Exploring, cooperation, competition, and co-optation among mainstream and environmental justice organizations in California

Areas of cooperation and competition between the mainstream environmental movement and the environmental justice movement have been examined and discussed at length by advocates in both movements as well as academics. What has not been given enough study are the power dynamics between the two movements and the strategies the two movements employ to coexist in the same policy environment. Both seek to influence key stakeholders that are often adversaries of the two movements on environmental and land use policy decisions (i.e., usually government and business). Since each movement has a different definition of "environment" they, too, are sometimes adversaries on certain policy issues. What is one of the unique aspects of this relationship is that the mainstream environmentalists enjoyed a hegemonic dominance of the movement until the emergence of the environmental justice movement, but the new movement appears to have broken their issue monopoly.;This research explores ways in which two movements in the same issue area in the post-Civil Rights era political landscape manage their relationship. Advocates of both the mainstream and environmental justice communities shared their views on the areas of cooperation, competition, and co-optation between the movements. The scope is limited to California primarily because California's progressive environmental regulatory history and demographic diversity makes it ideal for exploring on the most level regulatory playing field the power dynamics between the two movements.;Specific to the relationship between the mainstream and environmental justice movements, the findings suggest the external policy environment con produce incentives for both movements to cooperate, and that cooperative efforts to realize their respective policy goals rests on their finding a sufficient number of partners, that those potential partners be available to them, that those potential partnerships be assessed as valuable, and that mutual trust exists between the partners. Competition and co-optation are manifestations of failure to achieve, or perhaps to seek, cooperation.;More general to the research on interest groups, additional study is needed to explore whether these power dynamics hold in areas where, unlike California, there is no statute recognizing environmental justice as a government policy priority, and where low-income and minority populations make up a smaller percentage of a jurisdictions residents.