Networking in environmental movement organisation coalitions: interest, values or discourse?

Abstract

Networks of information and resource exchanges between social movement organisations (SMOs) have a dual function. Such networks can support instrumental alliances among very distinct and weakly connected SMOs, but they often support the formation of more tightly-knit social movement and SMO discourse coalitions. What distinguishes an instrumental from amore substantive alliance is the density of networking. The coalescing force in dense networks is not necessarily a collective identity, but the similarity in values (value homophily) or a shared discourse. Evidence from Indonesian environmental activism is used to draw three propositions on networking, value homophily and discursive practices in coalition work: networks tend to be most dense among environmental SMOs that share the same variety of environmentalism; density of interaction in SMO discourse coalitions reveals ongoing framing activities; and environmental SMO discourse coalitions bridge across SMOs with distinct yet compatible environmental values.

Keywords:

• social movements
• homophily
• SMO discourse coalitions
• social network analysis
• forest tenure
• Indonesia

Acknowledgements

I thank Tim Forsyth, Clare Saunders and Maria Brockhaus and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Support for this research came from several awards from the London School of Economics, the Central Research Fund of the University of London, the CAPRi Fellowship Program (IFPRI) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Notes

 1. A policy domain is defined as ‘a set of policy actors with a substantive focus of concern, which gather around policy initiatives and debates’ (Laumann and Knoke 1987, pp. 9–10).

 2. In social network analysis, density refers to ‘the number of lines in a simple network, expressed as the proportion of the maximum possible number of lines’ (Nooy de et al. 2005, p. 63).

 3. A variety of environmentalism is a specific way to understand nature, which involves specific beliefs and values on the interaction between people and the environment (Brulle 2008).

 4. In a similar way, Rootes (1997) and Saunders (2008) suggest that coalitions and social movements themselves are based on shared concerns as opposed to collective identities.

 5. A further consequence is that communication networks supporting SMO discourse coalitions are as dynamic as the discursive practices that shape them (Mische and White 1998).

 6. In fact, the very concept of discourse coalition was developed as a critique to value and belief-based explanations of coalitions (Hajer 1995). My aim here, however, is not to discuss the ontological questions at the base of these explanations (Dryzek 1997, Forsyth 2003), but a more limited and pragmatic one: to assess the compatibility between explanations based on similarity of values and on discursive practices (Hajer 1995, McPherson et al. 2001).

 7. In line with recent literature on social movements, actors include professionalised social movement organisations, membership-based grassroots organisations, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Saunders 2007).

 8. Multiplex networks are networks that include different types of ties (Kenis and Knoke 2002).

 9. The specific questions were: 1. ‘With which civil society organisations does your organisation exchange advice, expertise and information? (regular contact only)’; 2. ‘Does your organisation give money or other material resources to other civil society organisations? If yes, can you list them?’ and 3. ‘Does your organisation receive money or other material resources from other civil society organisations? If yes, can you list them?’

10. Cohesive sub-networks or sub-groups are defined as ‘subsets of actors among whom there are relatively strong, direct, intense, frequent, or positive ties’ (Wasserman and Galaskiewicz 1994, p. 249).

11. The expression ‘variety of environmentalism’, corresponds to ‘environmental values’ and is often just called ‘environmentalism’ in the literature (Guha and Martinez-Alier 1997, Rootes 2004, Brulle 2008).

12. The organisations were asked: ‘Which are the main causes of environmental problems in Indonesia?’, and: ‘How could environmental problems be solved in Indonesia?’

13. The two documents are: ‘Prosiding Ringkas Konferensi Nasional Pengalolaan Sumberdaya Alam’ (Jakarta, 23–25 May 2000) and ‘Ringkasan Konferensi Nasional Pengalolaan Sumberdaya Alam’ (2000).

14. I define a formal SMO coalition as a network of SMOs that has a clear membership, formal meetings, dedicated staff, publicly agreed goals and undertakes public collective action activities using the coalition's name (Heaney and Rojas 2008).

15. Kelompok Kerja Ornop untuk Pembaruan Agraria dan Pengelolaan Sumber Daya Alam (Pokja Pa-psda).

16. As such, the coalition covers a broader policy domain compared to the forest tenure issues alone. However, policy issues around forest tenure are central to the coalition.

17. The frame analysis is based on two key documents of the dominant coalition. For a detailed description on framing analysis see Gerharts and Rucht (1992).

18. In all preceding major coalitions in the forest tenure domain, agrarian rights concerns were not included.