Nevertheless the RMA had its value for this research on East-East cooperation among environmental NGOs in CEE. Especially in stressing the importance of mobilizing resources for environmental NGOs. Resources, both human and financial, are definitely needed for the survival of environmental NGOs. The lack of resources and the problems with mobilizing resources even seem to be bigger for Eastern than for Western NGOs. The socio-economical situation and the current political situation and interest for environmental issues in a country might be factors influencing the facility to mobilize resources. The latter stresses again the importance of the political process model for this research, since this model focuses more on the political surroundings of a social movement than the RMA does.
A debatable characteristic of both the RMA and the political process model is the underlying idea of the 'rational actor'. The attitude and behavior of most of the groups turned out to be focused on their own survival as organizations. In order to survive enough resources are needed, both financial and human. When we describe 'rational' as being focused on mobilizing enough resources to keep the organization going and growing, two ways of 'rational' behavior are found. First the incentive of the funding organizations which promote East-East cooperation is seen by the NGOs as a motivation to write such project proposals. Some of these project proposals are just cooperative, because of the extra funds available. Project proposals and sometimes even projects with fake cooperation does occur. For example the proposal with an individual Polish advisor to a Bulgarian project, coming once in two months at USD 800 excluding travel expenses does not sound as a reliable form of East-East cooperation. In our description it is 'rational' for NGOs to find whatever forms of East-East cooperation in order to get more and bigger funds.
At second the popularity of Western volunteers and/or advisors shows the NGOs' focus on resource mobilization. Almost all interviewed groups have a Westerner, had one, or wish they had one. Why are the Westerners so popular?
Because they are expected to write successful project proposals in the language and style the (Western) funding organizations award; which of course happens a lot of times. With a Westerner in the organization funds are coming more easily and the status of the NGO in the NGO community rises.
On micro level the Eastern volunteers and employees act rationally in the way that they want to keep their jobs. From another point of view it is not that profitable to work in the environmental movement. In other economical sectors a lot more money and respect can be earned. Anyway, this research was not focused on the personal motivation for working in the environmental movement. The above mentioned speculation comes forth from the more private talks I had with the environmental activists besides the official interview.
All five opinion leaders for each country, except Poland, whose country coordinator of Milieukontakt Oost-Europa was not available to give his opinion, gave the requested list with East-East cooperative environmental NGOs for their country. The opinion leaders came from three organizations which deal quite a long time with the environmental movement in Central Europe. Milieukontakt Oost-Europa and the Regional Environmental Center had two opinion leaders per country, where the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe had one. Four opinion leaders per country were Central European natives, only the country coordinators of Milieukontakt Oost-Europa are Westerners, namely Dutch. Both quantity and quality of the opinion leaders is high in relation to the size of the research, although some criticism can be given. The difference in amount of listed East-East cooperative NGOs differed from five to 35 groups. Since the final sample is based upon how many times a NGO was listed, the opinion leaders who gave only a few names had a relatively big influence. Their few listed groups usually entered the sample. All the others, sometimes listed two or three times by the other opinion leaders, did not enter the research. This means that only the really big and well known NGOs were interviewed. Smaller ones that East-East cooperate as well are missed, probably because of the limited knowledge of a particular opinion leader. The attitude and behavior of these missed smaller East-East cooperative NGOs might differ a little from those of the big and well known East-East cooperative NGOs. Specific factors for East-East cooperation only important for small East-East cooperative NGOs might be missed. The general conclusion however on the main factors is not expected to be different for smaller NGOs. Besides that the big and well known organizations are supposed to be 'market leaders' in the environmental movement. Their approach might be followed by the smaller groups later on. So for the outcome of the research not much difference can be expected from a bigger sample including the smaller NGOs, or from adding some smaller groups to the already existing sample of well known NGOs.
The total amount of interviewed East-East cooperative NGOs is 20. The opinion leaders listed all together for the four countries 108 East-East cooperative groups. This means that 18,5% of the East-East cooperative NGOs is interviewed. For the respective countries this percentage is:
Most groups were listed by only one or two opinion leaders. The NGOs which were listed at least three times had a high chance to enter the final sample. About 80% of these strongly recommended NGOs were interviewed. All NGOs listed four or five times entered the sample.
The research shows the opinions of 20 leading environmental NGOs on East-East cooperation. This is a relatively small group compared to the whole environmental movement in Central Europe, but those groups are the face of the environmental movement in Central Europe and the most experienced East-East cooperative NGOs. That is together with the above mentioned statistics the reason that the taken sample can be considered representative for the average East-East cooperative NGO in Central Europe.
All interviews were done by myself in face-to-face interviews, mostly in the NGOs offices, based upon one questionnaire, which form was filled out during the interview. [see Appendix I] The difficulties that arose were for example language problems. When a translator was needed, the translation was usually done by a NGO participant. A lot of time was spend on discussions among participants themselves in local language. After such discussions for example on a particular question, the final answer was translated to me, but of course I could not check if this information was valid and/or translated correctly. Another type of language problems occurred in NGOs were activists spoke a little English, and/or some German, so that I had to put together the given information into a logical format. The elaboration of the interviews let room for mistakes and misunderstandings as well. To solve that problem all elaborated interviews were sent back to the NGOs, so that they could correct the text. Ten out of twenty NGOs sent back their comments, just as the five interviewed opinion leaders. Usually these were only minor changes and/or additional information. In two cases NGOs weakened their own statements a little. The elaborated interviews can be found in the side report belonging to this script.