National Environmental Organisations in the Italian Political System
Lobbying, Concertation and Political Exchange.
By
Donatella Della Porta and Massimiliano Andretta.
1. Public interest groups in social movements: an introduction
The aim of our research is to describe and then to explain the characteristics of the Italian
Environmental Movement Organisations (EMOs), focusing on organisations active at the
national level. As in much of social movement research, the first objective is to understand
how these organisations have succeeded in overcoming the collective action problems,
particularly strong for groups that aim at collective goods, and to form ample and stable
organisational structures.
The social science literature on interest groups has underlined the difficulty for public
interest groups to get organised. From Bentley (1908) on, the classical approach to the
theory of the groups underlined the plurality of the groups as an element of equilibrium
between contrasting interests—the challenge of mobilised groups being considered as
sufficient to trigger the mobilisation of the latent groups (among others, Truman 1951).
Since the sixties, however, various scholars singled out the limitation of collective action.
In a criticism of the groups theory, Schattschneider (1960) stressed in fact that some
interests have greater mobilisation resources than others, and only few succeed in getting
organised. The intervention of groups in politics is a source of inequality—the pluralist
choir, he observed (ibidem, 35), sings with a strong upper class accent. The betterorganised interests can influence the government at the damage of the others. Research
focused therefore on the “barriers to the entrance”, that is on the conditions that facilitate
the organisation of some interests, hindering that of others.
With his fundamental work on The logic of the collective action, Mancur Olson (1963)
started a rich theoretical debate, affirming that the existence of a common interest is not
sufficient to produce a collective action. A collective good has the characteristic that
everybody, even those people that have not invested any resource to have it, are able to use
it. Individual rationality would then push to act as free-rider, that is not to pay the cost of
1
the collective action, waiting for others to mobilise. Although all shares an interest in clean
air, few are prepared to invest time and resources in environmental action, since the clean
air is a common good everybody will enjoy if and when it is granted by law. In order for
collective action to happen, we need organisations that are able either to practice coercion
or to distribute selective incentives--that is prizes and punishments that profit or strike
single individuals. The interest able to get organised will be those that, thanks to the
availability of material or symbolic goods, are able to motivate their supporting potential
members.
This means, therefore, that the ability of the groups to mobilise varies enormously, and
this strengthens the inequalities in the society. Not only it is easier to get organised for the
rich rather than for the poor people, moreover some types of interests have a great capacity
to emerge. For instance it is easier to mobilise groups that are based on material, tangible,
visible interests, while the organisation of the expressive groups is more complex instead,
requiring first of all the definition of the potential base of reference (Salisbury 1969).
Moreover, it is easier to mobilise groups of special interest (i.e. partial interest that benefits
some groups against others) than groups of public interest (i.e. common interest, shared by
all the members of a national community) (Schattschneider 1960). In fact, the groups of
special interest are smaller, with more expressly felt interests, and often-greater resources.
Vice-versa, the public interest groups have a very large number of potential beneficiaries,
the interests are widespread, the resources are often scarce.
The under-representation of public interest groups means that the governments are
usually overwhelmed by special interest demands—with the risk of loosing the public
goods. In order for a democracy to work, the public authority should therefore defend the
weak interests that have more difficulty to get organised. The role of politics is the
realisation of this ri-equilibrium in order to reach which politics has to be subtracted to the
pressures of the strongest. And for this reason it is generally also in the interest of the
weakest groups to socialise the conflict involving the public opinion and the authorities.
According to some critics of the pluralistic image of group theory, however, governments
are often (or even: more and more often) prisoners of special interests. The consequence of
the selectivity in the organisation of interests is the subordination of the governments to the
pressure of the strong interests and, therefore, their incapability to reach public good—
with, at the end, the economic and political decline (Olson 1982). The aggressiveness of
the pressure groups, assembled in the defence of particularistic interests, obstacolates the
attainment of common good (Lowi 1969). The continuous negotiation between different
2
interests not only prevents the planning but also reduce trust in valid rules. The situation
seems to worsen with the decline of the political parties, once able to equilibrate and
regulate the aggressiveness of particularistic interests (Lowi 1999, 299).
If for a long time the empirical research had indicated the dominance of business interest
groups and economic groups, recent results are however more contradictory (Baumgartner
and Leech 1998). If, in general, an increase of the interest groups has been observed both
in their number and in their membership, a larger mobilisation capacity emerged for the
weakest groups, together with their ability in finding patrons and allies. All groups seem
more institutionalised and richer in channel of access to policy makers (for instance, Allum
1991, 265). These trends towards increasing membership and recognition have been
particularly visible for environmental groups (for instance, Dalton 1988).
What allows for the organisation of “weak” interests? In the last three decades, the
resource mobilisation approach aimed at explaining the capacity of social movement
organisations to draw resources from their environment—stressing in particular the role of
an organisational structure based on “networks of networks”, involving mainly small
groups, with flexible membership, local range of activities, and often short life span. This
organisational structure presents several advantages. The small dimension of groups
discourages “free-riderism” and favours solidarity; the local range of activities reduces
costs; the frequent turnover of groups allows adapting to the timing of mobilisation,
alternating visibility and latency.
Moreover, some characteristics of modern societies have been quoted as increasing the
capacity of weak groups to mobilise. First of all, the transformations in the means of
communication have allowed to “externalise” some costs of mobilisation (Tarrow 1994,
143-45): if before well-structured organisations were necessary for letting circulate the
messages, today light organisations succeeds in capturing the attention of the media. The
diffusion of means of communication global and economic—such as the Fax or the
electronic mail--reduce the costs of the co-ordination, increasing though the level of
professionalisation necessary to organise the mobilisation. Second, socio-economic
changes may favour collective action. The economic progress would have, in general, a
positive effect on the associative abilities of the individuals increasing the quantity of
available resources for the masses and the elite (McCarthy, Zald 1987 [1977],). The
diffusion of education and the growth in proportion of the middle classes seems to have
increased the propensity to associate (McCarthy and Zald 1973). Together with material
3
resources for collective action, the education and social status generally grows trust in
ones’ own ability to influence the external world and with it the motivations for collective
action. Third, more and more material resources for various types of associations come
from the public sector. On the one hand, the crisis of the welfare state brought about the
tendency to contracting out services to the so-called Third Sector—to which EMOs may
belong. On the other hand, an effect of previous wave of protest is an enlargement of
"access from below" to the decision making. In order to influence policy making, social
movement organisations more and more chose to adapt themselves to the consolidated
language of politics, asking public authorities more responsiveness and giving them
legitimisation, or assuring public order, stopping to radically challenge it.
In the paper, we use the literature on social movement organisation in order to try to
understand the functioning of national EMOs. Apparently, national EMOs do not fit in the
model of SMOs as small, participatory, local, “spontaneous” groups. They are large
bureaucratic organisations; they are active nationally; they live long. A question we intend
to answer concerns therefore the resources that the national EMOs—as particular types of
public interest groups—are able to mobilise and their logic of action. Our paper will start
with an introduction on social movement’s theory, which tries to explain both how
movements are organised and the peculiarity of movement organisations in comparison
with traditional interest groups (part 2). Then, we will describe the features of the Italian
national EMOs using concepts and variables of this theoretical framework. In particular,
we will first analyse the information of the TEA-questionnaires of eighteen EMOs in order
to provide a general picture of the characteristics of national EMOs (part 3). Afterwards,
we will build up a typology of national EMOs, analysing four of them more in detail,
including as sources documents written by the same organisations and in depth interviews
to their main leaders (part 4). In the conclusion, we will summarise the features of the
national EMOs, explaining them on the basis of the characteristics of the national political
context and national policy making structure (5).
2. Social movement organizations in action: An analytical framework
According to a well-known definition, a SMO is a complex organisation whose goals
coincide with the preferences of a social movement and which tries to realise those goals
(McCarthy and Zald 1977, 1218). In general, each organisation must fulfil a number of
functions contemporaneously: inducing participants to offer their services; defining
organisational aims; managing and co-ordinating contributions; collecting resources from
4
their environment, and selecting, training and replacing members (Scott 1981, 9). Social
movement organisations must mobilise resources from the surrounding environment,
whether directly in the form of money or through voluntary work by its adherents; they
must neutralise opponents and increase support from both the general public and the elite
(e.g. McCarthy and Zald 1987 [1977]) 1. Social movement organisations, like any other,
are composed of social structures (patterned or regular relationships within the
organisation); participants (individuals contributing to the organisation); goals (definitions
of the organisation's aims), and technologies (machinery and technical skills) (Scott 1981).
In other words, they possess the means and organisational mechanisms to mobilise
resources for protest in order to further the movement's objectives (Rucht 1996).
When the sociology of social movements became a field of study in its own right, it was
generally agreed that such movements were characterised by a weak and informal
organisational structure and research has continued to emphasise certain organisational
peculiarities. Firstly, social movements have been described as decentralised in structure.
Adopting Gerlach's much-used categories, social movements are a) segmented, with
numerous different groups or cells in continual rise and decline; b) policephalous, having
many leaders each commanding a limited following only and c) reticular, with multiple
links between autonomous cells forming an indistinctly-bounded network (Gerlach 1976).
Social movements have been identified with loosely-structured collective conflict, in which
"hundreds of groups and organisations — many of them short-lived, spatially scattered,
and lacking direct communication, a single organisation and a common leadership —
episodically take part in many different kinds of local collective action" (Oberschall 1980,
45-6). Co-ordination of the movement is assured by different organisations in different
phases: journals, newspapers and other publications sympathetic to the movement's aims
will "launch" discussion of a particular theme; committees set up for the purpose (but with
no formal authority) elaborate proposals during periods of mobilisation; the alternative
press circulates information among peripheral groups of sympathisers. No single group
tends to (or should) be recognised as representing the movement's wider interest (Diani and
Donati 1984).
Secondly, social movements — or at least those left-libertarian movements with which
the majority of sociological studies are concerned — are characterised by their emphasis
1
The resources available to social movement organisations have been variously identified as: money, work, services
and legitimation (McCarthy and Zald 1977); work, land, capital and technology (Tilly 1978); financial resources, rankand-file activists and legitimation (Rucht 1984).
5
on participation. In favour of direct democracy, they distribute power widely among
individuals, allow only limited delegation of power and privilege consensual decisionmaking.
Democratic
participation,
anti-bureaucratic
politics,
community
versus
organisation and the demand for a "way of life that called for equal and caring
relationships" (Breines 1989, 48) were all catchphrases of New Left ideology. Subsequent
movements have also invoked the general principle of direct democracy, characterised as a
decision making process in which "a large number of movement participants gather
together in a single place and undertake an interchange of ideas about the immediate or
ultimate direction of the movement. The process (explicitly or implicitly) involves
consideration of alternative actions, and is sometimes concluded by the group as a whole
making a collective decision, either through consensus or a formal vote" (Rosenthal and
Schwartz 1989, 46).
