ABSTRACT
Of all the ‘new’ social movements which emerged from the student movements of the late 1960s, it is environmental movements which have had most enduring influence on politics and which have undergone the most wide-ranging institutionalisation in terms both of the professionalisation of their activities and of the regularisation of their access to policy-makers. Not least as a result of pressure from environmental movements, environment ministries are now a normal feature of western governments. Although the emergence of green parties is only the tip of the iceberg of the greening of the politics of industrialised societies, Green Party members currently hold the environment portfolio in the governments of three of the four largest western European states. Greens are established players in the political arena of most western European states, by turns competed with and courted by larger parties.
