Green Parties

Green Parties are political organizations that focus on a wide range of social, economic, and environmental issues in their party platforms. They have grown from a tiny fringe movement into a significant voting block in many parts of the world, though almost entirely in developed countries. Greens have had the greatest political influence in Germany—although they have suffered dramatic setbacks in the course of reaching a fairly well-established place in the political sphere—largely thanks to the popularity and political acumen of a single person, Joschka Fischer.

In the United States, the Greens remain a fringe party, but they have been able to carve out the possibility of becoming a significant, long-term third party, which would be an achievement in a country dominated by two parties for over a century. They achieved considerable prominence—and notoriety—during the 2000 United States presidential elections due to the candidacy of the well-known consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader. Their critics are as likely to be liberal as conservative, because Greens generally take votes from Democratic candidates and are stridently dismissive of mainstream Democrats. These liberal critics claim that the Greens cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election by taking crucial votes. The Green Party strongly denies this, insisting that Nader drew voters from across the political spectrum. In any case, the Greens attracted far more media attention in 2000 than ever before because they put forward a nationally known person as the party's presidential candidate.

Leadership has often been a contentious issue for Greens, and some of the major fractures within the Green Party movement, in the United Kingdom, in Germany, and in the United States, have been connected with widely different views about leadership, the role of prominent individuals, and the structure of the party's public presence and its spokespeople. The Greens' belief in grassroots democracy and gender equality has led to the development of internal systems and rules, in Green Parties around the world, to minimize the prominence of individuals.

Some Greens have been explicitly opposed to political involvement, on the basis that the existing political system is corrupt and irreformable. In the United States, the Green movement split over this issue, leaving the pragmatists, who were willing to work within the system, free to establish state Green Parties. This article focuses on the history of Green Parties and on three key events, in three different [Page 599]countries, in which differing views about leaders and leadership led to conflict.