Changing Issue Representation among Major United States Environmental Movement Organizations

Changing Issue Representation among Major UnitedStates Environmental Movement Organizations*

Erik JohnsonDepartment of Sociology and Crime, Law & JusticeThe Pennsylvania State University

ABSTRACT Histories of the environmental movement have emphasized theimportance of a shift in focus from those issues traditionally associated withthe movement, such as resource and wildlife protection, towards ‘‘new’’quality of life issues, such as environmental pollution and its human healtheffects. Here, time-series data between 1970 and 2000 on the issue agendasof fifty leading environmental movement organizations (EMOs) are used toempirically assess the veracity of this hypothesized shift. Results indicate thatwhile there is dramatic growth in the salience of new environmental issues,those issues traditionally associated with the environmental movementcontinue to dominate the collective agendas of major EMOs. Further, newenvironmental issues are most likely to be represented in organizationalfields composed of smaller EMOs on average.

The selection and problematization of issues are central to the mobili-zation, development and, ultimately, success or failure of a social move-ment, as well as individual social movement organizations (SMOs). Inaddition, the issues to which SMOs attend have potentially importantpublic policy implications. Perhaps more so than for any other contem-porary movement, changing issue representation holds a central theo-retical position in analyses of U.S. environmentalism.

Scholars suggest that the shift in focus away from issues of resourceand wildlife protection towards the ‘‘new’’ quality of life issues, such asenvironmental pollution and its human health effects, represents themost significant transformation in the twentieth century environmentalmovement. The extent of this qualitative shift is so dramatic that manyanalysts conceive of the development of a distinct movement (e.g.Dalton 1994; Hays 1987). Changing issue representation is thought tohave broadened the scope and constituency of the environmentalmovement and contributed to growth in both new and existingenvironmental organizations (McLaughlin and Khawaja 2000; Mitchell,

* This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (grant #SES-0201992), the Nonprofit Sector Research Fund of the Aspen Institute (grant # 2003-NSRF-07) and the Pennsylvania State University. The author would like to thank JohnMcCarthy, Jennifer Schwartz, Nella Van Dyke and three anonymous Rural Sociologyreviewers for comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. Please directcorrespondence to: Erik Johnson, Washington State University, Department of Sociology,PO Box 644020, Pullman, WA 99163.

Rural Sociology 71(1), 2006, pp. 132–154Copyright � 2006 by the Rural Sociological Society

Mertig, and Dunlap 1992), as well as the development of an extensivepublic policy system (Andrews 1999; Petulla 1988).

Despite its theoretical importance, the extent to which newenvironmental issues are represented among national environmentalmovement organizations (EMOs) remains an empirically open ques-tion. To my knowledge, there have been no efforts to systematicallydocument changing issue representation and the ascendance of newenvironmental issues. The many excellent histories that have beenwritten on the United States environmental movement primarily havebeen qualitative-historical, relying on media and first person accountsto document change (e.g. Dowie 1997; Gottlieb 1993); case studies ofa few of the largest national environmental organizations (e.g. Dunlapand Mertig 1992; Mitchell et al. 1992); or focusing on only one aspectof the environmental movement, such as toxics (Szasz 1994), environ-mental justice (Bullard 1990), or forest protection (Nash 1967). Towhat extent have major EMOs incorporated new environmental issueson their issue agendas? Have these new issues re-focused the attentionof major EMOs away from traditional issues of resource and wildlifeprotection? Finally, are new environmental issues more likely to berepresented in certain types of EMOs relative to others?

The single largest impediment to quantitative analyses of issuechange, and agenda-setting more generally, has been the lack ofavailable temporal data on issue representation (Baumgartner andJones 1993; Burstein 1991). Here, content analysis of self-reportedorganizational activity descriptions from the Encyclopedia of Associationsare used to trace issue representation within fifty major EMOs over thepast thirty years. In addition, I explore the distribution of issues acrossfive distinct organizational fields that compose the environmentalmovement to assess whether these issues have diffused broadly orpredominately within certain segments of the movement. I begin bydescribing the importance of examining change in issue agendasamong national organizations, contextualizing this discussion withhistorical accounts of the mobilization and refocusing of the environ-mental movement. I then provide a theoretical approach, building onnew-institutionalist theory, in which to couch analyses of issue changeamong major EMOs before presenting empirical analyses.

Theory

The Importance of Issue Selection for (E)MOs

The mix of issues to which social movement organizations (SMOs)attend has important implications for public policy outcomes. Inmost public agenda-setting models, SMOs operate as issue generating

Changing Environmental Issue Representation — Johnson 133

organizations that identify and problematize new issues and push fortheir inclusion on the limited space of government institutionalagendas (e.g., Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Rochon 1998; Andrewsand Edwards 2004). The adoption of issues by (environmental) move-ment organizations is, thus, an important precursor to understandingagenda-setting processes on broader public agendas.

The selection of issues to which movement organizations attend alsohas important implications for the development and survival of indivi-dual SMOs. Scott (2002) notes that ‘‘Organizations such as the SierraClub and Greenpeace gain legitimacy from the broader environmentalmovement, but carve out limited goals around which to mobilizeattention and resources’’ (p. 35). By identifying specific issues ‘‘aroundwhich to mobilize attention and resources,’’ social movement organ-izations establish niches within the broader organizational environ-ment. If that niche is resource and opportunity rich, organizationsprosper. If the issue niche which SMOs identify is relatively sparse, theywill either be forced to find a new niche (i.e., shift their issue focus) orsuffer the consequences.

