Elite networks for environmental philanthropy: shaping environmental agendas in the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT

Examining all donations of one-million dollars or more to environmental and animal-related causes from 2000–10 in the U.S., this paper employs network methodologies to identify structural patterns in elite philanthropy. Employing k-plex algorithms, analysis demonstrates robust, overlapping donor-recipient ties forming meaningful subcomponents within the larger network. In addition to donor-recipient subgroups that partition along major environmental and animal-related issues, we find politically polarized subcomponents among organizations engaged in energy and climate change. Here it is argued that these observed substructures in the network reflect an intra-elite fracture that mirrors ideological differences of donors and a larger partisan polarization on these issues in the U.S. These findings substantiate a critical theory of foundations and elite philanthropy that accounts for their role in establishing, maintaining, and at times contesting forms of political hegemony favorable to their factional interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmentalism
• elite environmental philanthropy
• animal-related philanthropy
• climate change politics
• network analysis
• k-plex analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Tomoyasu Nakamura, of Senshu University, for inspiring this project. We also acknowledge the Marquina Award Fund of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oregon for helping facilitate collaboration between graduate student and faculty colleagues.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The report was inspired by the Koch Industries’-sponsored Environmental Policy Alliance and its project Big Green Radicals. From 2006–2015, the Environmental Policy Alliance and related anti-environmental front groups developed materials to add skepticism to environmental claims, climate science and renewable energy policy initiatives.

2. The argument that ‘both sides do it’ is also flawed because in this case, the promotion of conservative climate denialism runs counter to scientific consensus and is blatantly suborned to very specific fossil fuel interests. Liberal foundations promoting climate science education and renewable energy may have strategic, and even economic interests behind their funding activities, as we discuss below, but they do so without a betrayal of the scientific fundamentals about the production/consumption of fossil fuels, carbon emissions and climate change.

3. Haines (1984) refers to varieties of a ‘radical flank effect’ where moderate organizations may gain access to third party resources because of concerns raised by militancy among a radical flank. More generally, the argument suggests that elites will favor moderates and channel resources in their direction when more radical activists or organizations are present.

4. See Sapinski (2016) for an analysis of climate capitalist efforts to make the reduction of GHG emissions profitable by shaping the policy agenda, promoting renewable energy, and otherwise expanding political support for restructuring the economy within a neoliberal capitalist framework.

5. It is important to consider that many foundations may have contributed to ideological ‘public benefit’ organizations but did so with sums less than $1 million per year and are therefore excluded from our data.

6. A k-plex can, and often does have more than one donor. Hence, the totals in Table 2 do not sum to the total number of k-plexes but rather the number of times donors, by ideology, appear in a k-plex.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeanine Cunningham

Jeanine Cunningham is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Oregon. Her primary research focuses upon politics of the environment, the power and influence of interest groups, and narrative techniques and framing strategies. 

Michael Dreiling

Michael C. Dreiling is Department Head and Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon where he specializes in political and environmental sociology. He is author of two books, numerous research articles, and is presently working on a documentary film series and a comparative study of the network power of dirty energy in two capitalist democracies. With Matthew Eddy, Michael produced and co-directed the award-winning feature documentary on Costa Rica's happy, healthy and demilitarized social democratic society – A Bold Peace, available on Amazon or Bullfrog Films. Their film has won over a dozen awards at over 200 theatrical screenings on four continents. It is now available in three languages and distributed internationally.