ABSTRACT
Green political ideas are hardly new. Xenophon, among other ancient Greeks, is alleged to have set out the main principles of the Gaia hypothesis, on which much Green thinking is based, over 2,000 years before James Lovelock developed the modern, scientific version. Green political parties, on the other hand, area distinctly modern phenomenon. It was only in 1972 that the first Green party was established (the New Zealand Values Party) and in 1979 that the first Green member was elected to a national parliament (Daniel Brelaz in Switzerland). Now, Greens sit in democratic assemblies at local government level throughout Europe and in a great number of national assemblies, including the former Soviet satellite states in eastern and central Europe. They represent a challenge to political orthodoxies of both left and right in three main respects: philosophical, programmatic and electoral.
