ABSTRACT
Thus far the history of the Swiss Green Party (GPS) has belied assessments of it as an unpromising deviation from the New Politics model of ecological politics (Church 1992a; Poguntke 1989:189). However, this does not mean that it has been able to carve out an unchallenged position for itself in Swiss politics. Because the Swiss political system charges a much higher price for consolidation than it does for entry, the GPS has experienced difficulties in five key areas:
• competition with other mainstream parties; • its distance from the environmental social movement; • its limited influence on the political agenda; • its reticent use of the instruments of direct democracy; • its vulnerability on the issue of Europe. (Its inability to reshape cleavage lines over
Europe has raised new questions about the party’s internal balance, strategy and unity.)
If it is still true that ‘the party is here to stay’ (Steiner 1991:62), it is clearly the case that the Swiss system of political competition has done more to change the GPS than the latter has done to change the system. Ecology has not emerged as the decisive cleavage some expected, and while the Swiss Greens have successfully run the first laps of their competitive race, they have yet to cross the finishing line,
The fact that the party now faces questions about its future direction should not obscure its achievements. The rise of the GPS has been analysed in detail elsewhere (Laver and Schofield 1990:242; Church 1991; Ladner 1989; Walter 1990), but it is worth stressing a few facts here. The history of environmentalism in Switzerland long predates the emergence of specifically ecological parties. As a result there has been a good deal of environmental legislative activity, both locally and nationally. This has involved a large number of votations,1 some of which have written environmental protection into both the federal constitution and the statute book.
