The Organizational Structure of World Sustainability Culture: Network Formation Mechanisms Among SDG-Related INGOs

Since the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were proposed in 2015, they have become a shared normative framework among global actors, even if their implementation has been uneven. From the perspectives of neo-institutionalism and world polity theory, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) carry world culture, including a “world sustainability culture,” and their interaction networks form an organizational infrastructure for institutionalizing world-cultural models. However, the structure and generative mechanisms of INGO interaction networks remain underexplored. Therefore, this study focuses on SDG-related INGOs and analyzes cooperation, partnership, and membership networks using a curved Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) to assess endogenous structural tendencies and the effects of exogenous attributes on tie-formation probability. The results show that these interaction networks exhibit distinct structural tendencies, and that tie-formation probability is influenced by embeddedness in national and subject domains and by the world-cultural themes they carry, with subject similarity emerging as the most important factor. Further observation suggests that membership ties may facilitate cooperative relationships among INGOs. This study extends the analysis of world culture and world polity from states–INGO affiliation networks to INGO–INGO interaction networks, advancing understanding of the structure and formation mechanisms of global sustainability organizational networks.