A decentralised and participatory structure also tends to favour the third characteristic of
social movement organisations: powerful internal solidarity. Having only limited access to
material resources, unlike political parties or pressure groups, social movements substitute
for this with symbolic resources. For the most part building incentives to solidarity, social
movement organisations give particular importance to internal relations, transforming the
very costs of collective action into benefits through the intrinsic rewards of participation
itself. In particular, small groups of activists "uses naturally occurring social relationships
and meets a variety of organisational and individual needs for emotional support,
integration, sharing of sacrifice, and expression of shared identities" (Gamson 1990, 175).
Within cohesive groups the conditions for the development of alternative value systems are
constituted and "communal associations become free spaces, breeding grounds for
democratic change" (Evans and Boyte 1992, 187). In these "free spaces" a "sense of a
common good" develops alongside the construction of "direct, face-to-face, and egalitarian
relationships" (ibid., 190-1).
Finally, social movements have a particular type of leadership. Studies of social
movements have insisted on defining leadership legitimisation as neither traditional nor
rational-legal. Rather, it is charismatic in the Weberian sense, dependent above all on the
ability of leaders to embody the movement as a whole, contributing to the creation of a
collective identity (e.g. Alberoni 1981). Manipulation of ideological resources has in the
past been considered as an important basis for charismatic leadership. More recently it has
been noted that experts have replaced ideologists in contemporary movements. Involved as
they are in technological issues, contemporary movements assign a very important role to
6
natural scientists and engineers: "challenging sophisticated technologies ... such organised
protests are dependent on recognised experts to interpret the issues and achieve public
credibility" (Walsh 1988, 182). Because it is dependent on possession of constantlychanging resources, leadership in social movements is ad-hoc, short-lived, relates to
specific objectives and is concentrated in limited area of the movements themselves (Diani
and Donati 1984).
At a first glance, it does not seem that our national EMOs fit in this scheme. They are
centralized, put low emphasis on participation, have week internal solidarity, have a
pragmatic leadership. In fact, they have been interpreted as culminating point of a process
of institutionalization. While many studies have emphasised the distinctiveness of the
organisational structure of social movements compared with other complex organisations,
others have played down the differences. Rather than putting forward a single alternative
model (constructed primarily by looking at the early growth phase of the movements,
which have emerged since the 1970s) the latest research has identified a number of
organisational models.
A glance at the panorama of social movement research reveals different kinds of
organisation ensuring a movement's survival at particular moments in time. Firstly, there
are a series of organisations whose principal task is mobilisation for protest action. At the
most decentralised level are local nuclei, relatively unstructured, inclusive and
predominantly based on symbolic incentives (see Rosenthal and Schwartz 1989, 44-5, for a
similar definition). Some of them, are oriented towards protest organisation; others,
described recently as movement associations, are formed to meet specific needs among the
movement's constituency (Kriesi 1996) while supportive organisations (Kriesi 1996)—
such newspapers, recreation centres, educational institutions or friendly printing firms-which contribute to a movement's aims while at the same time working on the open
market, fall into this category. The spread of this kind of structure contributes to the
creation of movement counter-cultures in which political engagement permeates the whole
of life. In certain phases various local nuclei may create an umbrella organisation to coordinate, on an ad hoc basis, pursuit of specific objectives. If these forms are usually small
in size and/or informal in structure, there are others, structured and large organisations,
with a legal constitution, internal power hierarchies, leadership elections, set methods of
fundraising and membership and supporter lists (Rosenthal and Schwarz 1989, 44-45).
Some of these organisations more closely resemble political parties; others pressure groups
(Rucht 1994, 313-14).
7
Institutionalisation—involving in particular formalisation and professionalisation—has
been almost unanimously singled out as the main direction of evolution for environmental
organisations, in particular for the national ones. Growing membership, and especially
growing budgets, unavoidably pushes towards a bureaucratisation. In social movement
literature, the term often used for this type of groups has been “professional social
movement organisations”. This type of organisations have a full time leadership, whose
resources originate mainly from outside the population that the movement declares to
represent, and a very small base of members, or a paper membership (whose participation
is limited to little more than allowing their names in the list of adherents) (McCarthy and
Zald 1987 [1973]). Differently from the normal pressure groups, however, the social
movements professional organisations do not address necessarily those people whose
interest they want to promote, but rather “conscience constituency”, composed by those
people who believe in the cause of the movement. Their leaders are entrepreneurs, and
their success is largely determined from their ability to use mass media (McCarthy and
Zald 1987 [1973]). While the leadership is powerful, the rank-and-file members have little
influence instead, their only resource being the payment of their membership dues
(McCarthy and Zald 1987 [1973]). So defined, the professional social movement
organisations resemble public interest groups. The national EMOs environmental have
been considered as typical examples of this category.
These last considerations guided us in the choice of our independent variables. SMOs
strategies have been usually explained in the light of internal and external resources.
Mobilization potential, networks, frames, political opportunities have been the most often
used explanations (della Porta 1995; della Porta and Diani 1999, chap. 5 and 6). In our
paper, we suggest that, in order to explain the strategy of national EMOs, we have to
consider their role inside a structure of political exchange. In the most classical form of
political exchange, the government furnishes good in exchange for consent: “A subject
(generally the government) which has good to distribute, it is ready to exchange them with
social consent that another subject is in faculty to give or to withdraw (in as much as it is
able to threaten public order) unless it receive the good of which it has need” (Pizzorno
1993, 208). Political exchange finds in fact its place in the analysis of the different types of
interaction that take place in the labour market: from individual exchange in the atomistic
market, to the collective bargaining where organised subjects act, up to the political
exchange, linked to "commodities" such as authority and consent. If the worker of the
atomistic market can try to improve his/her position through an increase of his/her effort,
8
or of his/her productivity, and in the collective bargaining the wage increase is gotten
through the threat of the strike, in the political exchange, instead, the resource of the
workers is the threat to withdraw their consent to the social order. The consent is
exchanged between collective actors to get collective support in exchange for public
politics; part of the benefits come from the state.
Since the exchange involves collective actors, the attention goes to the relationships
between represented and representatives. With the construction of the organisation, the
interest of represented and representatives in fact diverge from each other: while the first
continue to be motivated by his/her own advantage as economic or social category, the
representatives are motivated by power. In general, the strategy of political exchange is
founded on an underutilisation of the opportunities to get immediate advantages in
exchange for future advantages. The power of the organisation on its base is limited
however by the possibility of the represented to remove consent from the representatives,
subtracting them the principal resource to invest in the negotiation: the acceptance of the
rules of the game from their base. Since, for the law of the decreasing marginal utility, the
value of every resource depends on its availability on the market, so the more a regime
needs legitimisation, the more dependent it will be from the sectors that can offer it. The
power of the interest organisations is therefore a function of need of consent from the state
(Pizzorno 1993, 209). In this sense they can mobilise this consent in change of policies
responsive to their interests.
The organisational availability to enter in political exchanges would be reduced
especially in the initial moments of construction of the collective identity, when the
mobilisation is not directed in fact to create resources to spend on the table of the
negotiation, but rather to produce internal solidarity. Moreover, they will be more open to
political exchange when they have more political resources to spend (Regini 1983). This
seems the trend of environmental movement too, as the case of Italy should show.
3. National Environmental Movement Organisations: Toward a Policy Oriented
Model of Organisation.
Many of the studies on the features of EMOs stress the shift from a more protest-oriented
profile during the sixties and the seventies to a more institutionalised and professionalised
one during the eighties. The history of environmental movement starts with the first
organisations mobilising in order to protect birds and nature in the end of nineteenth
9
century (the “old conservationist” groups) and goes through a second cycle of
environmental mobilisation. During the sixties and the seventies, in Western democracies a
number of more radical environmental groups grew up not only asking to pay more
attention to environmental concerns but also struggling for a more receptive society and a
new way of conceiving politics. This second-wave environmental activism is classified
within the broader family of left-libertarian movements. In the eighties, in most of the
industrialised democracies, green parties have been successfully set up both at national and
local level of polity (Diani 1988; Dalton 1994). This was considered as a sign of a process
of institutionalisation and a sign of success of the environmental movement. Some scholar
even talked of a new cleavage which was restructuring the political alignment, at least in
Europe: new politics, postmaterialism and the like (Inglehart 1977, 1984; Dalton 1996).
Even if the political realignment has not occurred, and in all European countries the leftright cleavage seems still extremely relevant, the success of environmental organisations is
undoubted: consider as an indicator the presence of green lists in most of left national
government in Europe. Nevertheless it seems that the environmental movement renounced
to a more challenging profile and, in order to better influence policy makers’ decisions, has
chosen to fit the logic of the “old” politics instead of changing it2. The way environmental
groups try to reach it is through both political representation and interest representation, as
well as by directly influencing public opinion’s awareness of environment’s matters.
Our research tries to analyse more in details these general observations, specifying the
characteristics of the “institutionalisation process” for national EMOs. Looking at our
eighteen groups,3 we shall spell out the specific characteristics of their organisational
structures and, then, of their strategies of action.
3.1. The organisational profile: a mixed picture
2
This tendency has been noted in Italy (Donati 1995), in England, in Germany and Ireland (Diani, Donati, 1998).
3
We sent questionnaires of the TEA project (see appendix 1) to 40 environmental groups, with a return of about 50%
(18 groups sent the questionnaire back). The groups included in our research are: ACS, Associazione città sane (Healthy
Cities Association); Amici della Terra (Friends of the Earth- Italy); Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biodinamica
(Italian Association for Biodynamic Agriculture); Centro Studi & ricerche Cosmòs (Centre of Researches and Studies
Cosmos); Civiltà contadina (Peasant Civilization), Associazione nazionale per la Valorizzazione del Mondo Rurale
(National Association for Valorisation of the Rural World); Federazione Nazionale Pro Natura (National Federation Pro
Nature); Forum internazionale Uomo & Architettura (International Forum Human Beings and Architecture),
Associazione per l’Architettura Organica Vivente (Association or Organic Living Architecture); Greenpeace Italy;
HSA. Habitat, Salute e Architettura (Habitat, Health and Architecture); INBAR, Istituto nazionale di Bioarchitettura
(National Institute of Bioarchitecture); SES. International Solar Energy Society-Italy; Legambiente; VAS, Verdi,
Ambiente e Società (Greens, Environment and Society); Italian Touring Club; LAC. Lega per l’Abolizione della Caccia
(League for Abolition of Hunting); LAV Lega Anti-Vivisezione (Anti Vivisection League); Rete Bioregionale italiana
(Italia Bioregional Network); Federazione nazionale dei Verdi (Italian Green Party).
