ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the importance of political structure and level of class conflict in explaining the relative weakness of the new social movements in Italy. Offe views the new social movements as primarily responses to external provocations: the invasion by the state or the economic system of spheres of life that were formerly private and taken for granted as natural. With the economic crisis of the 1970s, Offe argues, people's identification with their economic roles has been weakened. At the same time, traditional values and ideologies have been dissolved by the corrosive action of liberal scepticism. Haberma's account, while similar in many respects to Offe's, lays particular stress on the point that dissolution of traditional value systems is accelerated by the expansion of state activity in response to economic crisis-tendencies in advanced capitalism. The chapter shows the crucial importance of political system, including the parties and their ideological positions, in explaining its strength and character of non-parliamentary opposition in Italy.
