Green Party Research Articles

Social Control of Everyday Life and Political Construction of (Montenegrin) Identity

Abstract The research problem is the influence of global crisis on identity and daily life of Montenegrin people. The subject is the political construction of (Montenegrin) identity, as a result of social control on everyday life, where identities are born. For the purpose of researching this relation, the starting point is the explanatory potential of J. Habermas’s contemporary socio-political theory about the colonization of the lifeworld by an expansionist logic of the political-economic constellation (system). Scientific goals are: 1) description of the colonization of the lifeworld and the construction of (Montenegrin) identity, as an indicator of social crisis (in Montenegro); 2) understanding the causal factors (causes, motives) of (Montenegrin) identity construction; 3) generic explanation of the political construction of (Montenegrin) identity, through strategies, policies, educational and media influences. Social goals refer to: 1) expansion of the fund of knowledge about contemporary (Montenegrin) society and its problematic aspects; 2) pragmatic explanations of the problem of social control of everyday life through the re-actualization of socio-political concepts; 3) indication of guidelines for possible changes for the better in the sphere of everyday life in the foreseeable future. The methodology concerns the main hypothesis that by constructing the identity of people in the post-industrial society, social control of everyday life is realized. Auxiliary hypotheses are: 1) Identity construction takes place through strategies, policies, educational and media influences as segments of social control aimed at managing social resources from the local to the global level. 2) With instruments of social control, a desirable system of values of individuals and social groups is established with the aim of preventing, delaying, compensating, and transforming their potential subversive action (undermining the system from within). The independent or causal variable is the social control of everyday life, while the dependent or consequential variable is the constructed identity. Making final findings will be facilitated by the synthesis, inductive and deductive methods of reasoning, as well as the method of comparison with a case study. The results refer to the achieved goals and the general conclusion that the system’s power logic reduces the sphere of free and open communication of individuals, thus their identity becomes a place of permanent crisis due to the threat of the meaning of everyday life within which identity is formulated. This crisis is the reason that identities will remain endangered until the question of alienation of life is raised, in accordance with the capitalist imperatives of unlimited economic growth and consumption, and instrumental-rational interaction. As a reaction to the system dominance, the forces of resistance are strengthening, in the form of new alternative grassroots social movements, such as Civil Movement United Reform Action (URA), in Montenegro, which is pro-European green political party of the left center and social-liberal ideological provenance.

Accelerating the sustainability transition of brown regions: Unlocking the speed factor

Green innovations aim to improve and reduce the environmental impact of economic activities. Thus far, research focus on the positive trajectories of green transition. Continuing in this direction we focus on brown regions (i.e. specialized in fossil-fuel technologies) and the challenges that they face to become sustainable. Taking as example German Labour Market Regions we identify brown regions and measure their transition using an innovative approach based on Social Network Analysis and Knowledge Spaces. We find that the technological relatedness to green technologies, having a high life satisfaction in the region and the presence of the green party in the local government facilitate the transition. However, strong economic structures based on brown activities do not generally increase the transition speed. Our findings imply that technological and socio-economic characteristics influence the speed of transition, a dimension not yet accounted for in the sustainability transition literature.

Countering the “Climate Cult” – Framing Cascades in Far-Right Digital Networks

ABSTRACT In many contemporary democracies, digital networks on the far-right have established themselves as “alternatives” to liberal institutions. Within this nexus of parties, hyper-partisan news, and social media channels, opposition to climate change mitigation has emerged as a central cross-cutting issue. Despite the prominence of these trends, we still know relatively little about the hierarchies that govern these communicative ties. This study draws on the concept of cascading frame activation to trace communication flows between four distinct actor types within the German far right. We apply a mixed-methods approach across social media and websites over a period of 19 months. First, we conduct a time series analysis via a vector autoregression model, to assess potential causal relationships between the issue agendas of far-right actor types. Automated text analysis then inductively generates a lexicon exclusive to far-right posts about climate change, which we qualitatively assess and manually cluster into distinct frame categories. We conclude by tracing framing cascade sequences across the various actor types. Our results reveal significant associations between the issue agenda of far-right actors, especially among right-wing news sites (RNS) and hyperactive accounts. Within this network, the most dominant frames demarcate out-groups, such as the Green Party or climate activists. Notably, RNS play a central role in shaping this discourse, initiating 42% of the identified frames before they find wider dissemination. These findings expand our understanding of hierarchies and new communication pathways among partisan media, political parties, and their extended digital networks on the far right.

