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Contents:

1 - States, movements and democracy; 2 - Patterns of movement inclusion and exclusion in the four countries; 3 - Co-optive or effective inclusion? Movement aims and state imperatives; 4 - The perils of political inclusion: moderation and bureaucratisation; 5 - The dynamics of democratisation; 6 - Evaluating movement effectiveness and strategy; 7 - Ecological modernisation, risk society, and the green state; 8 - States and social movements: conclusions.

Review:

Has global environmentalism become so pervasive that we don't need to see how it started? If we take the 1960s as our starting point then we might conclude that the movement has been a homogenous group but this actually hides the many facets of its development. Now that we have sufficient space to look back at the period we can use new analytical methods to examine the ways in which environmental protest became a social movement and how this managed (or didn't manage) to affect the political process. What is most fascinating about this text is that it highlights diversity which we realised might be there at the time but didn't seem to notice!

The sustitle of this text is 'environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Norway'. The choice of nation is not random - each represents a way of working and knowing different to the rest. The basic thesis of the text is that although 'green ideas' might share commonality between environmentalists the impact on the social fabric of the individual nations is different because the political construction of each nation is different. The aim then is to subject each nation to critical analysis to see what has happened and why. This starts with a classification of nations into four groups (with the idea being one case nation per group): expansive corporatism (Norway), authoritarian liberalism (UK), pluralism (USA) and legal corporatism (Germany). The aim is then to see how each of these governance perspectives affects the environmental movement taken here as a social movement. The first two chapters set the scene for this work. The first describes the classification of states in a 2x2 matrix with inclusion/exclusion on one axis and active/passive on the other. Chapter two shows how this can be applied to the four nations or rather, how these nations exemplify the classification previously described. Chapter three starts with the thesis that a key aim of all groups is to become part of the state concensus (mentioned here as an 'imperative'). Groups had this status in the USA but lost it, as did all groups, with the rise of energy shortages and economic security issues. Having put this forward the remainder of the chapter analyses each nation in detail to see what happened. Chapter four seems like a paradox. After arguments for the inclusion of groups in government and the problems that arise when this doesn't happen we see arguments to the effect that inclusion may not always be positive. Although access to power is useful, it often means that the group in question needs to compromise in some way. It could be said that this is all part of the democratic process whereby the more extreme views are tailored to fit societal needs rather than these needs change to fit whatever group demands it. Chapter five turns to look at the notion of democracy and whether it works in favour of environmental groups. As you might expect given the work in other chapters the overall picture is mixed. In some types of state open participatory democracy might do more harm to a social movement than outright attempts at suppresion. It depends on what the aims of the state are. How should groups behave? Chapter six looks at the various ways that groups can work out effective startegies. This is done by examining the location of this effort: in the state's core, its periphery and wider civil society. To do this of course you need to find out how to measure effectiveness which is where this chapter starts the examination. Not only do we find that there are a number of ways of calculating effectiveness but we also see, once again, the UK effort at the bottom of the list (where it reamins for much of the book largely because of the text's focus on the "Thatcher years"). To this point the study has been 'us' versus 'them' where the Green 'us' will lose to the politically powerful 'them' whenever there is a complete conflict. What happens though, if the goalposts change and there can be a way for economics/politics to co-exist with environmentalis. Chapter seven argues that this can happen because of the way in which society sees risks and starts to engage in risk analysis. Here, the environment stops being a free good and has value. As soon as this happens it can be compared to other goods and a decision made on the better option. Again we follow the theoretical discussion with an analysis of our four states with the UK faring a little better this time. The final chapter acts as both conclusion (highlighting key points) and forecaster (outlining options for the future).

There is much here to make one think. It's not an easy text because of its rigorous base of theory mixed with a series of cases where global understanding of the environmental movement would be a prerequisite. That said, it does carry out an analysis and provide a theoretical framework for understanding in a way few texts on this topic has done. It's sobering to see after all these years how little has been achieved in some nations but at least we can see where we're going. For those wanting a clear and concise analysis of environmental groups this text is a valuable addition to the literature.