Key issues

1. ◗ What is distinctive about green party organisation and strategy?

2. ◗ What have green parties in government achieved?

3. ◗ Has electoral success and entry to government changed green parties?

4. ◗ Do party responses to the environment follow partisan lines?

5. ◗ What factors influence the greening of established parties?

Chapter 4 charted the electoral appearance of green parties across Europe. Yet the simple fact of green representation does not guarantee any influence in the parliamentary arena, particularly as Green MPs frequently advocate radical policies and behave in unconventional ways. Where green parties gain electoral success, their political influence will partly be determined by the way they adapt to the pressures of conventional party politics. However, 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 transition 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 to identify the main factors shaping their responsiveness to the environmental agenda.