Explaining stated partnerships of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations engaged in climate governance

Abstract Indigenous Peoples participate in climate governance in their own right and through their partnership networks. This research focuses on 100 Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations (IPOs) affiliated with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2266 partner organizations listed on their websites. Partnerships are central to how IPOs amplify their influence in climate governance: they provide access to resources, advocacy venues, and forms of legitimacy that IPOs often cannot generate alone; they also help in the represention of Indigenous voices in multilateral processes. Following homophily theory, we hypothesize that IPOs more frequently list as partners organizations with which they share similar characteristics, specifically regarding organization type, governance scale, and language. Following theories of political opportunity structures, we hypothesize that when domestic influence pathways are limited, IPOs more frequently list transnational and international organizations as partners. The findings of negative binomial regression models show that IPOs tend to list other IPOs and non-governmental organizations more frequently as partners, as well as organizations operating at the same governance scale or speaking the same language, providing empirical support for homophily. However, our empirical findings reject the hypothesis that domestic opportunity structures increase the likelihood of IPOs listing transnational and international partners. We contribute to the literature by showing that IPO partnership networks are shaped primarily by structural factors—a finding with important implications for understanding Indigenous participation in transnational climate governance.