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Scaling Greenpeace: From Local Activism to Global Governance

Greenpeace skalieren: vom lokalen Aktivismus zur globalen Steuerung
[journal article]

Zelko, Frank

Abstract

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Initially, it was a small anti-nuclear protest group composed of Americans and Canadians, peaceniks and hippies, World War II veterans and people barely out of high school. Twenty years later, it was the world’s largest environmental NGO, with ... view more

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Initially, it was a small anti-nuclear protest group composed of Americans and Canadians, peaceniks and hippies, World War II veterans and people barely out of high school. Twenty years later, it was the world’s largest environmental NGO, with headquarters in Amsterdam, branches in over forty nations, and a regular presence at international environmental meetings throughout the world. This article will chart Greenpeace’s growth throughout its first two decades, in the process examining how the organization became influential at several levels: in local politics in places like Vancouver; at the national level in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Germany; and at global forums such as the International Whaling Commission and various UN-sponsored environmental meetings. It will analyze the combination of activist agency and political op-portunity structures that enabled Greenpeace to gain political influence. I argue that Greenpeace’s influence largely stemmed from its engagement with what political scientist Paul Wapner calls “world civic politics,” which in this case involves the dissemination of an ecological sensibility that indirectly influences behavior at multiple scales, from individuals, to governments, to multi-lateral organizations. Only in this way could a group with relatively limited resources hope to influence millions of individuals and powerful governments.... view less

Keywords
global governance; Greenpeace; organizational development; environmental protection organization; political influence; historical development; multilateralism

Classification
Ecology, Environment
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Organizational Sociology

Free Keywords
scaling activism; world civic politics

Document language
English

Publication Year
2017

Page/Pages
p. 318-342

Journal
Historical Social Research, 42 (2017) 2

Issue topic
Spatial Dimensions of Governance in 20th Century Political Struggles

DOI
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.42.2017.2.318-342

ISSN
0172-6404

Status
Published Version; peer reviewed

Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0


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© 2007 - 2025 Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR).
Based on DSpace, Copyright (c) 2002-2022, DuraSpace. All rights reserved.