New Internal Politics in Western Democracies: The Impact of the Environmental Movement in Highly Industrialized Democracies

Abstract

Early research on new social movements suggested that they form a new set of internal politics in Western democracies (Muller-Rommel 1985). Aft er more than three decades aft er these predictions have been formulated it is time to assess these assumptions. In this article I focus on the environmental movement as one important member of the family of new social movements and its impact on the environmental positions of governments, on the one hand, and on substantial changes in environmental performance, on the other. The results of this study confirms the research of three decades ago which suggested that these movements may have a profound effect on the political system as well as new politics issues. However, the paper also shows that over the course of time the green environmental dimension has been incorporated into the traditional left-right dimension with significant consequences. First, this means that left positions are increasingly associated with environmental concerns. Second, the incorporation of green position into the left-right dimension shows that the conflict of the green policy dimension has been transferred into the left-right dimension. Finally, this shift suggests that green politics has lost momentum in the new millennium and that during the recent economic crisis the left-right dimension was less concerned about environmental improvements, leaving environmental issues on the back burner. The paper analyzes 21 highly industrialized democracies from 1970s to 2012 and applies a new method of optimized time lags in order to grasp the political process as a sequential process.