There is no shortage of environmental problems; however, EMOsformed to address these issues do have access to finite pools ofresources and must choose to devote these resources to certain issues atthe expense of others. Early EMOs in America, for instance, wereorganized almost exclusively around the protection of natural resourcesand wildlife.1 During the 1960s and 1970s’ cycle of protest (Tarrow1998), the environmental movement entered a distinct and extensivemobilization period characterized by growing concern for ‘‘new’’ or‘‘second generation’’ quality of life issues (Brulle 1995; 2000; Dunlapand Mertig 1992; Gottlieb 1993; Hays 1987). Within years, a movementthat was largely defined by issues of natural resource and wildlife‘‘conservation’’ is thought to have re-oriented to the human healtheffects of pollution and other quality of life issues.

These new issues are thought to have proliferated largely as a result ofthe formation of ‘‘a whole new breed of environmental organizations’’(Mitchell et al. 1992). At the same time, however, recent histories of theenvironmental movement strongly suggest that periods and instancesof mobilization around quality of life concerns in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries are antecedents of modern mobilization (Gottlieb1993; Melosi 2001). It seems likely that major EMOs formed duringearlier mobilization periods provided important abeyance structures

1 Accounts of this early period heavily emphasize the division between advocates for thescientific conservation of natural resources and the preservation of nature (Nash 1967;Oelschlaeger 1991; Gottlieb 1993).

134 Rural Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 1, March 2006

(Taylor 1989), contributing to the rapid proliferation of these issuesafter the 1960s. The first organization within my sample to focus onthe issue of pollution (the Air and Waste Management Association), forexample, was founded (1907) as part of the Progressive Era urbanreform movement in the United States.2

While so-called quality of life issues are thought to have becomeheavily represented within the environmental movement, including onthe agendas of large and institutionalized national EMOs, there is strongevidence suggesting that at least some new environmental issues havenot been embraced by the ‘‘majors.’’ In particular, there often have beenstrained relations between the majors and local activists organizedaround issues of toxic contamination and environmental justice, in partdue to the perceived unresponsiveness of the majors to local issues andconcerns (Bullard 1990; Cable and Cable 1995; Szasz 1994).

Collectively, the research reviewed here leads me to expect that newenvironmental issues will be represented in a greater proportion of majorEMO issue agendas over the observed time period, while traditionalenvironmental issues will be mentioned less frequently. Further, newenvironmental issues will come to dominate the collective issue agendasof major EMOs, relative to traditional issues. Finally, I expect those newenvironmental issues most strongly identified with grassroots strands ofthe environmental movement (i.e., toxics and environmental justice) tobe represented less broadly than other new environmental issues.

Focus on Major National EMOs

Though clearly not representative of the environmental movement asa whole, there are good reasons to believe that major national EMOsare an appropriate locus of study. First, issue diffusion among themajors may be of more practical importance than diffusion amongnational EMOs generally. The majors are significantly larger than theaverage EMO and control substantial amounts of resources. As such,they disproportionately represent and speak for the environmentalmovement in public policy and media arenas. Organizations with moreresources are significantly more likely to participate in congressionalhearings, for instance, than comparatively smaller organizations(Leyden 1995). Certainly, scholars have tended to imbue developmentswithin the majors with particular significance and often treat them asemblematic of developments within the environmental movementgenerally. Analyses of the environmental movement regularly rely on

2 So, the quality of life issues referred to as ‘‘second generation’’ or ‘‘new’’ issues maynot be truly original, though the attention paid to them after the 1960s certainly wasnovel and represents a significant transformation within the movement.


information from an even more restricted group of large nationalEMOs (often the big 10 or 12) than is analyzed here, even whenillustrating developments within the grass-roots strands of the environ-mental movement. For example, the Handbook of Environmental Sociology ,in discussing grassroots mobilization, focuses considerable attention onmajor national environmental organizations included in analysespresented here: the Citizens Clearinghouse to Hazardous Waste, SeaShepard Conservation Society, Earth First!, and the Rainforest ActionNetwork (Mertig, Dunlap, and Morrison 2002:469–75).

The adoption of issues by major EMOs can also be expected to setthe stage for adoption by other national EMOs, since the adoption ofan innovation by a central organization typically raises rates of adoptionamong the remaining members of the field. Relatedly, issue selection bynational EMOs may have important implications for grassrootsorganizational activities, as substantial portions of sub-national EMOsare affiliated with (i.e., chapters of) national organizations (Andrewsand Edwards forthcoming; Kempton et al. 2001). This is not to saythat a small group of major national EMOs provide a centralized sourceof direction for, or accurately represent, the environmental movementas a whole. Nor should results presented here be generalized to themovement as a whole. Portions of the grassroots environmental move-ment, for example, have frequently entered into direct conflict withmany of the national EMOs included in this study over the relativepriority devoted to different environmental problems. Results do, how-ever, represent real changes in the issue focus of major U.S. nationalenvironmental movement organizations.

