ABSTRACT
In their famous article on cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments S. M Lipset and S. Rokkan postulated a "freezing" of the Western European party systems since the 1920s. A sound test of the suggestions made here would imply the laborious task to develop empirical measures of cohort-specific mobility chances which the typology had to assume as constant throughout all Western European nations. Since 1950 enrollment ratios in institutions of higher learning have quadrupled in Western European countries. In terms of the Weberian sociology of domination, the majority of green party supporters may thus be characterized as groups living in social distance to the routine of everyday economic life. The potential for new green parties representing non-established age cohorts with educational degrees results as highest in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The green parties in Europe gained the highest electoral success in those three countries.