10
As for the organizational structure, degree of organisation is central to any analysis of
both political and non-political groupings. The sociological literature on political parties
singles out variables such as structural articulation, intensity (as indicated by the number of
grass-roots units, for example), dimension (the number of members in each area of
activity), pervasiveness (the number of parallel units), frequency of local and national
meetings and the presence of written records (Janda 1970, 104-12). As far as SMOs are
concerned, Hanspeter Kriesi (1996) has described their internal structuration as deriving
from a) formalisation (with the introduction of formal membership criteria, written rules,
fixed procedures, formal leadership and a fixed structure of offices or bureaux); b)
professionalisation (understood as the presence of paid staff who pursue a career inside the
organisation); c) internal differentiation (involving a functional division of labour and the
creation of territorial units); and d) integration (through mechanisms of horizontal and/or
vertical co-ordination).
The distribution of power within an organisation also needs to be considered. Power can
be more or less centralised, as the literature on political parties in particular has revealed.
National structures can have greater or less weight; there can be greater or lesser
participation in decisions concerning resource allocation, goal definition, candidacies or
disciplinary procedures; and there can be greater or lesser centralisation of leadership
(Janda 1970, 104-12). Concerning social movement organisations more specifically,
McCarthy and Zald distinguished between federated and non-federated structures. In a
federated structure (with either branch building or the aggregation of pre-existing
organisations as its basis) members are organised in small, local units. Non-federated
SMOs, on the other hand, do not have branches, dealing directly with adherents by mail or
through travelling staff. Members do not usually interact on a face-to-face basis in such an
organisation (McCarthy and Zald 1977 [1987]). J.Q. Wilson (1974), on the other hand,
distinguishes between caucus organisations, in which a large but inactive base finances a
small number of active leaders, and primary organisations, where there is a high degree of
member participation. In general, social movement leaders have different resources as well
as degrees of power. How do our national EMOs rank on these characteristics?
We can start by observing the link between the cycle of protest of the late sixties and
seventies and later collective action in the environmental field. First of all, many EMOs
emerged since the seventies: among our 18 organisations, only two have been founded
before 1970. Moreover, organisations continued to be founded even after the peak of high
mobilisation, during the less perturbative eighties and nineties: eight of our groups have
11
been founded between 1971 and 1987 and eight after 1987 (Fig. 1). From this point of
view a glance at the kind of leadership of the most important EMOs confirms the location
of our organisation inside a wider social movement sector. Fore example, the leaders of
Legambiente, Greenpeace and Amici della Terra (Friends of Earth-Italy) told us that they
had had previous political experiences in the student movement organisations or in the
peace movement organisations during the seventies.
Fig. 1. Year of foundation of Italian national environmental
movement organisations.
Count
Before 1970
2
1971-1987
8
1988-1997
8
Total
18
National EMOs do not seems particularly specialised in their intervention, each
organisation being active on a wide range of claims. As we can see in fig. 2, the most
important types of claims for national EMOs are “urban ecology”, “nature protection”,
“alternative production and technology” and “personal change”. “Weapons and military”
seems to meet little emphasis today, even if the most important political ecologist groups
were born from the struggle against nuclear power and nuclear military during the
seventies and eighties4. Finally claims on “animal rights”, even if they are not confined to a
specialised sector of environmental movement, occur with less frequency than other type
of claims. If we have a look at the number of types of claims which each EMO deals with
we can underline that the number of groups which work in more than three sectors is 13,
while four organisations deal with 5 or 6 sectors, which means all considered sectors.
Fig. 2. Types of claim Italian environmental movement organisations deal with.
Count
Pct of
responses
2.1. Types of claim
1) Weapons and military
2)
Industrial
pollution/urban
ecology
3) Nature protection
4) Animal rights
5) Alternative production and
technology
6) Personal change/lifestyle
Total Responses
Pct of
cases
2
13
3.2
21.0
11,1
72.2
12
6
15
19.4
9.7
24.2
66.7
33,3
83.3
14
54
22.6
100
77.8
300
4
It is worth mentioning that Italy renounced to nuclear power. Both Greenpeace and Legambiente in Italy stress the
importance of environmental movement’s protest in order to achieve that important goal (interview 1 and 2).
12
2.2. N. of EMOs which deal
with different types of claims.
n. of types of claims
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
5
9
9
18
27,8
50,0
50,0
100,0
27,8
50,0
50,0
100,0
1-2
3-4
5-6
Total
Cumulative
Percent
27,8
77,8
77,8
Born inside the social movement sector, our organisations show a relatively high degree
of internal structuration, in particular in terms of the degree of formalisation and the
degree of internal differentiation. First, about 70% (12) of the national EMOs have a
formal membership. Second, EMOs are usually spread on a large part of the national
territory. Half of the considered organisations are widespread in the whole national
territory, being represented in the three main areas (South, Centre and North), even if only
five of them are represented both in urban and rural area. Nine of them have regional
sections and six more than ten, nine groups have local sections and six more than 50 (Fig.
3). A wide territorial spread is an important factor for influencing public policies
concerning environmental matters. Not only, in this way EMOs can mobilise more
“participants” and “adherents” and then to increase their material and human resources.
Moreover, the structure of the Italian environmental policy favours EMOs present both at
national and local level (including regional, provincial and commune’s level) that can so
put pressure on all different policy steps.
Looking at these variables, it seems, then, that there is a high degree of internal
structuration. If we take in account the degree of professionalisation, however, Italian
EMOs do not have a large number of paid staff. Greenpeace, one of the most
professionalised groups at the international level, has only ten paid persons. And the
General Directors of Legambiente, one of the most professionalised groups at national
level, told us that “we are talking of a voluntary association. Only few Regions, such
Lombardia and Campania, can afford paid staff, but by and large our organisation works
with voluntaries” (interview 1 and 4). A certain type of professionalization emerges instead
in the leadership skills, as a shift from the “charismatic” leadership of the sixties to the
growing importance of technical skills. Legambiente’s General Director stressed not only
the importance of scientific knowledge but also the capacities for mass organisation and
political communication. Greenpeace’s respondents underlined the capacity to construct
communication through action and to understand media’s mechanism. Amici della Terra’s
leaders often commented on the importance of policy making. The Lav’s general director
13
joined them to emphasize that environmental struggle is simply impossible without
detailed scientific knowledge (Interviews 1, 2, 3, 4).
If, thus, national EMOs do not seem particularly professionalised, they seem to have a
certain degree of integration which combine the mechanisms of horizontal co-ordination
and vertical accountability, even if some of them prefer vertical co-ordination while others
local autonomy (see § 4).
Fig. 3. Formalisation and level of organisations of Italian environmental movement organisations.
3.1. Type of membership:
Formal membership
Informal membership
Total
N.
12
6
18
3.2. Number of sections per
level of organisation:
a) Regional Sections:
0
From 1 to 10
From 11 to 15
From 16 to 21
Total
9
2
2
5
18
b) Provincial sections
0
From 1 to 20
From 21 to 30
From 31 to 70
Total
13
2
2
1
18
c) Local sections
0
From 1 to 50
From 51 to 200
From 201 to 5000
From 501 to 1000
Total
8
3
3
2
1
18
3.3. Presence of EMOs in the
national territory:
Northern-Italy
Center-Italy
Southern-Italy
Urban Area
Rural Area
Yes
18
8
9
16
5
No
0
10
9
2
13
Total
18
18
18
18
18
Our organisations show also a large (and growing) membership. For instance, the formal
membership of Wwf-Italy, Legambiente, Friends of Earth-Italy and Lav, dramatically
14
increased between 1986 to 1999: Russel Dalton (1994, Appendix), referring to data of
1985-86, reports 65,000 adherents for wwf-Italy and 30,000 for Legambiente, while they
now report 281.000 adherents for wwf-Italy (document from wwf-Italy internet home
page) and 115,000 for Legambiente (document of Congress 1999). According to our
questionnaire, Friends of Earth-Italy reports 9,204 formal members in 1988 but 25. 680 in
1997, while Lav (Italian Antivivisection League) reports 6.700 in 1987 and 13.500 in
1997.
Public opinion support provides not only human resources but also material resources.
Concerning the gathering of material resources, fig. 4 shows that most of EMOs’ income is
provided by members contributions, donations and selling books and other gadgets. About
one third of our groups, however, receive public money.
Fig. 4. Percentages of type of income sources of Italian environmental movement organisations.
Membership contributions
Donations income
State subsidies (national, subnational)
EU income
Private companies income
Private foundations income
Selling books, buttons, T-shirt, etc.
Other income (like services, projects and
the like)
Less
30%
6
5
4
1
1
2
8
2
than
31%-60% 60%
+
5
4
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
4
0
1
9
11
15
15
14
8
9
Missin Total
g
2
18
2
18
2
18
2
18
2
18
2
18
2
18
2
18
3.2. Action strategies: the logic of political exchange
Social movement organisations vary on their action strategies. By definition, SMOs
usually make a large use of protest, as unconventional methods of intervening in public
decisions. An important characteristic of protest is that it uses indirect channels to
influence decision-makers. As Michael Lipsky noted (1965), protest is a political resource
of the powerless: by attracting the attention of the media. In order to succeed protest must
produce positive stimuli, winning the sympathies of those who have more resources to
invest in the arenas where decisions are taken. While collective action by groups who
already possess power can be aimed directly at decision makers, the powerless must seek
to involve those who have the possibility to influence them. In order to pursue this aim,
social movements have to rely upon the mass media to spread their messages.
Forms of protest however differ from each other on various characteristics. First of all,
the degree of disruptiveness of their forms of protest varies. Repertoire of action include
15
moderate protest such as petitions, public march and the like, as well as more radical ones,
such as occupations, blockades, to violent ones. Protest forms differ also on their preferred
logic. Protest actions may try to influence policy makers by a logic of number (via forms
of action that stress the presence of an alternative “majority” on certain issues); logic of
damage (that stress the capacity of protestors to inflict damages upon their enemies), or a
logic of testimony (that stress the moral commitment of those who protest) (della Porta and
Diani 1999, ch. 7). Eventually, SMOs’ activities also differ in their type of direct target. If
usually SMOs try to influence policy via the public opinion, other forms of action follow
however other strategies: legal litigation aims at influencing the judiciary “against” the
legislative and the executive; lobbying addresses the policy makers directly. Moreover,
while SMOs traditionally try to attract media attention relying upon the news power of
disruptive protest, the use of information campaigns is however growing.
Our research indicates that, in their activities, national EMOs seems to be particularly
concerned with investing their large support in order to influence the policy making
process. The disruptiveness of protest repertoires is however not so central o this strategy.
First of all, the forms of protest are moderate. In particular, very few organisations make
recourse to the most disruptive forms of action (such as occupation, disruption of events),
but few also use the more symbolic forms of action (such as hunger strike or vigil).
Demonstrative forms of protest (such as the classical form of the march and the rally) meet
little consent, even if cultural performances are often made in public occasions. More used
are instead the forms of action that directly address the public opinion providing
information (such as signatures, petitions and public letters), and those ones which target
the media directly (such as scientific reports and press conference). As for the logic of
protest, the logic of damage is the less favoured, while more popular is a logic of
testimony. The logic of number is not sought in large demonstrations, but in the less
“costly” forms of expression—such as petitions or membership cards.
