Why some greens are more powerful than others: on destabilisation,power shifts and the democratic potential of NGOs

This article studies how the collective empowerment of NGOs that is embodied in the destabilisation of world politics is distributed among individual organisations in the NGO community. The article focuses on non-governmental power in three global environmental conventions. It seeks to explain power differences between individual organisations in terms of possession of resources such as income, expertise, prominence and independence. In contrast to previous NGO research, this article applies an extensive and statistical approach. The main finding is that there is a global green elite of well-equipped NGOs that is allotted most power. This result is discussed in the light of recent debates on the democratic potential of an expanded role for NGOs in global politics.