Green partiespolitical competition. But perhaps all of these explanations understate the
importance of the real cause of all the fuss: the state of the environment
itself.
This discussion of electoral success raises broader questions about how
green parties have adapted to the constraints of working within the par-
liamentary system and government, and how established parties have
responded to the green challenge; we turn to these issues in thenext
chapter.
◗ Further reading and websites
Doherty ( 2002 ) contains several excellent chapters on the development of
green parties. Burchell ( 2002 )provides an interesting comparative analysis
of green party development and change in four European countries. O’Neill
(1997)covers a wide range of countries, but is very dated. Muller-Rommel ̈
(1998)isinteresting on green party success. The journalEnvironmental Poli-
ticscontains regular profile articles that update green party electoral per-
formance in individual countries; see its 2002 special issue on green par-
ties in government (also published as M ̈uller-Rommel and Poguntke 2002 ).
Dalton ( 2006 )provides a good empirical survey of new politics issues, and
della Porta and Diani ( 2006 )isageneral discussion of social movement
theories.
The global green parties’ page provides links to green parties worldwide
(http://www.greens.org/) and the website of the European Federation of Green
Parties (http://www.europeangreens.org/) provides links to most European
national parties.
NOTES
1 The party is formally known as Bundnis 90/Die Gr ̈ ̈unen since merging in 1993
with the East German alliance of greens and civic action groups. The Greens
were edged into fifth place by the FDP and the Left Party in the 2005 federal
election.
2 See Abramson and Inglehart ( 1995 )foracombative rebuttal.
3 The concept of the ‘political opportunity structure’ has been widely used in the
social movement literature (Tarrow 1994 ;Kriesietal. 1995 ; McAdam et al. 1996 ),
although Rootes ( 1998 )notesthat several writers now prefer to use ‘political
opportunity’ as the use of ‘structure’ undervalues the importance of ‘agency’.
4 Detailed accounts of the development of the German Greens include Frankland
and Schoonmaker ( 1992 ), Poguntke ( 1993 ), Markovits and Gorski ( 1993 ), Scharf
(1994), and Mayer and Ely ( 1998 ).
5 See Faucher ( 1998 )and Doherty ( 2002 :ch. 4) for a fuller account of the
development of the French green movement.
6 See McCulloch ( 1992 )andRootes (1995c)for fuller accounts of the early
development of the Green Party.