Mastering national contextual challenges: the institutionalisation of LPO and Greenpeace France compared

Abstract

How does an organisation gain autonomy from the context in which it developed its activities? In contrast with the rest of the environmental movement in France, two organisations have experienced significant growth: Ligue de protection des oiseaux (LPO) and Greenpeace France. The evolution of these two key cases is examined, the analysis focusing on processes and effects of institutionalisation to underscore how both environmental movement organisations (EMOs) succeed in reconciling resource mobilisation and advocacy activities. Both organisations choose strategically which activities to undertake and which public to target in order to ensure the continuity of their organisations. Their enhanced ‘capacity for action’, relying as it does on resource mobilisation and policy-oriented activities, has further geared up their contribution to their respective international NGO networks as well as to public policy processes, including European policy issues.

Keywords:

• environmental movement
• organisational change
• EU environmental policy
• resource mobilisation theory

Notes

1. Interviews were conducted, mainly in 2001–02 and in 2008, either with elected or professional officials in the 1980s (n= 4), or campaigners or MDs in the 2000s (n = 9).

2. For different conclusions, see McCauley (2007).

3. As defined by Berthelot (1990), behaviour is related to ends, and a margin of strategy, if not autonomy, is related to agency: the ends are defined by a context, itself undergoing change.

4. This theoretical discussion is pursued in Berny (2008a).

5. Formal criteria defining the status and contributions of different actors/sections.

6. In July 1985, French Intelligence sabotaged and sank this Greenpeace ship in Auckland harbour. Greenpeace was campaigning against French nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

7. The principle of one Greenpeace office, one vote has become the general rule for taking collective decisions.

8. For further details, see press releases at http://www.greenpeace.org/france.

9. The British foundation was already a striking case of a wealthy environmental organisation in the 1980s (Dalton 1994).

10. Today, BirdLife International has developed the IBA programme internationally, structuring a network of more than 100 national partners.

11. Launched in 1992, the Financial Instrument for the Environment (LIFE) has been prolonged by EC Regulation 614/2007.

12. For further development cf. European Commission, DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, Agri-environment Measures, March 2005.

13. The particular way in which WWF France rose recently to these contextual challenges and started its ongoing internal formalisation in 2004 is particularly instructive. This recent organisational change, and an increased corporate sponsorship, can usefully explain how this previously under-resourced WWF office became wealthier and more fully involved in European policy issues (see Berny 2005, pp. 352–355).