New social movements and changes in political participation in Western Europe

Abstract

This article investigates to what extent the rise of the so‐called ‘new social movements’ has led to a major reorientation of patterns of extra‐parliamentary political participation in Western Europe. In a first step, recent changes in patterns of political participation in the Netherlands, both as regards the relative weights of ‘old’ and ‘new’ social movements, and as regards the relation between unconventional and conventional mobilisation, are discussed. In a second step, a comparative perspective is added, comparing patterns of participation in the 1980s in the Netherlands and five other West European countries, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Switzerland. The data show that a major shift towards new issues can only be traced in some of the countries, whereas in others traditional conflicts continue to dominate the extraparliamentary arena. Contrary to what the literature on new social movements suggests, the rise of new social movements is not associated with an increasing importance...