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Evidence abounds that transnational advocacy networks (TANs) have played an important role promoting environmental causes and human rights issues, especially in the last quarter-century. Less well explored, however, are the long-term impact that advocacy networks have on ?developing? countries where TANs have focused their campaigns. For example, Brazil saw a steep decline in deforestation throughout the late 1990s despite the fact that the international campaign to protect Amazonian resources peeked in the early 1990s. As such, unless we believe the World Bank flawlessly executed the supervisory policies suggested by many international non governmental organizations (INGOs), we need a better causal explanation of why environmental conditions in Brazil continue to improve. While a leverage politics/?boomerang? story best explains environmental policy changes during the 1980s and early 1990s, it is not sufficient to explain the role that TANs have played in Brazilian environmental politics during the past decade, nor does an ?INGOs-as-primary-actors-within-networks? model correctly describe the current composition of environmental advocacy networks in Brazil. In this paper, I argue that continued improvement in Brazilian environmental policy can only be explained by a second-order process which occurred during the original Amazonian campaign: an information cascade that catalyzed Brazilian NGOs and raised the salience of environmental issues amongst both voters and politicians. By examining how international forces increase the resource base of domestic NGOs and raise public awareness regarding environmental issues, we can explain more of the current improvement in Brazil?s implementation of development programs. In addition to the Brazilian case study, this paper concludes with a research design that seeks to generalize the information-shock model across both countries and issue-areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new landmark for international cooperation is likely to emerge on the next two years of climate change discussions, and the result could be the reverse of tropical deforestation worldwide, which should benefit present and future generations. On the last ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]