Contesting Climate Change
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CONTESTING CLIMATE CHANGE: CIVIL SOCIETY NETWORKS AND COLLECTIVE ACTION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Jennifer Leigh Hadden August 2011 © 2011 Jennifer Leigh Hadden CONTESTING CLIMATE CHANGE: CIVIL SOCIETY NETWORKS AND COLLECTIVE ACTION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION Jennifer Leigh Hadden, Ph.D. Cornell University, 2011 Civil society organizations choose vastly different forms of collective action to try to influence European politics: everything from insider lobbying to disruptive protest, from public education to hunger strikes. Using network analysis and qualitative interviewing, my research emphasizes that patterns of inter-organizational relations influence organizational decisions to use one of these strategies. They do this by structuring the information and resources available to actors, as well as by diffusing strategies across connected actors. This is particularly true when networks are segmented into two distinct components, as I find in the European climate change network. In this network, organizations using contentious ‘outsider’ strategies are only loosely linked to those ‘insiders’ behaving conventionally in Brussels. These findings are policy relevant because current scholarship and policy recommendations tend to assume that increased civil society participation in transnational policy-making will increase democratic legitimacy. But my network data and qualitative interviews suggests that the emergence of a coalition of organizations engaging solely in contentious outsider action reflects the development and diffusion of a new and highly critical strand of climate change politics. I further argue that this type of contentious civil society ‘spillover’ can actually slow the pace of development of climate change policy and of European integration more generally. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Jennifer Leigh Hadden is originally from Vancouver, Canada. She received her B.A. from Smith College with highest honors in Government in 2005. She also received an international diploma ‘mention bien’ from L’institut d’études politiques in Paris, France in 2004. In the fall of 2005, she began graduate work at Cornell University, completing a master’s degree in 2008. During her graduate work, Jennifer was a visiting researcher at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy as well as at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium. She will begin a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park in the fall of 2011. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people I would like to recognize for their help with this dissertation. I want to particularly acknowledge the influence and support of the faculty and staff of the Government Department at Cornell University. In particular, the members of my committee – Chris Anderson, Matt Evangelista, and Sarah Soule -- dedicated many hours to reading and discussing my work with me. All three routinely sent thoughtful comments, and have helped me develop my ideas since the early days of my coursework at Cornell. I am very grateful to them for their support. Donatella della Porta not only kindly agreed to serve as an outside reader, but provided valuable feedback when I was debating different dissertation ideas in Florence. Throughout my time at Cornell, Sid Tarrow has been an exceptionally generous mentor. Sid inspires me with his creativity and command of the field, and he has continually pushed me to grow intellectually and to never stop trying to improve my work. It has been my privilege to work with him during these past six years, and I thank him for the kindness and hospitality both he and Susan Tarrow have shown me during this time. I also benefited enormously from the research support of a number of institutions. In particular, the Institute for European Studies and the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell University offered me pre-dissertation research funding to explore potential topics. The financial support of the Fulbright program to the European Union and the European Union Studies Association provided me with the luxury of spending eighteen months conducting field research in Europe. During my time abroad, I was also fortunate to find intellectual community and working space at the European University Institute and at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future provided me with funding to conduct follow-up research at the 2010 UNFCCC meeting in Cancun, Mexico. iv I want to particularly acknowledge the assistance of the many activists, advocates, and policy-makers who gave their scarce time to participate in this project. During my research I was routinely impressed with their dedication and creativity in the face of immense global problems, and I hope that I do them justice in explaining their actions and motivations. In particular, Benoît Dutilleul, Matthias Duwe, Karim Harris, Tadzio Müller, and several others who wish to be anonymous went out of their way to support me during my fieldwork. This research could not have happened without them. While in Ithaca, my intellectual and social life was enormously improved by my interactions with my peers. I want to especially thank Phil Ayoub, Jaimie Bleck, Sean Boutin, Noelle Brigden, Todd Dickey, Jennifer Erickson, Joe Florence, Janice Gallagher, Don Leonard, Igor Logvinenko, Kristin McKie, Alison McQueen, Tsveta Petrova, John Scott, Lucia Antalova Seybert, and Andrew Yeo for their support and friendship. I would also like to thank Richard Bensel and the participants in the dissertation colloquium for useful comments and moral support during the final stretch. During my fieldwork, many people helped me in various ways to learn about European culture, politics and activism. I am particularly grateful to Nicole Dörr, Julianna Erthal, Jennifer Jones, Heike Klüver, Birgitta Gomez Nielsen, Grzegorz Piotrowski, Niccolò Tognarini, and Magnus Wennerhag for sharing with me their experience and insight. Outside of Cornell, a number of scholars generously read and commented on portions of my work. I would like to thank Scott Byrd, Michael Heaney, Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Ruth Reitan for providing helpful feedback on earlier versions of these chapters. v As always, during the past six years my family has provided me with the love and support that made this work possible. Laura Hadden and Jesse Freidman hosted me on many trips to Brooklyn, which were more important to me than they probably know. Eileen and Lyall Hadden assisted and encouraged me in every way possible, including (but not limited to) listening to all my problems and complaints, visiting me numerous times in Ithaca and during my field research, and celebrating with me when it was all over. My interaction with these wonderful people not only makes my work more enjoyable, but makes finishing it even better. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Acknowledgements iv List of Figures viii List of Tables x List of Abbreviations xii Introduction 1 Part One: Explaining Contentious and Conventional Collective Action 22 Chapter 1: The Historical Context of Climate Change Activism 26 Chapter 2: Events and Actors: Traditional Approaches to Collective Action 55 Chapter 3: A Relational Network Approach 96 Chapter 4: Modeling Choice of Action Forms 125 Part Two: The Two Worlds of Collective Action 149 Chapter 5: Conventional Climate Change Advocacy 153 Chapter 6: Contentious Climate Change Activism 192 Chapter 7: Mechanisms of Organizational Decision-Making 228 Chapter 8: Implications for Civil Society and Climate Change Governance 265 Conclusion 306 Appendix A Research Methods 318 Appendix B Qualitative Data Sources 338 References 345 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Public Opinion on Climate Change in the European Union, March- April 2008 1 Figure 1.2: Number of Registered Observer Non-Governmental Organizations to the UNFCCC, COP 1-5 42 Figure 2.1: Growth in Contentious Actions and Contentious Actors, 2008-2009 56 Figure 2.2: Total European Collective Actions on Climate Change with Policy Events, 2008-2009 70 Figure 2.3: Conventional and Contentious European Collective Action, 2008-2009 72 Figure 2.4: European Collective Action, 2008-2009, by Location 74 Figure 2.5: Contentious and Conventional Events by Target, 2008-2009 77 Figure 2.6: Contentious Collective Action as Percentage of Total Actions, 2008 and 2009 91 Figure 3.1: Relational Processes in the Mobilization of Collective Action 98 Figure 3.2: Sample Clique and Segmented Network Structure 105 Figure 3.3: Inter-Event Networks, 2008 and 2009 109 Figure 3.4: Inter-Organizational Networks, 2008 and 2009 114 Figure 3.5: Inter-Organizational Network, by Strong Ties 117 Figure 3.6: Inter-Organizational Network 2008-2009, by All Ties and Strong Ties 119 Figure 4.1: Inter-Organizational Network 2008, by Percentage of Contentious Actions in 2008 and 2009 127 Figure 4.2: Organizational Adoption of Contentious Tactics, January 2008 – December 2009 129 Figure 4.3: Predicted Probability of Contention by Number of Contentious Ties in 2008, for Radical and Non-Radical Groups 145 Figure 4.4: Egonets for Selected Organizations, 2008 147 Figure 5.1: Growth in Membership in the Climate Action Network Europe 171 Figure 5.2: ECO Newsletter on the FAB Essentials, December 2009 179 viii Figure 6.1: Consensus Decision-Making in Large Groups 207 Figure