the system but are
within the boundaries and rules set by the regime. These include lawsuits
that occur within the supragovernmental legal structure or through outside
legal agreements which the supragovernmental regime is party to. They
include any work through the regimes’ bureaucracy.
3. Captured: Activities that demonstrate strong regime influence and regime
loyalty. These include education campaigns intended to educate the
public about government policy, supporting the regime’s position in the
international arena, and participating in governmental committees and
panels intended to develop common policy. These also include the
conducting of research or any joint project that are paid for or done on
behalf of the regime.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Since World War II, we have witnessed the growth of regional trade regimes and the emergence of an international civil society, which consists of organizations dedicated to activism within and across nation states. This confluence of development raises fundamental questions about the relationship between international regimes and civil society. This dissertation focuses on the political implications of the development of different styles of regional-international regimes on their civil society, and on the corresponding, mediating effects of organizational level contingencies. This exploration, further addresses the debate as to whether regimes matter or not.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

The political economy of implementation: intellectual property rights protection across the world

PDF

The political economy of Brazilian trade policy: domestic determinants, world and regional strategies

PDF

The life cycle of jurisprudential regimes: the supreme court and the constitutional law of civil rights

PDF

A two-level analysis of foreign policy decision making: an empirical investigation of the case of China-Taiwan

PDF

Local ground-level ozone policies: Governance structure and institutions In achieving federal attainment

PDF

Shaking the foundations of violent civil conflict: institutions, disasters, and the political economies of state-rebel interaction

PDF

Financial crises and trade policy in developing countries

PDF

The interplay between the state and civil society: a case study of honor killings in Turkey

PDF

The murky risk of trade protectionism in an interconnected and uncertain global economy: a state, industrial, and regional analysis

PDF

The resiliency of Arab authoritarianism and the Arab-Israeli conflict: the United States' role in the cases of Egypt and Jordan

PDF

The political economy of R&D collaboration: micro- and macro-level implications

PDF

Assessing the implementation of the RECLAIM cap-and-trade market for pollution: measurement issues in counterfactuals, goal attainment, and command-and-control alternatives

PDF

The elephant and the mouse that roared: the prospects of international policy and local authority in the case of the convention on international species (CITES)

PDF

Visual reasoning: representations in global politics, economics, and society

PDF

The potential of art in a micro society: the spring 2009 Lineman Class at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College

PDF

Emergency-war machine: national crisis, democratic governance, and the historical construction of the American state

PDF

Regime type and international negotiation: a case study of US/China bilateral negotiations for China's accession to GATT/WTO

PDF

Influence of feedback, resources and interaction with superiors on work self-efficacy levels and employee engagement in informal learning activities in the workplace

PDF

Solidarity, violence, and the political imagination: Chicana literary imaginings of the Central American civil wars, 1981-2005

PDF

Perspectives on state capacity and the political geography of conflict

Asset Metadata

Creator Lehavi, Ron (author)

Core Title Regional trade association and civil society: an analysis of contingent interactions between regime-level and organizational-level variables

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Politics

Publication Date 05/08/2010

Defense Date 03/24/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag civil society,contingencies,free trade agreements,OAI-PMH Harvest,regime,regime matters,state and society

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Barnes, John E. (committee chair), Dekmejian, Richard H. (committee member), James, Patrick (committee member)

Creator Email lehavi@usc.edu,rlehavi@socal.rr.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3031

Unique identifier UC198298

Identifier etd-Lehavi-3710 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-343338 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3031 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Lehavi-3710.pdf

Dmrecord 343338

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Lehavi, Ron

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu