Three waves of political mobilization in Western Europe and the coming of a fourth

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyzes the new social movements (NSMs) from the perspectives of historical sociology and futures studies. The NSMs are seen as the fourth and last wave of broad ideological‐political mobilization in European history. This wave, called green and beginning in the 1960s, is compared to the violet wave (sixteenth and seventeenth century reformation), the blue wave (eighteenth and nineteenth century liberalism) and the red wave (nineteenth and twentieth century socialism). It is argued that the four waves form a cumulative pattern, in which the preceding waves prepare the ground for the next. On this basis the northwestern part of Europe is predicted to fall under the strongest impact of the green wave while eastern and southern Europe are expected to provide meager soil for this type of development. The paper also investigates the future possibility of women's liberation becoming a major force behind a green mass mobilization.