ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to ask: what trends and levels of support can be determined for the new social movements in the five countries during the 1980s, and how are variations to be interpreted? The countries are France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and Great Britain. The chapter examines not only the supporters and specifically the mobilization potential of new social movements, but also their opponents, a group that has been neglected in previous studies. It suggests that social movements are constituted for citizens primarily by perceptions – usually mediated by mass media – of these movements' collective actions. The converse is true for opponents: the ecology movement has fewest opponents, followed by the peace movement. In general, the mobilization potential increases rather than decreases. Thus the proposition that the new social movements are a politically marginal and transitory phenomenon is not supported by the evidence.