Human Capital and Climate Change

Abstract Addressing climate change requires individual behavior change and voter support for proclimate policies, yet surprisingly little is known about how to achieve these outcomes. In this paper, we estimate causal effects of additional education on pro-climate outcomes using new compulsory schooling law data across 20 European countries. We analyze effects on proclimate beliefs and behaviors, as well as novel data on policy preferences and voting for green parties. Results show that a year of education substantially increases pro-climate beliefs, behaviors, and policy preferences.

The Energy Transition and Support for the Radical Right: Evidence from the Netherlands

Energy transition policies often have distributional effects that could have electoral consequences. I study this issue in the context of a Dutch policy change that increased taxes on household natural gas consumption and redistributed the revenues as subsidies for renewables. Radical right parties were the only source of political opposition. A Differences-in-Differences (DiD) analysis with panel data from 2007-2020 shows that after the policy change renters with individualized utility bills became 5–6 percentage points more likely to vote for the radical right compared to renters with utilities included in their rents. Renters with individualized utility bills also became relatively less sympathetic towards the Green party and more concerned about price increases but they did not alter their left-right self-placements nor their views on immigration or the European Union. A secondary analysis finds similar effects for individuals (including home-owners) who are energy poor. This suggests an emerging economically rooted political cleavage over energy transition policies.

Variations in Social Europe? National political parties' positions on EU‐level social regulations

AbstractHow do national political parties vary in their views on Social Europe? I focus on an aspect that has received less attention despite its growing prevalence—EU regulations with ambitions to diminish social inequality to encourage social convergence among Member States. Since the Juncker Commission, the European Commission has become increasingly active in pursuing this aspect of Social Europe. Thus, understanding parties' positions on this aspect of Social Europe has become more important. However, current literature lacks measures of national party stances towards Social Europe, and explanations for these stances. Here, I use data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (2006, 2009, 2014 and 2019) to develop an indirect measure of party positions on Social Europe. Leveraging studies in party politics and EU politics, I propose that party families and national economic conditions may affect parties' positions on Social Europe. The analyses suggest substantial variation in parties' positions on Social Europe both within and across party families. The analyses also demonstrate that socialist and green parties support Social Europe most, whereas radical right parties support it least. Lastly, I do not find systematic evidence that national economic conditions influence parties' support for this aspect of Social Europe.

Do Parties Matter? Party Positions and European Voters’ Attitudes toward Economic and Political Globalization

Abstract To what extent do party positions influence voters’ attitudes toward the economic and political aspects of globalization? Initially an issue following a left-right dimension of conflict, globalization increasingly divides mainstream from nonmainstream parties. In this study, I argue that parties help citizens form opinions on globalization issues. I then use data on voters’ attitudes and party positions on globalization to test this supply-side theory of globalization attitudes on both economic and political dimensions. Holding demand-side factors such as economic self-interest and predispositions/values constant, I find that party positions strongly affect voters’ views on economic and political globalization, with the effect being similar to that of education. Moreover, I find that the effect of cues from left- and right-populist parties is much more negative than that of mainstream parties, replicating previous elite-level findings on the positioning of these party families. Finally, green party cues show conflicting results for the economic and political dimensions, with green cues affecting voters negatively on economic globalization but positively on political globalization. The findings in this study call for a deeper exploration of the supply-side determinants of globalization attitudes.

When (and how) ideas become arguments: the regulation of party donations in Germany

Abstract This article aims to explain the deviant German case of an early and comprehensive regulation of party donations (combining a high level of transparency and incentives for small donations). Given the limited explanatory power of economic and institutional factors, the article emphasises the causal role of ideas for a policy stabilisation which occurred after 1993. A process-tracing analysis suggests that the 1983–1993 reform period was characterised by a conflict of ideas. During this conflict, ideas regarding undisclosed donations as an anti-democratic interference with democratic political competition came to prevail over ideas regarding all donations as a necessary condition for democratic competition irrespective of their regulation. The key actors in this conflict were, on the one hand, the new Green party which resuscitated the idea of donations being potentially anti-democratic and, on the other hand, the Constitutional Court which ultimately endorsed this ideational legacy promoted by the Greens. After 1993, donations in Germany came to be accepted as a necessary evil whose anti-democratic potential had to be limited by transparency obligations and incentives for small donations. The findings presented here suggest that policymakers need to link attempts to regulate party donations to ideational legacies (if available) to successfully tackle political corruption.

