Parties and movements: getting from here to there

Abstract

Part II examines the question of green agency; or how do we get from here to there? Whether we are pursuing the radical green utopias envisaged by ecocentrics or a more moderate environmentally benign world, it is important to examine how we might achieve that sustainable society. One distinction to be made is that between collective action and individual lifestyle politics. The focus in Part II is on the main forms of collective action in environmental politics, namely green parties, the ‘greening’ of established parties and environmental groups, leaving the discussion of selected individual strategies, such as green consumerism, to Part III. A second distinction arises from the familiar reformist versus radical dilemma that underpins environmental politics. A broad strategic choice facing any political movement is whether to seek change through legislative institutions and the use of conventional forms of political activity or whether to adopt a more confrontational strategy that breaks the law and challenges the dominant rules and values of the political system. This tension lies at the heart of practical environmental politics: it underpins debates within green parties, colours their relationships with established parties and cuts across the environmental movement. It is also important to place the rise of environmental politics within broader debates in political science about the trend towards a ‘new politics’ in western industrialised societies. To understand the ‘new politics’, we need first to understand what is meant by the ‘old politics’ that the ‘new politics’ is supposedly replacing.