Patterns of Change: New Institutionalist Perspective

To understand the changing patterns of issue representation withinthe environmental movement, I draw on new-institutionalist theoryin organizational analysis, particularly the work of Paul DiMaggio andWalter Powell (1983), who show how organizational appeals toinstitutionally accepted norms of structure and behavior can result inthe homogenization of form and practice. The concept of organizationalfields is central to understanding the trend towards homogeneity in issuerepresentation or other organizational attributes. Organizational fieldsare the ‘‘collection of organizations that, in the aggregate, constitutea recognized area of institutional life’’ (DiMaggio and Powell 1983:148).They bound populations of reference organizations, typically those thatproduce similar products or services in some limited geographic area.Actors within a field share common systems of meaning and cognitiveframes that help to define social relationships and guide interactions.


The tendency towards homogeneity in organizational form andpractice within fields is thought to result from three general mecha-nisms.3 Most germane to this research has been the growing accumu-lation of evidence documenting instances of mimetic isomorphism. Thatis, in an effort to reduce uncertainty and enhance legitimacy, organiza-tions frequently model themselves after other similar, though presum-ably more legitimate, organizations. While mimicry of entities outside anorganizational field may occur, research has consistently found thatorganizations primarily pattern themselves on other organizations withinthe same field. Firms, for example, mimic other firms in the sameindustry (Fligstein 1985; 1990), and states adopt policies that mimic thoseof other states (Knoke 1982; Soule and Zylan 1997). Social movementscholars similarly have demonstrated that protest tactics diffuse primarily,and most rapidly, among actors who belong to a common social category(McAdam and Rucht 1993; Soule 1997). If it is the case that EMOsreference other organizations in the same field, to determine whichissues are normatively approved when making decisions about issuerepresentation, we should expect to find that issues diffuse primarilywithin organizational fields as opposed to between fields.

Data Collection and Methods

To answer the motivating questions of this research, it is necessary toidentify and collect time-series data on the issue agendas of majorEMOs, as well as to group them in organizational fields. Major EMOswere identified based on previous research that evaluated the signifi-cance of environmental organizations on factors such as size andperceived political influence (Brulle 1995; 2000). These organizationsinclude, among others, what are commonly referred to as the ‘‘big ten’’environmental organizations. Both highly institutionalized issue advo-cacy organizations (e.g. Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club) and moreconfrontational, loosely structured direct action groups (Earth First!,Clamshell Alliance) are included in the sample (complete list availableupon request).4 Collectively, these major EMOs exhibit a wide range oftactics, discourse frames, organizational structures, and constituencies.

3 In addition to mimetic isomorphism DiMaggio and Powell discuss mechanisms ofcoercive and normative isomorphism. Though these are theoretically distinct mechanismshypothesized to induce greater isomorphism within organizational fields, they may notbe empirically distinct.

4 Following in the resource mobilization tradition, we do not find it useful todistinguish between issue advocacy and social movement organizations (see McCarthy andCastelli 2002). A casual perusal of Encyclopedia entries indicates that many EMOs usea mixture of institutionalized and outsider tactics, making any division between issueadvocacy organizations and SMOs necessarily arbitrary.


The Encyclopedia of Associations (Gale Research Inc.) was used tocollect detailed time-series data on the issue agendas of these majorEMOs. The Encyclopedia is gaining widespread appeal as a source of dataon social movement organizations (e.g., Baumgartner and Jones 1993;Johnson and McCarthy 2004; Minkoff 1999; Nownes 2004). Publishedannually since 1974, and intermittently before that, the latest editioncontains information on more than 22,000 national associations.

Issue representation of EMOs was identified through a contentanalysis of self-reported descriptions contained in the Encyclopedia. Foreach year an organization was in existence between 1970 and 2000,5

it was recorded whether the organization indicated that it attends tothe traditional environmental issues of natural resources, wildlife, andenergy and/or the ‘‘new’’ environmental issues of pollution, humanhealth, toxics, nuclear energy, and environmental justice (see Appen-dix). Initial coding also revealed a significant fraction of organizationsin the most recent period that attend to issues of sustainable develop-ment; therefore, organizational entries were coded for the presence(absence) of this issue throughout the observed time period. Sustain-able development does not easily fit with the old/new issue dichotomyelaborated here, drawing instead from both streams with a coremessage that focuses on keeping the volume of human extraction ofnatural resources (old) and the emission of pollutants (new) in balancewith nature’s regenerative capacities (Sachs 1993:17). Because it linkstraditional and new environmental priorities within a single, over-arching framework, sustainable development is one very promisingdirection modern environmentalism has taken.

Though offering detailed, historical information on a range oforganizations, there are some important limitations to the Encyclopediaas a data source (see Minkoff 1999). First, due to space limitations, it islikely that there is some under-reporting of issues. This source cannotdetect, for example, the diversity of activities actually undertaken bythe local divisions of major national EMOs. It is likely, however, thatorganizations report those issues which are most salient and centralto their agendas. My analyses are necessarily limited to these centralagendas and serve as an important complement to in-depth case studiesof major EMOs.

There may also be a lag between organizational issue change andreporting, if organizations fail to accurately update their entries fromyear to year. This suggests some caution in interpreting the timing of

5 For 1971 and 1973, years during which the Encyclopedia was not published, data areimputed for each organization based on information reported in the year immediatelyfollowing.


issue agenda changes reported here (implying that actual changes inissue representation may occur somewhat earlier than reported). Thereis no reason, however, to believe this lag affects absolute magnitudesor overall patterns of change.

