This article provides a “top‐down” explanation for the rapid growth of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the postwar period, focusing on two aspects of political globalization. First, I argue that international political opportunities in the form of funding and political access have expanded enormously in the postwar period and provided a structural environment highly conducive to NGO growth. Secondly, I present a norm‐based argument and trace the rise of a pro‐NGO norm in the 1980s and 1990s among donor states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), which has actively promoted the spread of NGOs to non‐Western countries. The article ends with a brief discussion of the symbiotic relationship among NGOs, IGOs, and states promoting international cooperation.
Since the late 1980s, there has been a sudden rise in the number of advocacy NGOs in Japan involved in global and transnational environmental issues. This is a surprising development considering the difficult domestic conditions faced by social activists in Japan trying to organize at the national level. To explain these recent changes, this article looks to three international processes: (1) international opportunities, (2) transnational diffusion, and (3) international socialization of state actors. Using the case of Kiko Forum, a Japanese network organization created in 1996 to mobilize support for ambitious greenhouse gas reductions, this article traces how these three processes provided new external resources for activists and altered domestic structures themselves.
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