A New Era for Green Ideology: The Diverging and Emergent Policies of the Green Parties of England and Wales, France and Germany

Rising unemployment and recessions have forced Greens in various countries to make public their social and economic as well as environmental leanings. By today, many Green parties have successfully elaborated a total ‘conception of the world’. Now is a better time than ever to study Green ideology, and to ask whether it suggests a coherent ideational paradigm for solving the crisis in Europe. In the paper, I present the findings of my Gramscian ideology critique of Green party manifestos and press releases, backed up with interviews and historical data. I offer a comparative analysis of the parties’ stances on a selection of themes, some of which are classically ‘new politics’ or ‘green’ (e.g. gender relations, democracy) and some of which the parties have been forced to elaborate upon due to economic circumstances (e.g. the welfare state, the future role of the ‘free market’). I demonstrate that the French party remains closest to its ecologist and new left roots, taking a radical stance which demands the transformation of society, albeit via reform rather than by the streets. The other two parties are also recognisably new politics while showing evidence of a great many accretions from neighbouring ideologies. Die Grünen shares many of the French party’s ideas, but displays an evident liberal twist: the logic of the market pervades the majority of its discourse, even on social and environmental issues. Finally, the Green Party of England and Wales cleaves in many circumstances to a position reminiscent of social democracy, where ‘old’ politics concerns occasionally take precedence over the new. I conclude that I have uncovered, at the very least, several distinct permutations on Green ideology; and, more broadly, that ideology is a complex and emergent phenomenon which can never be finally categorised, but is forged in response to a developing political reality.