Moreover, the direct target is not always public opinion. Lobbying parliamentarians for
specific policy changes is a frequent repertoire for a significant group of organisations. A
good proportion of groups seems also prone to use procedural complaints and litigation, in
particular for trying to stop the implementation of anti-environmental policies5. The
consistent number of non-commercial positive actions (such as the management of a
protect area or the like), shows the importance of EMOs in the implementation of
5
During protest campaign against high-speed railways project in Tuscany, for instance, all these strategies have been
used by different kinds of EMOs in this way (Della Porta, Andretta 1999)
16
environmental policies.
Fig. 5. Frequencies of activities of Italian environmental movement organisations during one year
Form of action used:
3
At
least
once
15
6
16
6
7
Total appeals to media =
Press Conference
Scientific Report
Total appeals to people =
Never
1-6
7-15
16+
6
Total
cases
3
1
10
18
12
2
12
11
5
1
5
5
3
0
1
2
4
1
6
4
18
18
18
18
3
15
5
2
8
18
6
5
12
13
6
6
0
5
6
2
18
18
Total policy oriented actions =
5
13
1
3
9
Lobbying
Non-commercial positive action
Litigation
Procedural complaint
10
7
11
11
8
11
7
7
3
4
4
2
3
6
2
4
2
1
1
1
18
18
18
18
Total demonstrative actions =
5
13
5
1
7
18
Non verbal protest (e.g. vigil)
Cultural Performance
Public protest assembly/rally
Demonstration March
12
7
10
13
6
11
8
5
5
6
4
4
1
3
1
1
0
2
3
0
18
18
18
18
Total disruptive actions =
11
7
3
1
3
18
Boycott
Disruption of event
Blockade/ sit-in
Strike
Hunger strike
Occupation
15
13
14
18
17
16
3
5
4
0
1
2
2
4
2
0
1
2
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
18
18
18
18
18
18
Signature/petition/resolution/public letters
Referendum
Leaflet
Indoor assembly/teach in
Looking at fig. 6, we see, in fact, that the use of information techniques (such as scientific
reports) grew in time, together with the legal litigation. More public support oriented forms of
action such as demonstration march and more radical ones such as blockades, sit-ins, disruptions of
events and occupations are, on the contrary, less used (fig. 6). 7
Fig. 6. Evolution in time of activities of Italian environmental movement organisations during the last 5
8
years .
6
Column values are frequencies of EMOs per each category of “times” they used each form of action.
7
These findings fits with Mario Diani and Francesca Forno’s analysis of environmental protest events from 1988 to
1997 based upon “La Repubblica” (Italian liberal newspaper): also in that case, the most visible forms of action are
appeals, i.e. petitions, letters, leaflet and the like (Diani, Forno 1999).
8
Column values are frequencies of EMOs which use now “less”, “more” or “the same” each form of action comparing
with five years ago.
17
Same More Missing or
Less
group
younger
then five
years.
Total
Appeals to people
Signature/ petition/ resolution/ public letter
Referendum
Leaflet
Indoor assembly/teach in
1
5
1
1
12
11
13
11
3
0
2
4
2
2
2
2
18
18
18
Appeals to media
Press Conference
Scientific report
3
1
10
7
3
8
2
2
18
18
Policy oriented actions
Lobbying
Non-commercial positive action
Litigation
Procedural complaint
2
1
0
0
11
8
11
11
3
7
5
5
2
2
2
2
18
18
18
18
Demonstrative actions
Cultural Performance
Non verbal protest (e.g. vigil)
Public protest assembly/rally
Demonstration March
0
2
0
4
10
14
15
11
6
0
1
1
2
2
2
2
18
18
18
18
Disruptive actions
Boycott
Disruption of event
Blockade/ sit-in
Strike
Hunger strike
Occupation
3
1
1
0
0
1
12
13
14
16
16
13
3
2
1
0
0
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
18
18
18
18
18
18
The relationships between EMOs and other organisations of the political and social system
confirm a tendency towards political exchange. Fig. 7, in fact, shows that--even if relationships
with SMOs remain the most relevant—also the linkages with other organisations have a
significant importance. At least one third of EMOs exchange information with parties (especially
the green party), economical actors, unions and state agencies (which are the main actors involved
in policy networks).
18
Fig. 7. Exchange of information of Italian environmental organisations with
other groups or associations9.
Exchange information with:
No
Yes
Total Smos:
Amnesty international
Other human rights groups
antiracist groups
groups working on aid,
development
community action groups
neighbourhood associations
peace groups
women's rights groups
gay and lesbian groups
5
12
15
13
11
13
6
3
5
7
Pct of
cases (yes)
72,2
33,3
16,7
27,8
38,9
12
13
13
17
16
6
5
5
1
2
33,3
27,8
27,8
5,6
11,1
Total Associations:
health and welfare voluntary associations
sport and leisure time groups
cultural associations
religious groups and churches
6
13
16
10
14
12
5
2
8
4
66,7
27,8
11,1
44,4
22,2
Total Interest Groups:
trade unions
business organisations
8
12
10
10
6
8
55,6
33,3
44,4
trade,
and
State agencies
11
7
38,9
Green Party
8
10
55,6
Total Left Parties:
RC (Communist Refoundation)
pds/ds (Left-democratic Party)
13
14
13
5
4
5
27,8
22,2
27,8
Total centre-right parties:
PPI (Italian Catholic Party- centre-left)
CCD (Italian Catholic Party – centre-right)
Forza Italia (Berlusconi’s Party)
League North
AN (post-fascist party)
13
15
15
15
16
15
5
3
3
3
2
3
27,8
16,7
16,7
16,7
11,1
16,7
Other
total responses
15
3
116
16,7
644,4
Another indicator of the policy orientation of the Italian EMOs is the contacts they have
directly with public institutions, such as members of parliaments and public administrations, at
European, national and local level. The same could be said about the participation in consulting
tables at European as well as at national level—that is also an indicator of the success of EMOs in
being recognised as partners by policy makers, as far as environmental policies are concerned. Fig.
8 shows evidence of this tendency. Most—almost all—of our EMOs have contacts with policy
9
Column values are frequencies of EMOs which exchange (yes) or do not exchange (no) information with each of
mentioned organisations.
19
makers at the most various levels of government. For 15 organisations out of 18 contacts with
public administration happen often or sometimes (in as many as 12 cases, often). As many as 50%
of our groups have contacts at the European level. Their range of contacts is not limited to the
environmental bureaucracy, but involves different policy arena and institution. More than half of
our groups lobbies with members of legislative power. The fact that ten EMOs “often or
sometimes” participate in national consulting committees and six in European ones shows that
concertation for environmental policies is becoming more and more important.
Moreover, all groups have direct contacts with media. This seems another important
feature of national EMOs. Good contacts with the media are considered extremely relevant in
order to influence policy makers through the rise of awareness for environmental issues in the
public opinion. As we have already seen, scientific reports and press conferences are in fact often
used by EMOs. Moreover, in our interviews to the most important national EMOs, their leaders
confirmed the great account in which they take media contacts. The General Director of
Legambiente told us that “This of media contacts has always been for us one of the most
important thing. We try to have contacts with each newspaper and with each television, even if we
have a privileged relationship with RAI (the public television)”(interview 4). The co-ordinator of
the action teams of Greenpeace affirms that “the capacity to approach the media is peculiar to our
organisation. First of all you have to know the mechanisms that move media and then you need to
understand their productive routines, in order to be ourselves part of their routine. Thus, to know
when to send a press release, to know who is the right person inside the newspaper and so on”
(interview 1).
10
Fig. 8. Contacts with media and public powers of Italian EMOs .
Have contacts with:
With at least one public institution
In particular with
Often or sometimes Rarely or never Missing Cases
15
3
1
18
8
9
1
18
EU members of Parliament Contacts
Participation in EU consulting commission
Contacts with bureaucracy
Contacts with environmental office
Contacts with other offices
Contacts with national member of Parliament
Participation in national consulting commission
Contacts with regional government members
Contacts with local government members
6
13
10
9
11
10
9
13
11
4
7
8
6
7
8
4
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
Media contacts
17
0
1
18
10
A column value are frequencies of EMOs that have “sometimes or often” or “rarely or never” contacts with each of
20
Much less important are instead contacts with political parties (again in Fig. 7). Even
if some of the national EMOs we interviewed have contacts with political parties, they are
considered less and less important in order to influence policy making. General director of
Legambiente, for instance, told us that “Parties matter less and less, because they are less and
less decisive for policy making. Once you found the force (public support and capacity for
mobilisation) what matters more is contact with the bureaucracies” (interview 4). Lav’s
General Director affirms that “parties as collective actors do not count any longer. Singular
individuals within parties do: if really convinced they can influence the law making within the
Parliament. Bureaucracy and administrations at local level are much relevant, anyway”
(interview 2). Finally, the President of Amici della Terra is convinced that not the parties, but
individual administrators within them are to be influenced: “without contacts with
administrations it is impossible to influence policy making. They are always the most
important interlocutors” (interview 3).
4. Organisational features of four main Italian environmental movement
organisations: A typology of organisational style.
A common pattern of national EMOs appears therefore a highly structured organisation
and an orientation to political exchange. The national EMOs appear as well-endowed of
resources to exchange with policy makers. Although large in membership and wellstructured, they have however a low level of professionalization, relying instead on
voluntary work. Although equipped of channels of direct access to media and policy
makers, they still relying upon the public opinion for support, using moderate forms of
protest. In this sense, they still resemble more to SMOs than to interest groups, although
sharing with the latter an attention to policy making. Within these common patterns, there
are however margins for different strategic choices, as we will show by focusing more in
detail on four different national EMOs.
During the eighties and at the beginning of the nineties environmental movement
literature still stressed the relevance of ideological inclination for the explanation of
different strategies (alliances and forms of actions) and patterns of organisations among
EMOs (Cotgrove 1982, Milbrath 1984, Rucht 1989, Diani 1988, Dalton 1994). More
recent studies indicated that ideological inclinations less and less influence environmental
groups’ behaviour and that those groups are experiencing, instead, an organisational
mentioned group, organisation or institution.
21
convergence toward a type of public interest group (Diani e Donati 1998).
The general picture of Italian EMOs seems to confirm this kind of convergence but a
more detailed focus on organisations shows differences in organisational patterns and
forms of action. To describe the differences between our four organisations, we
constructured a four-fold typology, combining two relevant dimensions of SMOs structure
and strategy--such as “degree of centralisation” and “forms of action”. As for the first, we
distinguished between centralised model of organisations, with a strong emphasis on coordination, a top-down internal decision making, and a decentralised model of organisation
with a particular attention on local autonomy. In particular, we chose to focus on real
internal process of decision making, which includes not only the way the organisation is
formally structured, but also the concrete way it makes decision for campaigns and
external relationships. As for the second variable, we distinguished between organisations
oriented more toward protest, even if not necessarily radical, and those oriented more
toward lobbying.