Constructing Organizational Fields

Operationalizing the somewhat elusive concept of organizational fieldshas proven a challenge in new-institutionalist analyses. An organiza-tional field refers, conceptually, to ‘‘a community of organizations thatpartakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interactmore frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outsideof the field’’ (Scott, 2002:129). Though the definition of organizationalfields emphasizes interaction and shared meaning systems, its oper-ationalization has typically relied on geographic boundaries and a looseconception of ‘‘likeness’’ based on the product organizations produce(e.g., all community colleges, all fast food restaurants) rather thanempirical assessments of, for example, organizational perceptions(Fligstein and Dauber 1989:93).

Here, organizational fields are defined based on systematic analysis ofthe primary discourse frames invoked by major EMOs. Discourse framesare cognitive ‘‘schemata of interpretation’’ that organize past experi-ences and guide future action (Snow et al. 1986). Invocation of similardiscourses by major EMOs indicates shared meaning systems, percep-tions and assumptions about what is important, and how the worldoperates. As well, it defines patterns of interaction among organizationsand structures how those organizations perceive and respond toenvironmental stimuli. EMOs which invoke similar discourses tend, forexample, to share foundation connections (Caniglia and Brulle 1999).

Using detailed information from organizations themselves, Brulle(1995; 2000) has classified major EMOs according to the primarydiscourse frame which they invoke: conservationism, preservationism,deep ecology, political ecology, and reform environmentalism.6 There isloose consensus in the academic literature on the existence of thesedifferent strands within the environmental movement (Dowie 1997;Dunlap and Mertig 1992; Nash 1967; Oelschlaeger 1991). Further, thetemporal construction of these fields corresponds to standard accounts

6 Brulle (1995) identifies six distinct discourses, though one, eco-feminism, containsonly one organization (WorldWide) and, thus, can hardly be termed a developedorganizational field. The absence of a discernable eco-feminist organizational field withinthe environmental movement likely relates to the simultaneous mobilization around thisdiscourse within other social movement industries (McCarthy and Zald 1977) such aswomen, development, and peace. While included in analyses looking at all majors,WorldWide is not included in analyses relying on organizational fields.


of the environmental movement’s development in the United States,as reflected in the founding patterns of their incorporated EMOs.

Table 1 presents summary information on each of these organiza-tional fields for our sample of 50 majors, including: a description of thedominant discourse, sample EMOs, mean organizational foundingdates, and summary data on 2000 membership, budget, and stafflevels.7 Clearly, the older fields of conservation and preservation con-tain the largest EMOs. The fields of deep ecology and political ecologyhave developed most recently and are not only smaller in terms of thetotal number of organizations which constitute the field but are com-posed of EMOs that are much smaller, on average. The field of reformenvironmentalism, most ‘‘typical’’ of modern environmentalism, fallsin between these two extremes. This holds for all three measures oforganizational size: budget, staff, and membership.

Results

The hypothesized shift in the issue representation of the environmentalmovement is assessed in a number of ways. First, data are presented onthe proportion of major EMOs that attend to a variety of traditional andnew environmental issues. This is followed by assessing the total relativeshare of attention to new versus traditional environmental issues. Next,the percentage of major EMOs which attend only to traditional or newenvironmental issues, or to a combination of these issues, is presentedin time-series format. Finally, evidence on the distribution of issuesacross organizational fields is presented.

Table 2 shows the proportion of major national environmentalmovement organizations identifying particular issues as salient at tenyear intervals between 1970 and 2000. Columns do not sum to 100percent as organizations may identify more than one issue as pertinent.Issues are grouped into the rough designations of ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ andranked within these designations, based on the magnitude of changebetween 1970 and 2000 in the proportion of major EMOs that identifyissues as salient (final column), with issues undergoing more changelisted first.8

7 Two organizations from the reform environmentalism field (National Clean AirCoalition and New Alchemy Institute) and one from the political ecology field (ClamshellAlliance) go defunct prior to 2000.

8 The total number of major EMOs is presented at the bottom of the table. Between1970 and 2000 the population of majors increases by twenty-one organizations, nearlydoubling in size, as a host of new organizations are founded, and a handful of others die.The majority of this increase in the population of EMOs occurs during the 1970s, con-sistent with patterns of growth documented in previous research on the foundings ofU.S. national EMOs (Johnson and McCarthy 2004; McLaughlin and Khwaja 2000).


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Throughout the observed period, natural resources remain thedominant issue area, by far the issue most likely to be included ona major EMO’s agenda. Though wildlife remains second only to naturalresources as the most commonly included issue on the agendas of majorenvironmental organizations, there is a 10 percent decline between 1970and 2000 in the proportion of organizations that address wildlife issuesas a primary area of organizational concern. This is the greatest observeddecline in the proportion of organizations that attend to any issue.

While traditional environmental issues, especially natural resourceconcerns, are the most commonly represented, or unifying, issueswithin the environmental movement, there has been a large increase inthe proportion of national EMOs attending to ‘‘new’’ environmentalissues. The issues of human health (.15), toxics (.13), and pollution(.11) experience comparably large overall increases in organizationalattention. Pollution is the ‘‘new’’ environmental issue most likely tobe included on the agenda of major national EMOs, though it remainssignificantly less likely to be included than either wildlife or resourceissues. Combining the distinct, but related, issues of human health,toxics, and pollution into one category, I find that at no point do morethan one-third of EMOs attend to them. This is comparable to therepresentation of wildlife issues in the most recent period, but remainsconsiderably less than for natural resource issues.

