Changing the climate: International environmental institutions, non-governmental organizations and mobilization in a post-Kyoto world

In this study, I define and assess the institutionalization of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within transnational politics by examining the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its relationship to accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from 1991 to 2007. I combine participant observation, interview, and network analysis in order to assess institutionalization as part of a multi-level polity, in which NGOs interact with states and international institutions in both domestic and international contexts. Embedded in this analysis is an examination of the Climate Action Network (CAN) in Canada and the United States following Canada's ratification and the US's non-ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.;The insights of this study provide theoretical insight into NGOs' institutionalization within transnational politics, the role that transnational coalitions may play in this process, the relationship between insider and outsider identities as well as their relationship to institutionalization, the distinction between mobilization and institutionalization, and the relationship between structure and agency.;By assessing the intra- and inter-organizational dynamics of NGOs within the UNFCCC negotiations, I demonstrate that transnational coalitions may be one of the primary ways in which NGOs are becoming institutionalized in transnational politics. By assessing the construction of insider and outsider identities within one transnational coalition---CAN---I demonstrate that insiders enacted their identities by constructing and communicating the institutional memory of the framework. Outsiders, beginning in 2005, enacted their identities by doing the 'emotion work' of the mobilization around the 2005 Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Canada. Their enactment of these roles and their relationship to one another redefined the boundaries between institutionalized and contentious politics. Finally, I demonstrate how CAN's institutionalization within the UNFCCC shifted down in Canada after Canada's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by acting as a cohesive coalition and engaging in institutionalized politics. In the US, by contrast, CAN organizations fell back upon relations outside of CAN and engaged in contentious politics.