As we can see in fig. 9, crossing those two variables we find the following types of
national EMOs:11:
a)
Professional ecologist protest organisations, which co-ordinate collective
actions from the top, but still put lot of emphasis on protest actions.
b)
Participatory ecologist protest organisations, which share an emphasis on
protest, but allow local groups to organise their own actions with a low control on
them.
c)
Ecologist Unions, with an emphasis on lobbying and a high degree of
organisation, centralised and articulated in a way which maximise its probability to
influence policy making both at national and local level, with the aim of
“monopolizing” the environmental representation on the national territory.
d)
Ecologist voluntary groups, with low use of protest, but a decentralised
structure and disarticulated local interest groups with a low control on them.
Those differences are not directly related to ideological inclinations. In fact we focused
our presentation on four environmental organisations which more or less share the same
11
This typology is quite similar to Mario Diani and Paolo Donati’s one, but it is not the same: while the indicator of
“form of action” is the same, we chose a different indicator of “degree of organisation”. While Diani and Donati used
the “profesionalisation/participation” dimension, we chose the “centralisation/decentralisation”, considering that our
cases combine, in a way or in another, professionalisation and participation, but they do not share the same degree of
centralisation. For this reason we will find some type which is named in the same way as Diani and Donati did, but
some other is named in a different way (Diani, Donati 1998).
22
“ecologist” approach: Greenpeace, Friends of Earth, Legambiente and Lav 12 (Italian AntiVivisection League). Each of them, however, may be taken as an illustration of the
different organizational types we just described.
Fig. 9. Typology of Italian Environmental Movement Organisations.
1) Degree of organisation:
Centralised
Decentralised
Professional Ecologist Protest
Participatory Ecologist Protest
Group
Group
Ecologist Union
Ecologist Voluntary Group
2) Emphasis on protest
High
Low
4.1. Greenpeace: a Professional Ecologist Protest Group.
Greenpeace is represented in Italy since 1986, and counts now, according to the
questionnaire and our in depth interview, on 40,000 adherents, 50 local groups and
200/300 permanent active members, with more than 1,000 not-permanent activists across
national territory. It is widely present in the north and in the urban area of the country.
The International Greenpeace’s Annual Report of 1995 reports for the Italian group a
budget of approx. 1.150,000 Euro. According to “Greenpeace News”, a magazine of
Greenpeace-Italy, 1998 budget approached 1,100,000 Euro. As much as 95% of this
budged comes from donations and 5% from merchandising and licensing (document 1 and
2). These data are confirmed by our questionnaire.
According to our interview with two leaders of national group, the organisational
membership in the last ten years is increasing: this trend concerns adherents, activists as
well as full-time paid staff. Referring to the Italian group, the responsible for the local
groups told us that “At the beginning we were born in a rather accidental way, in a
‘brancaleone’ style, eventually, step by step, we consolidated and professionalised
ourselves, and the group became what it is now” (interview 1).
The Greenpeace’s style of action is well known around the world, and the Italian case is
no exception. Greenpeace-Italy recent actions well illustrate this style. In 1998 some
activists of the group made a “blitz” in different Toys and Chicco’s shops in order to
12
Lav has been considered by Mario Diani as an “environmentalist” group, which is a third category between
“conservationist” and “ecologist” (Diani 1988). Now this category seems to have loose its peculiarity, maybe because
of the convergence of environmental organisations. Besides, according to our in depth interview to a leader of Lav, this
organisation share a “deep ecology” inclination which consist to consider animals as individuals with their own
individual rights: “There is a great difference between ecologism and environmentalism – he said – and we are surely
more ecologist then environmentalist”.
23
denounce the use of PVC for the construction of toys. In April 1999, during the war in
Kosovo, Greenpeace showed large pacifist stripe in front of Aviano’s military base. On
September 15 of the same year, four boats let down by the Rainbow Warrior came through
the Venice’s Laguna to occupy the Petrochemical pole of Porto Marghera, one of the most
polluting industries of the Mediterranean. Six activists climbed a smoke-stake, and showed
a 20 ms large poster where there was written “Morto Maghera” (Dead Maghera) instead of
“Porto Maghera”. Greenpeace denounced the death of the lagoon’s ecosystem, the death of
workers of the Petrochemical and the risk of the inhabitants of the zone. Some guardians of
the factory threw stones at the Greenpeace’s activists who did not react.
As we can see, the forms of action of Greenpeace are not only confrontational but also
have a high degree of symbolic impact. The last one, for instance is the most typical form
of action of Greenpeace, and according to the responsible for local groups in Italy, it is the
symbol of Greenpeace itself: “We change, somebody goes and somebody comes, but what
is visible for people must be always the same thing and this is the boat, a boat with a small
number of individuals who struggle against great oil-tanks, enormous nuclear flat tops.
This makes possible what in English is called ‘vicarious action’: the person who sees what
Greenpeace does would never do it him/herself, but he/she is happy because there is
somebody who does it and in that moment feels a positive emotion”.
Symbolic construction of action is never accidental, because the action is the way
Greenpeace present itself. Every group belonging to the organisation is considered a
working group for action: “You must think – the responsible for local groups told us – that
for us the action is our imagine, our message. But we use dramatic messages and therefore
we must be careful, we walk on razor’s edge, because there is always somebody who takes
you for an ecoterrorist…we cannot do mistake.”
Thus, the action is prepared in all every details, with particular attention to the selection
of activists who participate to the phases of the action itself. Activists who wants to
participate in a protest are trained: “Since Greenpeace is based upon the image, it is
important to internalise a series of things before doing an action, because when you are
there every movement of your face is enlarged and you must not seem aggressive. You do
not have to make mistakes because it would be a suicide: the communication and the
management of the image through gestures that are not coherent, responsible and serious
would be a suicide for us.” (interview 1).
The action carries great importance for Greenpeace, then. Although protest is the main
means though which the group communicates, it is however by no means the only form of
24
action.. Lobbying has been used more than 16 times in one year, according to the
questionnaire, and relationships with parties, members of parliament and business
companies are taken in serious consideration. From this point of view the organisation, at
least in Italy, does not seem to have ideological preference for some party, or type of party.
“Parties which we lobby change a lot, even in ideological collocation” - the person
responsible for local groups told us. We can say that protest is the way in which the
organisation publicises itself and then gathers material resources (donations and members)
and human resources (public support and activist) in order to continue the work: in order to
change policy decisions both in the political and economic system. The fact that direct
action is the most visible feature of the organisation’s work “is the great equivocation of
Greenpeace: The action is just an infinitesimal part, despite the enormous work of
research, lobbying, gathering of funds, communication of information etc.”.
Greenpeace’s degree of centralisation is well known--and it is also confirmed by our
data. Greenpeace is organised at international level; it is this level that decides upon the
campaigns every sub-level can deal with. The responsible we interviewed affirmed that
“Greenpeace is a global association and then at global level makes its decisions about the
campaigns that we want to deal with, those are four or five at maximum. Within those five
campaigns each single Office decides what to do, it can decide to do every campaign or
some of them, it depends on its resources. Of course those campaigns are decided upon at
the International level in a debate and after decisions are communicated in a pyramidal
way and horizontally to the offices, the campaigners and so on. In sum there is a
complicate way to make a collective decision, we can say that the method we use is rather
finalised… This is why even a local project is finalised to a success at global level…”. The
Art. 3 of the formal statute of the national group confirm the “global” perspective of the
association: “According to the philosophy of Greenpeace, The Association will achieve its
goals in a world-wide perspective and not at a tightly national or regional level.”
Greenpeace’s centralism is also confirmed by the formal relationships between national
and local groups since the statute does not mention any decentralised structure of
representation and neither mentions the existence of a local level of organisation. Art. 8 of
the formal statute (Structure) affirms: “The structure of the Association includes: The
Assembly of members, the Directive Council, and the College of Revisers”.
4.2. LAV (Italian League Anti Vivisection): A Participatory Ecologist Protest Group.
Lav is an organisation that operates in Italy since 1977; it is member of the Europe for
25
Animal Rights and observer of the European Group for Animal Welfare. According to its
web site “LAV is a non-violent organisation acting in the defence of the health and respect
for all living beings through research, legislation, dissemination of educational materials,
and direct intervention. It is the biggest Anti-vivisection /animal rights organisation in Italy
and one of the most important ones in all of Europe”.
Lav counts today upon 20,000 adherents (see web site) while in 1997 it had 13,500
adherents and 6,700 in 1988 (TEA-questionnaire). The active formal members increased
from 200 in 1988 to 500 in 1997 to 1000 today (TEA-questionnaire and web site). The
budget has been approx. 550.000 Euro in 1995, 600,000 Euro in 1996, less than 600,000 in
1997 and approx. 750,000 Euro in 1998. As we can easily see the organisational trend is
quite consolidated. Nevertheless if we consider another indicator of organisational
consolidation such as the presence of paid staff, Lav did not have it before 1998 and now
has only three full-time paid persons.
The activity of the group are so presented in the group’s web site:
“Originally founded exclusively as an Anti-vivisection group in 1977, one of its first
projects was collecting signatures under petitions in different cities to prevent local dog
shelters from giving dogs to medical research labs. In 1978 a bill was presented in
Parliament by popular demand for the abolition of the practice of vivisection; 270,000
signatures were collected even though only 50,000 were required. Starting in 1980 LAV
widened its scope to include animal rights but still kept vivisection in the frontline due
to its anti-scientific nature. In the eighties early initiatives included getting rid of animal
acts in circuses (resulting in bans in several cities) as well as closing some zoos-among
them those of Turin and Milan. At the same time another bill was presented in
Parliament regarding the relationship between human beings and other animals” (Web
site).
Animal rights is a rather vague expression to indicate the ideology of the group. Art. 2
of the formal statute affirms that “Lav’s aim is to abolish … vivisection, to protect animals
and to affirm their rights. Lav struggles against each form of exploitation and violence on
human as well as non-human animals, on environment and for the respect of the right on
life of every living being”. The leader of national organisation we interviewed told us that
on animal rights “we throw inside everything, the question of human health, the question
of the developing countries, the ethic question and the environmental one.” This should
confirm, if necessary, that we are dealing with an ecologist group.
Lav organised different protest campaign both at European and national level: It co26
ordinated in Italy the European campaign against cosmetic test on animals, the national
campaign for dismantling the intensive stock-farms and the diffusion of vegetarian food.
Other campaigns were organised against the utilisation of animals in circus and against the
human use of animal furs. The campaign titled “out of cages”, against intensive stockfarms, carried out with the slogan “Gallina libera fa buon brodo” (Free hen makes a good
soup), involved protest actions in more than 200 Italian cities, showing the ability to coordinate actions across the national territory.