Table 2. Proportion of Major Environmental Movement OrganizationsAttending to Various Issues, 1970–2000 (N ’s in parentheses)

Issues 2000 1990 1980 1970

MagnitudeChange

1970–2000

‘‘Traditional’’

Wildlife .30 (14) .25 (12) .26 (11) .40 (10) �.10Energy .09 (4) .12 (6) .19 (8) .04 (1) .05Resources .66 (31) .67 (33) .58 (25) .68 (17) �.02

‘‘New’’

Health .15 (7) .18 (9) .09 (4) .00 (0) .15Toxics .17 (8) .18 (9) .07 (3) .04 (1) .13Pollution .19 (9) .20 (10) .12 (5) .08 (2) .11Justice .04 (2) .04 (2) .00 (0) .00 (0) .04Nuclear .04 (2) .08 (4) .09 (4) .08 (2) �.04

Sustainable Development .19 (9) .12 (6) .07 (3) .00 (0) .19

Total Number ofOrganizations (n)a 47 49 43 25a The total number of organizations included in analyses changes over time as new

organizations are formed and others cease operations.


Like the issue of toxics, environmental justice has been most closelyassociated with grassroots political action. Unlike toxics, however, majorEMOs have failed to significantly address the social distribution ofenvironmental costs. Only 4 percent of the majors currently identifyenvironmental justice as a core issue, whereas by 2000 almost 20percent list toxics as a central area of organizational concern. Theenvironmental justice issue developed somewhat later than toxics, inthe mid-1980s, so it is possible this grassroots issue has not yet diffusedto national organizations. The environmental justice movement hasalso tended to identify with the civil rights movement rather than theenvironmental movement.9 This may also help to explain the relativefailure of environmental justice issues to be adopted by major nationalEMOs.

Nuclear issues, unlike all other ‘‘new’’ environmental issues, havewitnessed a decline in organizational attention over the time periodexamined. This decline may be attributable, at least in part, to therelative success of the movement in this arena; no utility has ordereda new nuclear reactor in the United States since 1978, and interpretiveschema ambivalent or hostile to nuclear issues have promulgatedamong the media and public alike (Adair 1996; Gamson and Modi-gliani 1989). We might expect these declines to continue unless propo-nents of nuclear energy prove successful in efforts to revive the industryin the United States by, for example, successfully re-framing nuclearenergy as a viable and environmentally friendly (CO2 free) energyalternative.

The hybrid issue of sustainable development experienced the largestincrease between 1970 and 2000 of any issue in the proportion of majorEMOs that identify it on their agendas. No organizations identified thisissue prior to 1970. Fully one-fifth of major EMOs do so in 2000,making sustainable development the third most common issue repre-sented (tied with the issue of pollution, after natural resources andwildlife respectively).

Overall, the traditional issues of natural resources and wildlife clearlyremain the unifying and orienting issues within the movement. Mostmajor EMOs still attend to natural resource issues, and many continueto focus on wildlife. In fact, no other issues maintain attention frommore than 20 percent of the majors. Older issues do not lose muchground in terms of the proportion of major environmental organ-izations attending to them, despite the increased attention to the new

9 Note, however, that as coded, environmental justice issues go beyond those of theunequal racial distribution of environmental costs to include class and genderdistributions as well.


environmental issues of toxics, health, and pollution as well as sustain-able development among major national environmental organizations.

Figure 1 provides an alternative method of analyzing the rise of newenvironmental issues, displaying in time-series format the percentage ofmajor EMOs that attend only to traditional environmental issues, tonew environmental issues only, and to a combination of both tradi-tional and new environmental issues. This figure addresses how widelythe increased attention to new environmental issues has been distrib-uted among major EMOs. That is, do a small number of major EMOscontinually expand their focus to include a greater number of newissues, or does the increase in new environmental issue representationcharacterize the sample as a whole? If new environmental issues havecome to dominate, we would expect to find increasing proportions ofmajor EMOs to focus on new environmental issues, exclusively, or onsome combination of new and traditional issues.

At the beginning of the observed period, close to 90 percent of majorEMOs attend solely to traditional environmental issues, and just over 10percent of organizations attend only to new environmental issues. From1970 to 1983, the percentage of organizations that attend solely totraditional environmental issues steadily declines to 60 percent,remaining relatively stable after that point. The proportion of organi-zations that attend solely to ‘‘new’’ environmental issues, meanwhile,has remained relatively stable since 1975, fluctuating between 13 and

Figure 1. Percentage of Major Environmental Movement Organizations Attending toNew Issues, Traditional Issues, or Both, 1970–2000


20 percent. Finally, the proportion of major EMOs that attend to bothtraditional and new environmental issues grows from zero percent atthe beginning of the observed period to just over 22 percent by 1983,a level which is maintained into the present day. This suggests that whilenew environmental issues are increasingly represented on the agendasof major EMOs, they do not achieve broad representation within themovement. That is, sole attention to traditional issues is the dominantformat of major EMO issue agendas, though a few organizationsdiversify their agendas to include new as well as traditional issues, anda smaller percentage specialize in new environmental issues.