Socialized with "old cleavages" or "new dimensions": An Age-Period-Cohort analysis on electoral support in Western European multiparty systems (1949–2021)

Across Western Europe, the electoral base of formerly dominating parties on the left and the right has been eroding in the past decades. In contrast, both far-right parties and green parties could expand their vote share in numerous elections all over Western Europe - especially among younger voters. Still, those transformations in multiparty systems remain understudied: Are those electoral differences representing a cohort effect within the left and within the right bloc? This study uses survey data from ten Western European countries spanning over 60 years to test for cohort differences in political blocs. By applying multilevel logistic regression models and generalized additive mixed models, the analysis yields generational differences within the left and the right, with more recent cohorts being more likely to vote for greens than other left-wing and more likely to prefer the far-right over other right-wing parties. Those results shed light on the cohort-driven electoral realignment in Western Europe.

Political expectations and electoral responses to wind farm development in Sweden

Wind energy expansion has influenced electoral behavior by decreasing support for incumbents, primarily explained by not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) arguments. However, how does the establishment of wind farms shape electoral behavior when municipal politicians can veto such establishments? Analyzing Sweden, this study shows that voters respond not only by retrospectively evaluating past constructions but also by evaluating parties differently based on their expectations. Our results indicate that parties more likely to approve turbine constructions are punished more than those less expected to do so. Additionally, we find no evidence that the construction of wind turbines influences support for either Green or radical right-wing parties. In conclusion, this study show that the political repercussions of wind farm expansion are multifaceted, influenced by a combination of past actions, future expectations, and the ideological stances of political parties.

How Greens turn gray: Green Party politics and the depoliticization of energy and climate change

Decarbonization efforts and sustainability transformations represent highly contested socio-political projects. Yet, they often encounter various forms of depoliticization. This article illuminates how a grand socio-ecological challenge like the energy transition gets depoliticized by an unusual suspect, namely Germany's Green Party. Based on a qualitative content analysis of Green Party programs, party conventions, and additional documents published between 1980 and 2021, this article traces how the Green Party has depoliticized the energy transition over time, emphasizing a shift from radical societal change to ecological modernization. The changing stance of the German Greens on the country's energy transition reflects more profound changes of a future society the party collectively envisions through their energy and climate change agenda. These changes result from a struggle between moderates advocating incremental political reforms and radicals aiming for more fundamental and systemic societal change. By merging sustainability transition research with science and technology studies, this article makes a twofold contribution: First, it proposes a conceptual framework to investigate social and political futures envisioned through energy and climate politics. Second, the article empirically demonstrates the long process of depoliticization for an unusual but critical case. Germany's Green Party has embraced a technocentric vision of the energy transition, thereby suppressing earlier notions of broader societal change, such as anti-capitalism and energy democracy. This article spells out implications for the wider field of energy and climate politics and concludes with suggestions for future research.

Doorknocks and dog bandanas: a new conception of field campaigning activities

ABSTRACT Despite pundit claims that field campaigns contributed to the Australian Greens Party and independent candidates’ successes in the 2022 federal election, little is known about the activities conducted. The use and development of novel activities has been established, but what happens on the ground remains largely invisible. Comparing the results of semistructured interviews with participants from across the Australian Greens Party and the ‘teal’ independents (N = 73), this article develops a new understanding of the activities of field campaigning and illuminates the differences between independent and party campaigns. The Greens are shown to focus more on traditional voter contact activities, while the independent campaigns prioritise visibility and volunteer participation. From these results, this study establishes a new definition of field campaigning and clarifies the way in which institutional knowledge, or the lack thereof, shapes the conception and development of campaign activities.

The Greening of the Others? The Destination of Alliance and Green Party Transfers, 1997–2023

ABSTRACT: Northern Ireland’s elections are typically a contest about Union versus unity. However, constitutionally neutral parties have increased their vote share. Both communal blocs are now minorities. How significant is this shift? This paper analyses transfers from Alliance and the Green Party to nationalist and unionist blocs between 1997 and 2023. I show why it is reasonable to estimate that the nationalist share of Other party transfers has doubled. The concept of notional communal bloc (communal bloc first preferences added to lower preference votes for that bloc from Alliance and the Green Party) is introduced. It is estimated that the notional nationalist bloc is now a majority of Northern Ireland’s voters. Evidence of election-time communal realignment of many communally dealigned voters is presented. Northern Ireland is in a transformed and more complex political space: still pro-Union but also notionally nationalist. The implications of this transformation for zero-sum politics and reunification are discussed.

Razvoj ekoloških partija i zelenih političkih pokreta u Republici Srbiji

The following work aims to provide an analytical overview of the development of environmental political parties in Serbia. By relying on the methods of process tracing, as well as on Lipset and Rokkan's and other relevant theories of sociopolitical cleavages, the work examines how political events that occurred in Serbia over the last three decades led to the formation of eco-activist movements and parties, especially within the last several years. More specifically, the fulfillment of the primary aim requires - but is not limited to - an analysis of how green parties and environmental movements formed, shaped, and changed their strategies over time, especially when it comes to their activity planning, decision-making, support-mobilizing, and networking (including participation in broader political coalitions). The study not only includes genuine eco-activist organizations but also focuses on how (and why) decoy and phantom green parties developed and evolved in relation to the activities of their authentic counterparts. The paper concludes that environmental issues became increasingly more important in Serbia during the previous decade, with a more prominent arrival of foreign industry and foreign investors, which consequentially caused a noticeable deterioration of the environment (quality of air in particular). This opened a window of opportunity for opposing movements and parties to attract widespread support - and develop their strategies - based on and in relation to this previously less important topic.

Vegetarians in Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this article examines (1) the prevalence of vegetarians in Germany, (2) their social profile, and (3) dynamic features of a vegetarian diet and short-term effects on subjective health. As in many other Western countries, the prevalence of vegetarians and vegans in Germany is on an upward trend. In the period 2016–2020, about 7 percent of the Germans declared themselves as vegetarians (including vegans). The probability of being a vegetarian is higher among women, younger people, the better educated, those living in single households, residents of urban areas, and those who support the green political party. We observe considerable temporal stability of individual dietary patterns – mainly due to a dominant group of continuous non-vegetarians (almost 90 percent). We also test a special variant of the health-benefit hypothesis of a vegetarian diet. We find no support of this hypothesis when looking at short-term effects on individuals’ overall assessment of their personal health.

Ein weiterer Erdrutschsieg: Die britischen Parlamentswahlen vom 4. Juli 2024

After 14 years in opposition, Labour is back in power . A governing party in conflict with itself, big and unresolved economic problems, and a Scottish National Party that managed to steer itself in a political cul-de-sac made change possible . The size of change is not least the result of the first-past-the-post electoral system and its disproportionality effects . These allowed the Labour Party to take 63 .4 per cent of the seats in Parliament with only 33 .7 per cent of votes . The British party system is more divided than ever before . The Liberal Democrats experienced a political comeback as alternative to the Conservatives, and the Green party made progress as an alternative to Labour . Reform UK, the party of the right-wing populist Nigel Farage, came third in the electoral contest with regard to vote totals . The lower turnout is surprising given the broader and stronger competition among parties . It reflects widespread disillusion among voters concerning politics, and the distancing of a growing number of people from the political process .

한국 녹색당의 성장 조건에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to examine the emergence and development of green parties around the world to identify general conditions for their growth and to see if the findings can be applied to the Korean Green Party. In doing so, it explores the requirements of a political party based on the experience of the Korean Green Party.
 The empirical analysis shows that in terms of political opportunity structure, green parties around the world grow into parties that influence the political system when elections are highly proportional and the proportional representation rate is above 40%. However, in the case of the Korean Green Party, the limitations of the quasi-connected proportional representation system with a ‘cap’ clause and the emergence of satellite parties in the 2020 general election resulted in lower electoral proportionality than before, and the proportional representation rate was only 15.67%, which did not have favorable conditions for growth.
 Next, in terms of party leadership, global green parties have observed that green parties grow when they maintain intra-party unity and pursue coalition politics in elections. However, the Korean Green Party failed to create a growth engine during the 2020 general election, as it failed to maintain intra-party unity and pursue coalition politics.
 Based on this analysis, in order for the Korean Green Party to grow in the future, the party leadership should focus its efforts on introducing a more proportional electoral system and expanding the number of seats for proportional representation, while maintaining intra-party unity and pursuing coalition politics.