Nation-wide protest is made possible by the organisational structure of the associations,
which includes 3 regional delegations, 26 groups at provincial level and 36 at local level,
being represented in the north, the centre and the south of Italy, especially in urban areas
(Tea-questionnaire).
The local level is of great importance for the organisation. There, in fact, more direct
forms of action take place, including occupations as well as blitz-occupations and action of
civic disobedience. “First of all – the organisational responsible for the national level told
us – we are the first in the animalist field in Italy to do an occupation of stock-farms. In
1992, in fact, we made an occupation of a fox stock-farm in Lazio, near to the lake of
Bolsena. It was abusive. There was no record of imagines, videos or photos, of a stockfarm where animals for furs are bred up. We decided to go there and to occupy it. But also
to call the Carabinieri (Italian branch of police) denouncing ourselves for the action we
were doing. We also brought there, journalists and televisions, TG1, TG2 and TG3 were
there and the action had a great impact. … Besides there was a brawl with the owner…”.
Those kinds of actions, including blitz into the universities where experiments on animals
took place, are typical of this organisation. According to our questionnaire, Lav organized
in one year more than sixteen times boycotts, disruptions of events and sit-ins. In fact, the
responsible for Lav affirms that “We repeated those actions in different forms and in
different periods. Overall the local delegations used them a lot…”.
As in the case of Greenpeace, even relying upon protest, Lav uses all available channels
in order to influence policy makers, from contacts with all parties, to lobbying local
administrators, from gathering signatures to promote a law to sit in a national consulting
committee. According to the questionnaire, petitions, motions, public letters, and lobbying
have been used more than sixteen times in one year. “Both in the European and Italian
Parliament – says the Lav’s respondant – we have practically one referent for each party,
or at least for the most important parties, so to speak, from the right to the left”.
Direct and sometimes radical action plus lobbying is then a strategy shared Greenpeace
27
and Lav. But Lav and Greenpeace are different in the degree of centralisation: high for
Greenpeace, low for Lav.
The high degree of decentralization, that fits well with the importance given to the local
level for LAV’s direct actions, may be explained by the way in which the group was born.
In fact before founding a national group, there were a number of local groups sharing same
values and interests who then decided to confederate in a national organisation (interview
2). Contrary to that of Greenpeace, the Lav’s statute mentions the local level in Art. 19,
stressing the autonomy of local delegations which are provided by analogue representative
organs as the national level: the local Assembly of Delegation’s members elects a
Directive Council and so on. The autonomy of local level is administrative as well as
political, since it includes the possibility for the local chapter to stipulate conventions with
other actors in its territory, and the management of funds.
If we pass from the analysis of the formal statute to the empirical process of internal
decision making we can see that between national and local level there is a kind of division
of labour--between national matters and local ones. We asked Lav’s responsible for
organisation “If the members of a local delegation wants to organza a direct action on their
own, do they have to communicate with the national level before?”. The answer has been
that “If it is a local problem, no. Our statute states that delegations that do something
related to their local territory do not have the obligation of communicating with the
national level. If however the action risks to have a national echo, for instance, if they are
planning to do an attack against a national industry, then, they should organise the action
with the national level.” (Interview 2).
The only requirement the national level impose on local chapters when they want to do
direct actions, such a blitz and an occupation, is to denounce themselves after the action.
This is a kind of philosophy of the organisation in order to avoid clandestine actions, which
may be considered as terrorism. “We condemn [clandestine actions] – stated the
respondant from the Lav (Interview 2) - because we consider these methods, these
activities, to produce the opposite effects …for instance going with a Balaclava helmet in
the night to do the most noble of the things, means to be framed in the system of Italian
communication as a terrorist.”
Thus, the organisational structure foresees decentralisation when local matters are
concerned and co-ordination when local actions could become of national relevance, but
never centralisation as in Greenpeace’s case.
28
4.3. Friends of Earth- Italy: an ecologist voluntary group.
As far as Friends of Earth is concerned, the first imagine we have is of a group that uses
mainly direct actions and has a typical Anglo-Saxon ecologist behaviour. It’s in fact
defined by Diani and Donati as a “participatory protest group” which combine protest and
lobbying while Jordan and Maloney consider it even a “professional protest group” (protest
business) (Diani, Donati 1998; Jordan, Maloney 1997). Our research showed however a
significant difference between the international level of this organisation and the national,
Italian one. In fact, the Italian group appeared as rather decentralized, but with a low use of
protest activity.
Friends of Earth-Italy exists since 1977. According to its statute:
“The Association’s aims are: to defend the nature and the environment, to guarantee
an equilibrated relationships between human activities and nature, to protect animal and
vegetal species, to defend artistic, cultural and historic patrimony, to promote fully
aware and rational consumers’ choices, to overcome insecurity and injustice… with a
particular interest in human and political rights, to promote co-operation among people
and a sustainable development, to promote and organise voluntary activities” (Art. 2,
Formal Statute).
The Association in Italy registered 25,680 members in 1997, with a strong increasing
trend since 1988 (9,208 members) (the TEA-questionnaire). It counts 18 regional groups
and 98 local ones, covering most of the Italian territory. The budget of 1997 has been
approx. 417,000 Euro, but the trend since 1988 is not linear, showing a peak in 1991
(approx. 767,000 Euro) and then a decline. With the exception of 1994 and 1995, when
there were three paid persons, the group had just one paid staff—member from 1987 to
1998,.
The first difference between this group, on the one side, and Lav and Greenpeace, on
the other, is the income composition. While in the latter the most important source of
income are member contributions or donations, FoE-Italy’s questionnaire shows that 75%
of the income come from professional works contracted out to the association by public
and private organisations (researches and communications plans).
About the origin of the national group, the Italian president of the association stressed
the importance of “the group of persons which decided to organise an Italian section of
FoE … was assisting Emma Bonino [a leader of the Radical Party, later European
commissioner and now one of the most visible political leaders in Italy] at the absolute
beginning of the antinuclear struggle” (our interview). As for many political ecologist
29
groups in Italy, such as Legambiente and Greenpeace, the first initiatives of the association
has been the successfully struggle against nuclear power.
Its campaigns and activities at national level involve both lobbying and voluntary work.
The lobbying of public power aim at the implementation of some organs and provisions, as
well as the reorganisation of the existing ones, in order to control and to defend the
environment. Direct voluntary actions is oriented at the management of protect areas and
natural parks. In the last years AdT conducted an intensive political campaign in order to
obtain the institution of the Agenzia Nazionale per la Protezione dell’Ambiente (ANPA) –
the national agency for the protection of the environment. According to its web site, AdT is
co-operating with other associations and political organisations in order to pressure the
Parliament to set up Regional Agencies for Environment.
The association is interested in supporting and lobbying political institutions in order to
improve environmental policy. It tries not only to build expertise in policy making – AdT
wrote the first report on environmental policy in Italy – but also to invest this expertise in
national and local consulting committees (for instance it has representatives in the National
Consult for Protect Areas and in some of the committees for natural parks’ management).
Forms of action AdT use in order to achieve its aims are various. They go from
lobbying (7-9 times in one year) to protest actions such as sit-ins and disruption of event
(only 1-3 times in one year) (TEA-questionnaire). The emphasis is on contacts with
institutions not in direct actions. In the TEA questionnaire, AdT indicated, among other
forms of action, hearings in institutions (7-9 times in one year). And to the question
“Which are, for you, the most important groups (both environmental and nonenvironmental) with which your group regularly co-operates?”, they answered
“Institutions, private industries, international environmental groups, international and
national scientific institutions”. Among claims they deal with, they put “institutional and
public administration’s claims”.
The organisation of referendum is another preferred form of intervention, as in the case
of the referendum that excluded the monitoring of environment from the task of the USL
(regional unity of public health). This initiative has been carried out with the co-operation
of the radical party. Even if the link with radical party13 is no longer organic (in the sense
that in the beginning the two organisations shared the same view, while now AdT
13
The Radical Party has dramatically changed is ideological physiognomy: one of the most active left-libertarian parties
during the seventies, it is now a right wing, “liberist” party. Last year the party has participated to European election
with the name “Lista Bonino”, obtaining around 10% of votes. Among its recent initiatives is the gathering of
signatures for the promotion of referendums, many of which for the abolition of labour rights. In many occasions, the
30
conceives itself as something of separated and different), the imprinting of the radical party
is often evoked by the president of the association.
Summarizing, the Italian AdT seems much more oriented toward policy making than
towards protest. The president of the group recognises this difference between national and
international level. During last national congress she openly stated that “Amici della
Terra/Italia never felt as an Imperial Anglo-Saxon periphery. Our ideas, our permanent
commitment … our initiatives have contributed to building the physiognomy and the
identity itself of the Federation…More than one time, our intervention avoided the risk that
the Federation agreed, in a not fully aware way, on … documents full of dogma typical of
extreme leftist movements, which are present in international ecologist groups” (document
3).
The picture of the relationship between national and international level drawn from
Italian president is quite lively; full of contrasts and discussions, considered however as a
sign of internal democracy. “Confront, sometimes strong with other members [during
international meetings], is necessary for a complex and articulated organism as our
Federation in order to maintain efficient and rational positions” (document 3).
The libertarian, participatory organisational discourse still dominates: “Inside the
Federation no superior authority exists … which is able to resolve conflicts…. And it is
right in this way: this forces ourselves to an exercise of responsibility and of
democracy…”. In this, the group reflects the decentralised international model of their
organisation as a network of previously-existing groups: “There is an executive committee
at international level but it is not a real structure. The Centre does not found national
groups, but pre-existing groups are admitted into the network… It is a true federation” (our
interview). This model of organisation is projected also at the national level, at least in
Italy. Art. 14 of the formal statute affirms that “The Association works on the territory
through Clubs, which have the task of co-operating for implementing national
programs…The Clubs decides with autonomy activities of local interest.”
If we shift to the concrete Centre-periphery relationship we find that “It is all made
within criteria of autonomy, overall autonomy of management, local Clubs are completely
autonomous for financing … each one has got its own budget. Another feature of this
autonomy is that local groups are created by local people via free initiatives, i.e. there is
not the national level which goes to Turin or Florence etc. to open a local club in order to
have a representation. It means that where there are members, activists or persons who are
party allied with the right-wing “Polo delle Libertà”.
31
doing certain activities for the association, if they want to open a local club they can do it
in full autonomy, accepting of course to respect the statute and the decision we collectively
make at national level during the congress … but the local club is still free to act on a wide
range of issues” (our interview).
This seems a proof of the decentralised character of the Italian FoE. The articulation at
the local level, the autonomy of those local groups and the policy oriented forms of action
of this association give us the idea of a network of local public interest groups, and a
national public interest group which co-operate as far as a national policy is concerned but
act separately when local matters are at stake.