Combined, these results tell a consistent story that provides onlymixed support for the hypothesized major transformation in issuerepresentation of the environmental movement. Early in the periodunder observation, the collective issue agendas of major EMOs aredominated by traditional environmental issues: resource protection,wildlife, and energy related issues continue to be the primary focus ofthe majors. Most focus on these issues exclusively, and more than 80percent of all issues mentioned are traditional environmental issues.Although new environmental issues are increasingly represented withinthe movement over time, they never come to dominate the agenda.Never do more than 20 percent of major EMOs attend to any one newenvironmental issue. Of all the issues mentioned in major EMO self-descriptions, never are more than one-third ‘‘new’’ environmentalissues. Finally, never do a majority of major EMOs focus on newenvironmental issues, either alone or in conjunction with traditionalissues.

Table 3 disaggregates change in the issue attention of environmentalmajors by organizational field to determine the extent to which issuesdiffuse broadly across the movement, or in a more segmented fash-ion.10 Each panel displays the proportion of major EMOs in five orga-nizational fields that identify an issue as salient in a given year. Resultsfor the deep ecology and political ecology fields should be interpretedwith caution as both fields contain a small number of organizations,and percentages are, thus, highly variable.

Natural resources (Panel A) is a common orienting issue acrossorganizational fields, with between 20 and 100 percent of organizationsconcentrating on the issue throughout the observed period. This issueis most strongly linked with the older fields of conservation andpreservation; more than 88 percent of preservation and nearly

10 Data were collected at one-year intervals, but are displayed at five year intervalsfor summary purposes. I do not trace attention to environmental justice issues by field,as this issue has largely failed to diffuse among major EMOs.


Table 3. Proportion of Major Environmental Movement OrganizationsAttending to Issues (Panels A–H) by Organizational Field, 1970–2000a

Organizational Fields 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Panel A: Natural ResourcesConservation .60 .67 .57 .57 .71 .71 .71Preservation .88 .89 .89 100 100 100 100Reform Environmentalism .50 .47 .47 .48 .48 .53 .47Deep ecology — .00 .50 .50 .67 .67 .67Political ecology — 1 .25 .67 .67 .33 .33

Panel B: WildlifeConservation .60 .50 .43 .43 .43 .43 .43Preservation .75 .67 .67 .50 .45 .45 .55Reform Environmentalism .08 .05 .05 .19 .14 .21 .21Deep ecology — .00 .25 .17 .17 .17 .17Political ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00

Panel C: EnergyConservation .00 .17 .29 .14 .14 .00 .14Preservation .00 .00 .11 .20 .18 .09 .09Reform Environmentalism .08 .26 .26 .24 .14 .26 .16Deep ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Political ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00

Panel D: PollutionConservation .00 .00 .00 .14 .14 .14 .14Preservation .00 .00 .11 .10 .09 .09 .09Reform Environmentalism .17 .21 .21 .33 .33 .37 .32Deep ecology — .00 .00 .00 .17 .17 .17Political ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00

Panel E: HealthConservation .00 .17 .14 .14 .14 .14 .14Preservation .00 .00 .00 .10 .09 .09 .09Reform Environmentalism .00 .05 .05 .19 .24 .16 .16Deep ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Political ecology — .00 .50 .67 .67 .67 .67

Panel F: ToxicsConservation .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Preservation .00 .00 .00 .00 .09 .09 .09Reform Environmentalism .08 .05 .11 .24 .33 .37 .32Deep ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Political ecology — .00 .25 .33 .33 .33 .33

Panel G: NuclearConservation .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Preservation .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Reform Environmentalism .17 .11 .11 .29 .14 .11 .11Deep ecology — .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 00Political ecology — 100 .50 .67 .33 .00 .00

Panel H: Sustainable DevelopmentConservation .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00Preservation .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .18Reform Environmentalism .00 .05 .05 .10 .10 .16 .16Deep ecology — 100 .50 .34 .34 .34 .34Political ecology — .00 .00 .00 .33 .33 .33a A ‘‘0’’ indicates that no organizations in an organizational field attend to an issue

while a ‘‘—’’ indicates the absence of any active major EMOs in a field.


two-thirds of conservation organizations list natural resources asa significant area of organizational concern throughout the period ofobservation. Around 50 percent of reform environmentalism and deepecology organizations attend to natural resource issues. Politicalecology organizations display a more variable pattern, though manyof these organizations also attend to natural resource issues. This issueis broadly represented across organizational fields and most fields haveincreased attention to natural resource issues over time.

Attention to wildlife issues across organizational fields is displayed inPanel B. Though a large majority of EMOs in the preservation (75percent) and conservation (60 percent) fields listed wildlife as a salientissue in 1970, these fields have decreased attention to this issue overtime. Notably, offsetting some of these losses in representation, reformenvironmentalism organizations have increasingly adopted wildlife asan issue, from about 8 percent in 1970 to 20 percent by 1983. Aminority of deep ecology organizations (17 percent) focus on wildlifeissues, while no political ecology organizations do so. This issue remainshighly identifiable with the older conservation and preservation fields,despite declines, and has diffused somewhat among reform environ-mentalism organizations.

The issue of energy, Panel C, is the one traditional environmentalissue that is not represented primarily within the conservation andpreservation fields. Instead, the field of reform environmentalism hasthe largest proportion of major EMOs identifying energy issues assalient. Significant proportions of organizations in both the conserva-tion and preservation fields do adopt the issue starting in the late 1970s(at least partially in response to the Arab oil embargo), thoughattention declines again in the early 1990s. No deep ecology or politicalecology organizations attend to energy issues. The issue of energy ismost salient for reform environmentalism but fails to diffuse to themovement broadly, despite fleeting attention by the conservation andpreservation fields.

