PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS
as green parties remain of marginal importance in most countries, much
will depend, for the foreseeable future, on how the political elites respond
to the broad environmental challenge. This chapter assesses the impact of
environmental issues on party politics by looking at both these issues. The
first part examines the experience of green parties in dealing with the transi-
tion from pressure politics to parliamentary opposition (focusing primarily
on the German Greens) and, more recently, into government. The second
half of the chapter uses case studies of Germany, Britain and the USA to
assess how far established parties have absorbed environmental ideas and
toidentify the main factors shaping their responsiveness to the environ-
mental agenda.◗ Green parties in parliament
◗ The ‘ anti-party party’ in theory
Green parties place great importance onagency:themeansofachieving
thesustainable society. Die Gr ̈unen is often regarded as the paradigmatic
green party because its programme, organisation and electoral success have
provided the dominant model for green parties elsewhere. The founders
of Die Gr ̈unen set out to create a unique kind of party, which its leading
activist, Petra Kelly, called the ‘anti-party party’ (APP). The APP has two core
elements: a party organisation based on grassroots democratic principles,
and a rejection of coalitions with established parties.
The principle of grassroots democracy, orBasisdemokratie,oneofthefour
pillars of green politics discussed in Chapter3 (see Box3.5), underpins the
organisational structure of Die Gr ̈unen (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992 :
100–5; Poguntke 1993 :137–9), in sharp contrast to most major political
parties. Large, well-established parties are usually hierarchical, centralised,
bureaucratic and professional; typically, they have a small, dominant parlia-
mentary elite, a powerful professionalised national party machine, a rigid
rule-bound organisational structure, and a weak, inactive party member-
ship. These parties seem to confirm the ‘iron law of oligarchy’ identified
by RobertMichels ( 1959 ) which stated that all political parties – even those
with strong democratic principles – would always fall under the oligarchical
control of a small ruling elite (see Box5.1).
The organisational structure of Die Gr ̈unen was designed to avoid these oli-
garchical tendencies by preventing the emergence of a separate ruling class
of professional politicians who might resist the radical demands of the grass-
roots membership (see Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992 :ch. 5; Poguntke
1993 :ch. 8). Party officers were elected and unsalaried. Enforced job rotation
prevented anyone from being re-elected immediately to the same post. No
one could hold a party post and a parliamentary seat simultaneously. There
wasnosingle party leader; instead, a principle of collective leadership pro-
duced three elected national speakers to share power and responsibility with