4.4. Legambiente: an Ecologist Union.
The Lega per l’Ambiente was founded in 1980 (document 4) after an assembly at the
University of Rome within the Arci, an umbrella group of associations related with the
Italian Communist Party. According to their formal statute:
“Legambiente promotes citizens’ participation in the defence of the environment, the
definition of their own quality of life, favouring a better social organisation and a shift
in individual and collective behaviour. It pursues the protection of human beings,
animal and vegetal species, of the environment. It intervenes in the educational and in
the didactic field in order to create within young people a sensitive conscience toward
environmental problems and an equilibrated relationship between human being and the
nature. It is a pacifist and non-violent association, it struggles for peace and for cooperation between all people above all kinds of boundaries. It stands for a total
disarmament, nuclear as well as conventional; it fights for a new international
economical order and against the hunger in the world. For concrete helps and for the
solution of alimentary, technological, sanitary, financial, and cultural problems of
developing countries; it fights against any form of exploitation, ignorance, injustice,
discrimination, and exclusion. It intervenes on issues referring to knowledge, research,
relationship between science, culture and work, in order to break the forms of exclusion
by knowledge, to promote the diffusion of culture and to shape a widespread scientific
culture”(formal statute).
The number of formal members today is 115,000. As many as 20 regional groups and
1000 local groups compose LA. Legambiente is then represented in all part of Italy, and,
according to the responses to our questionnaire, it is represented both in rural and urban
areas (TEA-questionnaire). It is the largest political ecologist group in Italy.
32
Even, if in the 1986, la Lega per l’Ambiente (LA) exit from the Arci in order to have a
more autonomous organisation and a more distinctive profile, its “mark of origins” makes
the study of this organisation extremely interesting for the relationship between the old left
and the left-libertarian movements.
During the first campaigns in which the group has got involved, the initial group met with
the Committee of Control of Energetic Choices (Comitato di controllo delle scelte
energetiche), a group of physicists and anti nuclear students. In fact one of the most
important issue of the environmental movement, especially if we take in consideration the
ecological part of it, has been the struggle against the nuclear energy. The technical skills,
particularly important for the anti-nuclear campaign, became for LA an important factor of
legitimisation and of recognition vis-à-vis the political and (especially) the administrative
institutions.
The range of claims the organisation deals with is very wide. It goes from the protection
of wilderness, countryside and landscape to that of tropical rainforest, agriculture and
animal husbandry; from struggle against fishing to intervention in resource extraction;
from commitment for tourism and recreational activities to campaigns against the
industrial pollution (TEA-questionnaire). The construction of infrastructure (such as road
building) as well as the problem of urban traffic are covered. Another important area is that
of waste disposal/treatment/ transport--LA is interested in nuclear waste as well as both
non-nuclear hazardous waste and domestic waste. There are then the linked areas of energy
production/installation/use, i.e. against energy coming from nuclear power, gas, oil, and
coal and in favour of solar, wind and biogas energy. Education and diffusion of different
styles of life are other issues, together with biotechnology, health and pollution of all
natural elements (land, ocean, lakes, rivers, air) and, lastly, noise.
During its evolution, LA changed its peculiar forms of action from demonstrations and
marches to more moderate and policy oriented forms of intervention. Mass voluntary
participation has been channelled in more moderate public campaigns. The first large
information campaign has been “Goletta Verde” which has been organised in 1986 in order
to test coast by coast the quality of the national sea and then inform the citizens. Since that
year, LA organised a number of campaigns whose main features were the involvement of
large group of people either as volunteers in demostrative actions or as public in
information campaigns. To these types of actions—campaigns repeated year after year-belongs “Treno verde” (The green train), “Spiagge pulite” (cleaned beaches),
“Festambiente” (environmental party), “Ambiente Italia” (Environment Italy).
33
Another means frequently used by LA has been the mobilisation of people by
petitions—such as the petition of 1990 for the reducing of carbon dioxide which was
addressed to European Economic Community and to Organisation of the United Nations
and which gathered 600,000 signatures.
Two important questions have to be underlined about LA and its activities.
The first one is the strong effort of the organisation to find a way, both theoretical and
practical, to combine economical development and environmentalism—via the concept of
sustainable development. With this aim in mind, the traditional linkage of LA with the
labour movement organisations has been reactivated. In fact, in 1996 LA signed with the
three national unions (Cgil, Cisl and Uil) a protocol to promote public policies which
conjugate the creation of work and the improvement of the environment.
The second one is the emphasis on the international level. On the one hand, LA strives
to locate itself in the international environmental network– in 1983 the First Congress held
in Urbino was titled “Think globally and act locally” and in 1987 LA joined the Bureau
Européen de l’Environnement with many others environmental organisations. Moreover,
LA conceives the European level of government as an important level to promote both
better public policies and a different idea of citizenship where the quality of environment is
an essential element. In 1998, LA organised in Rome a march for an Europe of Citizens
and for an Italy of quality.
As we can see LA uses direct actions. Almost every form of action mentioned in TEAquestionnaire has been used by LA (with the exception of hunger strike and occupation).
However, they are no longer the most important activities of the organisation. Lobbying,
political alliances and involvement in consulting committees are the most visible activities
now. National campaigns are practically institutionalised, since LA organises them every
year. Another important fact to remark is that the Italian state has devolved to LA the
management of a large number of protected areas. This kind of relationship between LA
and the state is the first sign of the union-like organisation of LA.
The national responsible of LA also stresses the relevance of contacts, or even
permanent relationship with the political system: “differently than other environmental
associations, we never had fear to dirty our hands with politics. We think that problems
need to be solved, and that in order to solve them we need to find solutions convincing for
whom has to make decisions” (interview 4).
But permanent relationships with state agencies, and other interests groups need a
strong bureaucratised and even centralised territorial organisation. If we look at the formal
34
statute, we can have the impression of a typical decentralised structure: Regional
committees and Local Circles are decentralised organs of LA (art. 31). Each Regional
Committee has its own formal bodies, which are similar both in the structure and in the
name to those ones of the national level: Regional Directive, Regional Secretary, Regional
President etc. But, every committee can have its own statute if compatible with the
principles of the national one. There is also a Regional Congress, which is organised, as the
national one, once every 4 years (art. 33).
Local groups are, besides, an important, even indispensable, resource for LA. As we
mentioned, there are 1000 local groups spread on the entire national territory. There are
different kinds of local groups: “…territorial circles, sector associations, category
associations, co-operative societies, institutes, and other organised realities, which preserve
their own autonomy and their own leading organs, as long as they adopt the social card
(Tessera sociale) and this statute” (art. 37).
LA appears then a highly bureaucratised group, which combines vertical control and
accountability, horizontal accountability and autonomy. The stress on members’
participation is mitigated by the need to co-ordinate activities, while the technical bodies
(such the Scientific Committee and the Work’s Groups) have a large autonomy.
These considerations need however to be specified in the light of the information of
what empirically happens in the decision making and the informal procedures that cannot
be grasped by the analysis of the statute. For instance, when we asked in our interview how
a campaign is organised, the respondent for the national organisation told us that “For the
organisation of the campaign … the national Centre thinks it, elaborates it and then
proposes it to Regional Presidents’ Assembly. Our campaigns are frames elaborated from
the Centre and then filled up territorially.” Of course local groups have their own
autonomy, “but with a strong link, a feeling of belonging to national Centre, which is not
only co-ordinating Centre, but even a Centre which makes and diffuses information,
technical and scientific expertise and overall a place, a strong Centre of political initiatives’
making.”(interview 4).
As we can see LA autonomy is strongly counterbalanced by a vertical co-ordination and
implementation of internal decision making. The model is similar to that of a union, which
tries to monopolise the environmental representation. LA deals with each environmental
claim, is organised in a pervasive territorial way, has contacts with bureaucracies, parties,
public administrations, unions and so on. LA is the group that shows in the Teaquestionnaire the thickest network of contacts with other EMOs but, at the same time,
35
stresses the relevance of networks with other social and political organisations.
Considering both the exchange of information and the organisation of common campaigns,
the three Italian unions are mentioned as regular allies (see TEA questionnaire). If we look
at the variable “other groups-network”, every type of group is mentioned, from Amnesty
international to each single party, from third sector associations to religious groups and
churches (only women groups and lesbian and guy’ groups are excluded). To the question
“Which are, for you, the most important groups (both environmental and nonenvironmental) with which your group regularly co-operates?” LA answered: “Cgil, Cisl,
Uil”, “Industrial association”, “Third sector”, “wwf” and “political parties”. In a certain
way, LA is organised like a party but it is not a green party. Even if LA is one of the most
important of the groups involved in the foundation of the Italian green party: “we tried to
protect our autonomy – told us the national responsible of the organisation - because
politically we are another thing, this explains also why green party never increased its
electoral base, instead we always increased. Each year we are more and more, more
members, more groups…”. Besides, “We have relationships with all parties. Of course the
green party is more receptive, but keeping relationships with all political forces is
absolutely necessary for us because we want to contaminate, with the environmental one,
other key questions, such as employment, development, economical activities, the struggle
for legality” (interview 4). LA is the Italian Green Union, which tries to represent
environmental interest consolidating relationships both with the State and the main
important social actors (unions and interest groups).
4.5. Summarising.
A model of organisation oriented to the political exchange does not necessarily mean
that every EMO is adopting the same type of organisation and the same strategy of action.
During the last two decades, models of organisation and strategy of action have been
considered as the result of the ideological inclination of EMOs, showing that more
“conservationist” EMOs tended to adopt more moderate forms of action and a traditional
interest group-like model of organisation while “political ecologist” groups tended to adopt
a more direct protest oriented strategy of action and a left-libertarian movement model of
organisation. We have tried to demonstrate that, at least in Italy, this is no longer true. In
fact, first, political ecologist groups tend now to deal much more then before with concrete
policies, to moderate their actions in order to be “accepted” as legitimated interlocutor, and
to develop more professional forms of organizations. Second, even if they share the same
36
ideological inclination, they experience with different ways to represent environmental
interests, choosing different strategies and models of organisation. In particular, crossing
two variables such as a centralised/decentralised model of organisation and a major/minor
emphasis on protest, we singled out four types of “political ecologist” organisations.
Greenpeace-Italy--not differently than the other local chapter of the international group
it belongs to--has a centralised and professionalised organisation and a great emphasis on
protest, considered as the means through which the group builds its own image and
communicate with the public opinion. If influencing policies is the goal, high symbolic
protest is the mean. Greenpeace remains a professional ecologist protest group.
Italian Antivivisection League (Lav) is, instead, a type of participatory ecologist protest
group, combining a great emphasis on protest and a decentralised structure of organisation,
even if with attempts at co-ordination.
Considering Italian FoE, we have pointed at the differences between the Italian chapter
and the international organisation it belongs to. Moderate forms of action, and a strongly
policy oriented strategy, combined with a decentralised structure of organisation to make it
a type of ecologist voluntary group, or rather a network of such groups.
Finally, Legambiente, the most important Italian ecologist group, shows an impressive
mass territorial organisation, bureaucratised and co-ordinated by the Centre. It tries to
monopolise the representation of environmental interests, linking itself with the state and
keeping permanent contacts both with other Italian EMOs and social and economical
actors, such as unions and business groups. Those features make of it a kind of green
union—even a surrogative green party.
5. The political exchange of environmental movement organisations: Toward a
conclusion.
Our research indicated that Italian national EMOs are, to a large extent, in an advanced
process of institutionalisation. Once environmental organisations gained a widespread
public support, which in turn provides rich material and human resources for their
organisations, it seems that what matters now is to influence environmental public policies.
Indicators of this policy-oriented model of organisation are both moderate and policymaking-oriented forms of action and a type of organisation that fit the multilevel structure
of policy making. Contacts with public actors and involvement in consulting committees
both at national and at local level as well as at European level confirmed this tendency.
For how large the differences between our EMOs and the traditional image of SMOs,
37
we have to observe however that our groups resemble even less to the typical “special
interest” groups. Our organisations have often a large membership and consistent material
resources that brought to a structured form of organisation, with formal statuted and
membership cards. Notwithstanding their spread on the national territory, however, our
organisations still rely mainly upon activism—with a very small paid staff. In many cases,
the national organisation is a co-ordination committee for semi-autonomous local groups.
Even formal organisations are often just “networks of networks” of local groups.
As for their strategies, our national EMOs seems to be more and more involved in
influencing public policies. They have frequent contacts with public authorities—contacts
that are not mediated via protest: they are involved in consultation and receive material
support from public sponsor. They also have channels of access to the press—that, once
again, are not “mediated” via the news-power of disruptive action. However, as we
mentioned, the largest source of money are members’ contributions; the public money
corresponding usually to the contracting out of services. The public opinion remains the
target of much action—in particular of information campaigns; and intervention in the
decision making process involves often legal litigation.
In order to understand the strategic choices of the environmental organisations, we need
to take into account, first of all, the fact that public interest groups operate inside specific
model of interactions between organised interest and institutional power that vary from
state to state. In particularly, in Italy pluralistic assets prevailed over neocorporatist ones.
The organizational structure of our groups fits in fact within the pluralist model. In a
classical definition, the pluralistic system of interest representation is characterised by the
fact that the constitutive units are organised in a non-specified number categories which
are multiple, voluntary, and in competition with one another; they are not hierarchically
organised, (Schmitter 1974, 55). In the pluralist model, the associations are multiple,
voluntary, competing, not hierarchical and not necessarily diversified according to
functional criterions. They don't have licenses, are not recognised, neither subsidised,
neither created and not even controlled by the state. In contrast with this description, the
neocorporatist model of interest representation is characterised by the fact that its
constitutive units are organised in a limited number of unique categories, compulsory and
not in competition with each other; they are hierarchically ordered and functionally
diversified. They are recognised, if not created, by the state that deliberately grants them
the monopoly of the representation inside the respective categories in exchange for a
certain control on the selection of their leaders and on the articulation of demands
38
(Schmitter 1974, 279). As in the pluralistic model, our national EMOs share a fragmented
organisational structure and poverty of resources; organisations have to rely strongly on
their base (Kriesi 1994, cap. 12).
The results are however less clear as far as the strategies of action are concerned. Some
forms of action seem to fit in the pluralistic model—where the groups influence the
government through forms of pressure, without structured relationships. The forms of
pressure are varied. Besides the lobbying (understood as action of delegates of the interest
groups, in direct contact with MPs, members of the government, bureaucrats, etc., with the
goal to influence the political choices), techniques of action often used by the groups in a
pluralist system are public opinion campaigns and the recourse in judgement (Lowi 1999,
292 ff.). As we mentioned, these are all strategies used in our case. However, we noticed
also a certain relevance of the main strategy of influence for interest organisations in the
corporativist model: concertation. In neocorporatist assets, in fact, an institutionalised
system of interactions attributes to the associations a relevant role in the elaboration and
especially in the implementation of the public policies.
Summarizing, national EMOs seems to be characterized by a structure which is typical
for a pluralistic interest mediation, but a model of external actions more and more oriented
towards what was once considered as the typical forms of neocorporatist interest
mediation: concertation. In particular, interactions with the executive are more and more
preferred vis-a-vis the traditional interactions with political parties.
These characteristics fit well the Italian model of interest representation—in particular
in its recent evolution. As far as Italy is concerned, public policy is traditionally
characterised by a weak corporatism, which means in Lehmbruch’s terms, an institutional
participation of unions to public policy making and implementation but in a small range of
issues, while for other ones a pluralistic system prevails, where there is the lobbying of
fragmented and competing interest groups (Lehmbruch 1984). During the nineties,
however, it seems that the system is changing toward a more concertative model, with the
centralisation of decision-making and the inclusion of the most important interest groups –
centralised and co-ordinated – in the decision making. Centralization is limited to a small
number of decisions (especially development and economic policies), for a large range of
questions we can speak of multilevel decision making structure. Concertation seems
however to spread to various issue. If the analyses of neocorporativism focus on the
economic interest, considered as the strongest interest, an increasing number of activity are
however regulated through accords between few large interest organisations and the public
39
powers (Lange and Regini 1987, 21). In this sense, corporativism is “one of the many
possible types of accord through which the organised interest can mediate between their
own members … and varied interlocutors (particularly representatives of the State or the
government)”. It is more exactly that method of mediation of the affairs, in which a central
role is played by the permanent organisations, specialised in the work of interest promotion
and defence (Schmitter 1992, 457-58). It is partly a consequence of the action of the
movements of the past if, in many countries, we find new channels of direct access to the
public administrators and a stronger emphasis on citizens’ participation to public decisions.
Various forms of concertation strengthened the circuit of functional representation of
interest exactly at a moment in which the traditional electoral system of representation
weakened. The effect of a declining public confidence in political parties and Parliaments
and of the shifting of decision towards governments, bureaucracies, independent
authorities and the judiciary, is the increasing role of interest organisations vis-à-vis
political parties. In Italy, this tendency is strengthened by the corruption scandals—that
ended up in the self-dissolution of most political parties—as well as by structural weakness
of the Green party.
Many characteristics of our national EMOs help them to adapt to this external situation.
A certain degree of organisational istitutionalization is a precondition to get access to
public institutions—both in terms of participation in the policy process and resource
mobilisation. A certain level of centralization allows EMOs to co-ordinate nationwide
campaigns and interaction with the national governments, “on behalf” of their large base of
support. Within these general tendencies, we noticed the survival of different strategies:
Particularly it seems that some EMOs chose a decentralised model of organisation which
allow them to give local groups the autonomy needed to perform local protest actions
(LAV) or local institutional lobbying (AdT). On the other side more centralised
organisation seem to prefer a high level of co-ordination in order to launch “globally”
planned protest actions (Greenpeace), or national campaigns and co-ordinate lobbying
(Legambiente).
The opportunities to intervene in the policy making are also reflected in the forms of
protest that to become, overall, more moderate. Although more radical forms survive at the
margin, there is a sort of “civilisation” of most protest repertoire. Demonstrative actions of
small groups tend to point more on innovation than on violence. When there is
confrontation, tactics of civil disobedience and nonviolence prevail. Mass action is rare,
and when used, there is often a preference for forms that require low individual investment
40
(as, for instance, petitions). The preparation of dossiers—often with the aim of “educating”
the population as well as the administration—is a very central activity. This moderate
repertoire seems more adapt to influence public policies, symbolic but peaceful forms of
action try to keep public support without loosing the possibility of interacting with public
authorities.
Within this general tendency, the specific strategies vary. As we mentioned, there are
some EMOs which continue to give a strong emphasis on protest (Greenpeace and LAV),
while others try to consolidate their relationships with private and public actors
(Legambiente and Amici della Terra).
The ability to use channels of access to the institutions seems a common element of
different environmental organisations, anyway. The perception of no longer being able to
rely on the support of the party increases the sensibility of the administrators in elective
positions to (even narrow) organised groups of citizens, whose support is all the more
precious to the extent that it becomes a scarce resource in the delegitimated political
systems. The tendency to resolve the problems of the fiscal crisis "contracting out" tasks
and services of the public administration seems to affect also the areas in which protest
movement are active. Environmental movement organisations are therefore more and more
involved not only in the formulation but also in the implementation of public decisions (see
the management of protected areas or natural parks).
In the public administration a growing legitimacy for forms of negotiated decisions also
increased the tendency to involve groups “from below” in the different steps of public
policies. Since environmental movements have contributed to the rise of some specialized
branches of the public bureaucracy they tend to develop systematic relations with these
branches, participating in policy communities. More often ideologically nearer to the left
than to the right, environmental movement organisations tends to privilege their
relationship with public administrators and the public opinion vis-à-vis those with political
parties. Also in this case, within this common tendency, there is however the survival of
different strategies: either the “detaching” from the “dirty side” of politics—defending the
civic society against politics (see Greenpeace and Lav, which in fact keep a protest
oriented form of organisation); or the instrumental use of party allies when a public policy
or an institutional access is at stake (see Legambiente and Amici della Terra).
Concluding, common to all groups seems to be the representation of diffuse interests to
which more and more citizens appear to be sensitive—but that are not represented in the
electoral institutions. The national EMOs operate as mediators of this large base of support
41
in the system of interest representation. They obtain access to the policy makers inside a
logic of political exchange through the institutional recognition of representative power to
private groups. Notwithstanding the tendency towards institutionalization, the EMOs still
combine the recognition as interest groups with many elements of a social movement
structure—among which a network internal structure and the frequent addressing of public
opinion.
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TEA-Questionnaire:
of ACS, Associazione città sane (Healthy Cities Association); Amici della Terra (Friend
of Earth- Italy); Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biodinamica (Italian
Association for Biodynamic Agriculture); Centro Studi & ricerche Cosmòs (Centre of
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internazionele Uomo & Architettura, Associazione per l’Architettura Organica Vivente
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Bioarchitettura; SES. International Solar Energy Society-Italy; Legambiente; VAS,
Verdi, Ambiente e Società (Greens, Environment and Society); Italian Touring Club;
45
LAC. Lega per l’Abolizione della Caccia (League for Abolition of Hunting); LAV Lega
Anti-Vivisezione (Anti Vivisection League); Rete Bioregionale italiana (Italia
Bioregional Network); Federazione nazionale dei Verdi (Italian Green Party).
Interviews:
1.
Greenpeace-Italy, to the Responsible of local groups and to Responsible for team action.
2.
LAV, to the General Director.
3.
Amici della Terra, to the President and to General Director.
4.
Legambiente, to the General Director.
46