In contrast to natural resource and wildlife issues, which aredominated by the conservation and preservation fields, the newenvironmental issues (Panel D-G) are virtually absent from the agendasof conservation and preservation organizations. Never does more thanone major conservation or preservation organization in the sampleattend to any new environmental issue. Instead, new environmentalissues are predominately represented within the reform environmen-talism and, to a lesser extent, political ecology fields.

Roughly one-fifth of major reform environmental organizationsattend to pollution issues during the 1970’s, and fully one-third do sofrom 1985 to 2000. There is also a steady increase in the representation


of human health issues among reform environmentalism organizationsduring the 1980s to around 20 percent, though political ecologyorganizations are most likely to identify human health issues on theiragendas, with two-thirds of the EMOs in this field attending to this issuefrom 1982 to 2000.

Toxics (Panel F) and nuclear (Panel G) issues are primarily attendedto by EMOs from the reform environmentalism and political ecologyfields. There is a steady increase in the percentage of reformenvironmentalism organizations attending to toxics issues and elevatedlevels of attention to nuclear issues from 1982–1989. Approximatelyone-third of political ecology organizations attend to toxics, whileinterest in nuclear issues among this field has withered in recentdecades. Finally, sustainable development (Panel H) is primarilyassociated with the younger organizational fields: reform environmen-talism, deep ecology and political ecology. In the most recent timeperiod, however, two preservation EMOs (the Earth Island Institute andSierra Club) do also indicate that they attend to this issue.

In all, there seems to be some support for the hypothesis that issuesare more likely to diffuse within than between fields. The traditionalissues of natural resource and wildlife, though highly representedacross organizational fields, have been and continue to be most salientto conservation and preservation organizations. Conversely, the rise oforganizational interest in ‘‘new’’ environmental issues can be attributedprimarily to changes in the fields of reform environmentalism and, toa lesser extent, political ecology. Only rarely are new environmentalissues represented on the issues agendas of major EMOs from the fieldsof conservation, preservation, or deep ecology. The issue agendas ofmajor conservation and preservation EMOs appear to be relatively fixedand focused on issues traditionally associated with the movement. Thenewer fields, particularly of reform environmentalism, have compara-tively flexible issue agendas that have evolved over time to give morecollective emphasis to both a broader array of new environmentalissues, as well as resource and wildlife issues.

Conclusion

Histories of the environmental movement have emphasized the shift infocus from protection of natural resources and wildlife to ‘‘new’’environmental quality of life issues, such as pollution and humanhealth. This shift is associated with the revival of the environmentalmovement in the 1970s, as foundings of new EMOs proliferated andolder ones expanded their issue agendas. Systematic empirical evidenceof this shift has been lacking however, with analyses based on media and


first person accounts of developments within the movement, case studiesof only a very few of the largest environmental organizations, or of singleissues within the movement such as toxics or nuclear pollution.

In this paper, for the first time, the changing representation ofvarious issues on the agendas of major EMOs in the United States issystematically documented. In particular, I focus on the dynamicbetween traditional and new environmental issues and the representa-tion of these issues within five different organizational fields thattogether comprise the U.S. environmental movement. The results pre-sented here indicate that, indeed, there was a tremendous surge inEMO attention to ‘‘new’’ environmental issues. The growth in attentionto these issues was dramatic and occurred primarily during the 1970sand first half of the 1980s. This corresponds to the period of highlyelevated founding rates in national EMOs generally, as well as withinthe sample of majors included in this analysis specifically. Throughoutthe later half of the 1980s and the 1990s, proportional attention to newenvironmental issues remained relatively stable.

However, while there is dramatic growth in the salience of newenvironmental issues, they never come to dominate the collectiveagendas of major EMOs. Across the study period, the proportion ofmajor EMOs attending to natural resource and wildlife issues remainssignificantly higher than the proportion attending to any newenvironmental issue across the study period. In addition, most majorEMOs continue to attend solely to traditional environmental issues.Clearly, issues traditionally associated with the environmental move-ment continue to dominate the agendas of major EMOs.

There is also considerable variation across organizational fields in theextent of attention devoted to various environmental issues. While theissue of natural resources is represented broadly across organizationalfields, the typically larger conservation and preservation organizationsare especially likely to attend to both natural resource and wildlifeissues. To the extent that new environmental issues have garneredincreased attention, it has largely come from those fields composed ofrelatively smaller EMOs, namely, reform environmentalism and politicalecology. Never does more than one conservation or preservationorganization identify as important any new environmental issue, and noorganization from these fields ever mentions the issues of environmen-tal justice or nuclear pollution. Since larger EMOs presumably havemore of an ability to influence public agendas and impact public policy,the differential representation of issues by organizational fields haspotentially important implications.

In addition to rapid growth in ‘‘new’’ environmental issues, theanalyses presented make clear there has been significant growth in


attention to the issue of sustainable development. While no majorEMOs identify this as a salient issue in 1970, one-fifth do so in 2000,making it tied with pollution as the third most commonly mentioned.The ascendance of this issue can be attributed, at least in part, to theincreasingly transnational nature of the environmental movement andto the legitimating effects of the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio deJaneiro, organized around the issue of sustainable development. The‘‘bridging’’ quality of this issue makes its’ ascendance potentially veryimportant, and it is one of the major directions modern environmen-talism is taking, as is reflected in the growing attention to which majorEMOs devote themselves. As such, sustainable development has thepotential to act as a powerful force uniting disparate organizationalfields within the environmental movement. Only very recently, however,does it appear to have begun serving this integrative function and todiffuse broadly within the environmental movement.

