We examine the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental policy reform in Asia. Standard accounts treat NGOs as critical players in the policy process, responding to local environmental degradation and pressing states for environmental reforms. We argue, by contrast, that environmental policy changes are borne largely of the global environmental regime, and that domestic environmental NGOs in Asia are better seen as products of world society than as independent actors driving policy change. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses support our view. In event-history analyses of policy reform, we find that both ties to world society and linkages to the global environmental regime are stronger predictors of policy adoption rates than domestic environmental NGOs or local degradation. We suggest that the rhetorical centrality of `grassroots' NGOs results not from any direct impact such associations have on political change but rather from their roles in the theater of democracy, which is staged in a post-Second World War liberal world culture that celebrates bottom-up voluntary organizing and participation, even when such associational activity is only loosely connected to domestic political change.
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