Comparative Green Politics: Beyond the European Context?

It is argued that there are significant differences between green electoral politics in Europe and green developments in the affluent non‐European west, and that these are such that, despite the greater political formalization of the green movement in Western Europe, there is a sense in which North American and Antipodean developments are ultimately more fundamental than those that have occurred in Europe. Loosely adopting explanatory categories employed by Rudig and Lowe in a Political Studies article, we examine evidence under four sub‐heads: electoral thresholds; the historical legacy of the environment movement; the different contextual roles played by the anti‐nuclear movement and wilderness experience, and ecology, Marxism and the new left. Copyright © 1988, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved