The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy, 2nd Edition

Party politics and the environment

5.1 Michels’s theory of oligarchy

Who says organisation, says oligarchy.

(Michels 1959 [1915]: 401)

The Swiss political scientist Robert Michels

outlined an ‘iron law of oligarchy’ stating that all

political parties will inevitably turn into

oligarchies dominated by a small group of

leaders. Three main factors contribute to these

oligarchical tendencies:

1. Direct democracy is difficult to operate once
   an organisation grows beyond a certain size
   in terms of members and task differentiation,
   so hierarchy is more ‘efficient’.
   2. Individual rank-and-file party members lack
   the abilities, resources or motivation to
   participate effectively in complex
   organisations, so management is left to
   professionals.
   3. Party leaders run the party in their own
   interests, notably a love of power and
   regular contacts with the ruling elite, not
   those of the rank-and-file members.
   The German Greens were greatly influenced by
   the earlier ‘oligarchisation’ of the socialist SPD.
   See Beetham ( 1977 ) and Kitschelt ( 1989 ) for a
   critique of the ‘iron law of oligarchy’.

thefederal party executive. Similar rules prevented a class of professional
parliamentarians accumulating power over the wider party. A system of
mid-term rotation required parliamentarians to step down halfway through
their term of office in favour of a colleague lower on the party list. MPs
had to live on an income equivalent to that of a skilled labourer, donating
theremainder of their parliamentary salary to environmental causes. The
‘imperative mandate’ principle bound Green deputies to the resolutions or
instructions of the party congress and the federal council. By restricting the
trappings of office, the period of service, the accumulation of bureaucratic
posts and the focus on individual leaders, the Greens hoped to prevent the
personalisation of politics. The grassroots membership was also vested with
arange of powers to enable it to keep a tight rein on the activities of party
‘leaders’. Party meetings at every level, including the federal executive and
the parliamentary party, were normally open to all members, as well as non-
members. The party also pursued an aggressive policy of positive gender
discrimination, with equal male/female representation on candidate lists
and committees (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992 :106–9).
The second element of the APP model, the rejection of coalitions, was
intended to prevent the institutionalisation of the party into the estab-
lished system of parliamentary politics. Activists wanted the party to
act as the parliamentary arm of the new social movements and remain
committed to a role of fundamental opposition. The idea of the ‘movement-
party’ was captured in Petra Kelly’s ‘two-leg’ soccer metaphor: the party in
parliament was to be the free-moving leg and the extra-parliamentary move-
ment was the more important supporting leg. Coalitions were rejected
because they involved compromises that might lead the party to sacri-
fice its radical principles for short-term electoral or political gains. As
Kelly observed, ‘I am sometimes afraid that the greens will suddenly get