The research presented here begins to advance our understanding ofthe changing representation of issues among major EMOs, but alsoraises many questions. While the results of this study suggest that theadoption of new environmental issues has been more limited than mostaccounts of the movement’s development imply, the extent to whichthe issue agendas of major EMOs are representative of the environ-mental movement generally remains an open empirical question.Research on local EMOs, however, supports the notion that naturalresource and wildlife issues are more likely to be used as an organizingframework than are new environmental issues (Andrews and Edwardsforthcoming). One area of future research should be to assess thedegree to which the issue agendas expressed by major EMOs and theiractual activities correspond. New-institutionalist analyses suggest thatthe degree of de-coupling between the expressed goals and actualactivities of an organization can be considerable (Meyer and Rowan1977). As well, there is likely to be at least some discrepancy betweenthe issue agendas expressed by the national level offices of EMOs andthe agendas and activities of organizational sub-units (e.g., individuallocal chapters).

The findings reported here also raise questions about how changes inthe issue representation of a social movement occur. There is a re-markable degree of stability over time in the issue agendas of the larger,more established, EMOs. Conversely, the agendas of the younger,smaller organizations appear more variable. However, the youngerfields also witnessed the largest growth in new organizations, suggestingthat perhaps it is the founding of organizations focusing on new issuesthat is the engine of issue change within the movement, rather than thedynamic issue agenda of individual organizations. These observations


regarding the dynamics of organizational change link directly to thedebate in organizational sociology over how change in centralorganizational characteristics occurs in a population of organizations.Organizational ecologists generally assert that organizational character-istics (including issue agendas) are relatively fixed at founding, and thatchange in a population of organizations occurs primarily throughcompositional change as a result of differential selection by theenvironment. New institutionalists have argued that organizationalcharacteristics are much more fluid, though change most often leads toincreased homogeneity as flexible organizations adapt in ways thatmake them more similar to their contemporaries. That is, there arecompeting explanations of how ‘‘new’’ environmental issues becameincreasingly represented on the agendas of EMOs: through foundingsof new EMOs that attend primarily to newer issues or the extension andtransformation of existing organizations’ issue agendas to include thesenew issues.

In sum, the research presented here begins to advance ourunderstanding of changing issue representation within the environ-mental movement. At least among major EMOs, the ascendancy of newenvironmental issues has not been as extensive as it is often portrayed.While new environmental issues have been increasingly incorporated inorganizational issue agendas, issues of resource conservation andwildlife, traditionally associated with the environmental movement,continue to dominate. The majority of major EMOs attend solely totraditional environmental issues, and those that do attend to newenvironmental issues are, on average, significantly smaller.

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Appendix: Coding Issues

Below is a list of the nine different environmental issues tracked in this paper, followed byan abbreviated operational definition of each. Relevant Encyclopedia entries were coded todetermine the presence/absence (1, 0) of each issue on the agendas of major EMOs. Issuecategories are mutually exclusive and account for the evolving discourse of environmen-talism over the thirty year period under observation (e.g., the transition from trade tohazardous waste). When coding entries, all available information is used: section of theEncyclopedia, organization name, keyword, textual description, committee information,former names, publications, etc.

01 Natural resources: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with protecting,conserving or managing ‘‘natural resources’’ or ‘‘wilderness’’ generally, as well as specifictypes of natural resources (i.e., national parks and public lands, forests/trees, water, plants,farmland, or soil).

02 Wildlife: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with protecting ormanaging ‘‘wildlife’’ or their ‘‘habitat’’ in either general or specific (e.g., ducks, trout,deer) terms. Also included is mention of endangered or threatened species.

03 Energy: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with any type of energy orpower production other than nuclear (e.g., solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen, geothermal,oil, gas), or that it works in the areas of energy conservation and/or efficiency.


04 Pollution: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with environmental‘‘quality’’ or ‘‘pollution’’ generally, or with specific types of pollution such as air pollution(‘‘ozone,’’ ‘‘greenhouse gasses’’) or water pollution/quality.

05 Health: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with protecting humanhealth.

06 Toxics: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with issues related to theproduction, use, disposal and/or cleanup of trade wastes, hazardous or toxic materials, orchemicals (or specific hazardous/toxic materials such as asbestos), or pesticides(including herbicides or fungicides or mention of alternative methods of pestmanagement).

07 Nuclear: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with issues related tonuclear energy or weapons production, safety and/or waste.

08 Environmental Justice: if an organization indicates that it attends to or is concernedwith the unequal distribution of environmental pollution or protection by race, class, orgender, or if the entry indicates that the organization aims to work specifically with thesegroups. References to look for include: ‘‘minorities,’’ ‘‘working class,’’ ‘‘poor,’’ ‘‘black,’’‘‘latino,’’ ‘‘native American,’’ and ‘‘female.’’

09 Sustainable Development: if an organization indicates that it is concerned with‘‘sustainable development,’’ ‘‘bioregionalism’’ ‘‘ecological development,’’ ‘‘sound de-velopment,’’ etc. Also included is mention of transnational financial institutes andprocesses related to development, such as the ‘‘World Bank,’’ ‘‘IMF,’’ or ‘‘internationaldevelopment lending.’’


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Changing Issue Representation among Major United States Environmental Movement Organizations

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