Social Movements, Self-Limiting Radicalism and the Green Party in West Germany

Abstract

The Green Party in West Germany represents a renewed challenge to interpretations of the relationship between social movements and parliamentary politics. Its emergence and durability can, to a large degree, be explained in terms of an attempt to reconcile innovative with established organizational forms, radical goals with reformist political practice, and the interests of the new middle class with those of marginalised social groups. Support for this interpretation is derived from empirical studies and from theoretical accounts of social movements. The latter have focused on the reconstruction of the most influential paradigms, namely, the traditional, resource mobilization and action-oriented ones (see Cohen 1985). Although largely conceptual, these attempts to arrive at a new synthesis lend support to an analysis of the Green Party in terms of its `self-limiting' characteristics.