PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS
Slovenia and Ukraine, as part of anti-Communist alliances in the early 1990s,
only for them to disappear as an electoral force when these alliances broke
up. In most countries, this brief Green success was a phenomenon peculiar
tothat particular historical juncture, when many dissidents joined ecologi-
cal movements simply because they represented one of the few legal political
organisations allowed under the former Communist regimes. One exception
is Latvia where the green party combined with a farmers party to form the
Green/Farmers Union party, gaining electoral success as part of the minority
coalition government that came to power in 2004. The Czech Greens won
six seats as part of a centre-right alliance in the June 2006 election. Other-
wise it is barren ground for the Greens. Those fledgling green parties that
do exist in the ‘new’ Europe badly need the resources, organisational know-
how and experience of their counterparts in the ‘old’ Europe. However, no
Green MEPs were elected from the ten accession states in the 2004 Euro-
pean Parliament elections, and the dismal performance of most Green can-
didates demonstrates the Herculean nature of the task ahead (Carter 2005 :
109–10). There is little evidence of any groundswell of environmental con-
cern in the transitional states, where the typical core green constituency –
thenew-middle-class, postmaterialist voters – remains relatively small. Nor
will it be easy for green parties to carve out their own political space in the
crowded party systems characteristic of these countries. Consequently, the
prognosis for the Greens making a significant electoral breakthrough in
the transitional states must be pessimistic.◗ Conclusion
No single argument adequately explains the rise of green parties. There is
some support for the claim that green parties are an expression of a new
politics. Several green parties originally sprang from a vibrant new social
movement milieu, with anti-nuclear protest acting as a critical mobilising
condition. Green parties do draw support disproportionately from the ‘new
middle class’, but this statistical relationship does not tell us very much,
as the majority of this group supports other parties. Although Inglehart’s
cultural thesis that affluence and early socialisation have produced a popu-
lation whose values are increasingly postmaterial has important theoretical
and methodological weaknesses, there is considerable evidence that green
parties do attract a relatively large share of postmaterial supporters. How-
ever, educational attainment, particularly possession of a higher degree in
an arts or social science subject, may provide the strongest causal link with
green support. Suggestions that the green constituency is gradually ‘grey-
ing’ could imply that there is a one-off generational cohort passing through
thesystem, although the evidence is again inconclusive. The political oppor-
tunity structure helps to explain variation in green party performance by
directing attention to institutional factors, such as the electoral system, and