Green partiesstrongly with the Greens for the environmental vote. Kitschelt concludes
that green parties have been less successful in countries where another left-
libertarian party was already firmly established. By contrast, where social
democratic parties dominated government throughout the 1970s, as in West
Germany, Austria and Belgium, but there was no established left-libertarian
party, green parties were able to colonise vacant political territory. The per-
suasiveness of the left-libertarian thesis is underlined by the keenness of
many green parties to stress that they are not simply ‘environmental’ par-
ties, but are also pledged to a wider left-libertarian political programme.
One qualification to Kitschelt’s thesis is that left-libertarian parties have
generally done less well in countries, such as France, Italy, Greece, Portu-
gal and Spain, where a strong Communist Party provided stiff competition
forthe left-wing electorate, at least during the 1970s and 1980s (Markovits
and Gorski 1993 :17). Nevertheless, Kitschelt’s left-libertarian thesis is impor-
tant for underlining the significance of political competition in green party
development.
The POS framework shows how the interplay between structural, insti-
tutional and political factors can explain variations in green party perfor-
mance between countries. Yet the strength of the POS is also its weakness.
Although providing a much fuller account of green party development, by
throwing everything into the melting pot, the POS can end up looking like
a catch-all typology: ‘Used to explain so much, it may ultimately explain
nothing at all’ (Gamson and Meyer 1996 : 275). The POS also conflates durable
structural features of the political system, notably the electoral system, with
contingent features, such as the state of party competition at a particular
moment (Rootes1995b). Whilst electoral systems rarely change (although
theintroduction of proportional representation in some British elections
and the shift towards a plurality system in Italy show that they are not set
in stone), the configuration of party competition can alter dramatically, as
illustrated by the rightward shift of the German SPD and the thawing of
traditional left–right party alignments in France since the 1980s. As long as
these limitations are acknowledged, the POS provides a useful framework
fortesting how different institutional variables have influenced the devel-
opment of green parties.
Critical question 3
What is the principal factor determining the electoral success of green
parties?
◗ Whatever happened to the environment?
One danger of using broad structural developments or institutional vari-
ables to explain the rise of green parties is that the underlying issue – the