Cleavages in green parties: The gases of the Dutch, French and German Greens

Abstract

Abstract The article presents a comparison of the political stands and cleavages in the Green Parties of Germany, France and the Netherlands. Soon after their foundation, Green Parties were forced to extend their platform beyond ecology and, as a consequence, dissent arose about giving up autonomy and searching for alliances, about the stands to adopt on non‐environmental issues and about the choice of a policy style. The article presents a comparison of the three Parties’ stances. Analysis of cleavages in each of the three Parties reveals that the internal conflicts are still dominated by questions concerning alliances, the character and scope of each Party's leftist agenda and the opposition between a pragmatic and a radical policy style. Though the cleavages in all three Parties refer to these conflicts, there are differences as to which cleavage is the most significant: the French Greens are preoccupied with the question of alliances, while the German and Dutch Greens are much more divided on the question of policy style and characterized by an opposition between ‘Socialist Greens’ and ‘Social Democratic Greens’. The data stem from a two‐year field study and a membership survey in the three Parties.