All just empty words/ leere Worte/ празни приказки/ boş laf? A cross-linguistic analysis of the New Year’s addresses of Rumen Radev, Alexander van der Bellen and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the language used in the New Year’s addresses of the presidents of Bulgaria, Austria and Türkiye and describe the major differences in terms of topics and expressions used. The cross-linguistic critical analysis attempts to reveal both how the political background of the presidents is reflected in their speeches and how the different scope of powers these presidents possess influences the choice of topics and their linguistic means of expression. The presidents of Bulgaria, Austria and Türkiye come from different political traditions, namely the socialist tradition, the environmental movement and the Islamic-conservative tradition. True to historically close relations with Russia, Radev avoids taking sides when talking about the Russia-Ukrainian war. A former speaker of the Austrian Green Party, van der Bellen is the only one of the three presidents who mentions the climate crisis as one of the major challenges of the future. And only AKP’s leader Erdoğan resorts to constructing fears and referring to God’s help he is hoping to receive. While Radev and van der Bellen position themselves as observers of political and social life, Erdoğan primarily focuses on the achievements of his party. In terms of field of action, the speeches of Radev and van der Bellen can be determined as belonging to ‘Formation of public attitudes, opinions and will’. In Erdoğan’s speech, we find elements from ‘Formation of public attitudes, opinions and will’, ‘Political advertising’ and ‘Political executive and administration’.

Green Großraum: Carl Schmitt’s political ecology of space

How scholars conceptualize the driving forces of planetary crisis is intimately connected to how they conceptualize solutions to it. Recent scholarship has drawn on the work of Carl Schmitt, Nazi jurist and political philosopher, to articulate concepts in political ecology. These works of political ecology, however, do not engage with the problematic political history of the work and concepts developed by Schmitt. This article asks: what kinds of assumptions do we adopt when deploying Schmitt’s geographical, political, and ecological conceptual apparati? First, the article draws on the work of Minca and Rowan (2015, 2016) and Giaccaria and Minca (2016) to argue that Schmitt’s thought is geographical, that Nazi geographical thought was intimately tied to geographies of conquest on the part of the Nazis. It argues that Schmitt’s concept of Großraum or “greater space/ sphere of influence” is bound up with Schmitt’s and the Nazi’s politics of an ethnically/ racially motivated politics of “Friend versus Enemy.” The article then evaluates Schmitt’s concept of the political and considers its implications in relation to the environmental crisis of contemporary conjuncture, arguing that Schmitt’s amorphous conceptualization of the political allows the distinction between friend and enemy to be left open to interpretation, making it possible for both intellectuals and green political parties to articulate xenophobic and reactionary political positions in environmental terms.

FORMATION OF THE GERMAN MODERNIZATION STRATEGY: APPROACHES OF THE «TRAFFIC LIGHT» COALITION IN 2022–2023

Large-scale transformation tasks, features of intellectual cultures, features of traditions, current political goals, balances and parities, crises and conflicts make it difficult to formulate a modernization policy in the countries of the collective West. Despite the difficulties, Germany’s ruling parties are trying to develop common approaches. The article characterizes the current state of formation of Germany’s modernization strategy. The first section analyzes the position of the Minister of Economy, representative of the Green Party, R. Habeck, and notes his intention to make the country’s «green modernization» irreversible. According to Habeck, accelerating modernization will allow to quickly overcome crises and complete the transformation of the model of German society and the German state. The second section examines the approach of Finance Minister K. Lindner. For Lindner, the success of modernization depends on the use of liberal methods. We are talking about abandoning government subsidies and encouraging the initiative of entrepreneurs. The third section analyzes the project of one of the leaders of the SPD, L. Klingbeil. He sees priorities in agreeing on a new European security and in cooperation with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In the fourth section, the decision of the Constitutional Court of Germany was analyzed. Thanks to this decision, the ruling parties will be forced to come to a common approach regarding national priorities. The practical significance of the article is determined by the influence of modernization on other areas of public policy