Assessing the impact of social movements on environmental policy change with social network analysis methodology

Recently there has been a growing interest in the effects of social movements, especially with respect to environmental movement (Coglianese 2001; Dunlap and Mertig 2014; Mertig and Dunlap 2001; Spaargaren and Mol 1992). Many studies point to a lack of research of influence that social movements have on policy change (Burstein et al. 1995; Della Porta and Diani 2020), though it is an important point in the topic. Political scientists try to answer the questions: “When and how do activists achieve their goals? Is protest a necessary and/or sufficient condition for producing policy change? Do social movements have any long-term legacies on our societies? Do they change the life choices of those participating in protest activities? How does all this vary both across contexts and across different movements?” (Bosi et al. 2016 p.3) In this study we build a cross-national, longitudinal assessment of factors and actors that influence environmental policy change. Environmental social movements are only one of the possible actors and factors in this research. Environmental policy changes are measured both as policy outcomes (improvement of environmental qualities) and policy outputs (development of international cooperation, commitment, and concern about environmental problems). We use social influence network analysis model combined with structural equations modeling to test the hypotheses about environmental social movements impact in policy change.