Gaining Access to the State: Political Opportunities and Agency in Forest Activism in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper investigates the complex nature of access to the state for environmental movement organizations (EMOs) and adopts an interactionist approach to explore inter-organizational networking between EMOs and state actors. The paper supports existing evidence that proximate political opportunities are in part contingent on the interests, claims and frames of policy actors. The main theoretical contribution of this paper is to illustrate that EMOs strategically adapt to existing opportunity environments and actively seek to engage state actors that are most receptive to their demands, as opposed to those that have most influence in the domain, and that new modes of governance facilitate such access. Using evidence from forest activism in Indonesia, it shows that: lobbying less powerful but more receptive actors is a strategy that EMOs use to overcome limited political opportunities and that semiindependent multi-actor forums expand access of EMOs to potential state actor allies.The paper also shows that within the Indonesian context these multi-stakeholders forums are actively supported by international organisations, which therefore directly contribute to expanding opportunities for EMOs.

Politicians and Social Movements: The Impact of Electoral Victory on Local, National, and Transnational Activism by Hmong Americans in Minneapolis–St. Paul

“…Opportunity is actualized by interactions between social movements and state officials (Di Gregorio, 2013;Saunders, 2009) because the boundary between protest and conventional politics is more permeable than previously thought (Goldstone, 2004). After an opening in the political system, social movements must still actively pursue access to power, such as gaining the support of sympathetic politicians.…”

“…The nine campaigns ranged from gender and sexual orientation inequality within the community to unjust actions by municipal, state, and federal government as well as human rights violations against the Hmong in Thailand and Laos. Building on the idea that movements target state actors receptive to their demands (Di Gregorio, 2013), the data are then used to measure four ways Senator Moua and Representative Thao did or did not support each campaign. Consistent with political opportunity theory, the politicians provided at least one form of support to eight of the nine campaigns.…”

Producing expert capital: how opposing same-sex marriage experts dominate fields in the United States and France

“…That also makes it embodied within experts themselves. Although activists can forge alliances with experts that share their ideological perspectives (Gregorio, 2014;Meyer, 2004), sometimes through mediating groups like think tanks (Medvetz, 2012), academics and professionals form their own "epistemic communities" (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) within knowledge production fields that overlap with but are distinct from political fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012;King & Walker, 2014). Furthermore, though some activists can become experts themselves (Cresswell & Spandler, 2013;Epstein, 1996), doing so requires that they operate within the norms of knowledge production fields.…”

Contesting ‘Deforestation’: Civil Society Movements and Knowledge Co-Production in Indonesia

“…Activists mostly target The Ministry of Forestry 48 and the People's Representative Council (DPR) (the main Indonesian national legislature), the Ministry of Environment and the National Land Planning Agency in their advocacy (Di Gregorio, 2014). With the seemingly more accomodating approach by state, civil society organizations and activists take the advantage of having access to bureaucratic policy making as a means to articulate specific political demands.…”

“…It controls the revenue flow from logging concessions and other forest fees and contributes roughly 1% of the total revenue of the Indonesian Government. Its main priority is to advance large-scale forest exploitation for national development aims, and while sustainability standards exist, they are only weakly enforced (see Di Gregorio, 2014). aftermath of forest fires in 2015, President Joko Widodo (also known as Jokowi) established 'Peatlands Restoration Agency, consisting of various civil society actors, including academia and environmental NGOs.…”