Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Norway.

By John Dryzek, David Downes, Christian Hunold, and David Schlosberg with Hans-Kristian Hernes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 240p. $72.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany and the United States.

By Miranda Schreurs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 306p. $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

These two well-researched books do something that is rare in the study of environmental politics. They attempt to describe, explain, and explore the consequences of differences in the national environmental movements that arose in the 1960s in most advanced industrial democracies. Because these movements appeared at the same time, were influenced by common processes of international learning, and seem to be well explained by theories, such as Ronald Inglehart's postmaterialism thesis, that emphasize similarity rather than difference, very little work has acknowledged or systematically examined cross-national variations in environmental politics. Both works do an excellent job of filling this gap.

While the overarching questions driving these works are similar, what the authors see as the implications of their research is quite different. Drawing on the influential theory of discursive democracy developed by its lead author, the book by John Dryzek et al. relates the nature of a country's environmental movement to the degree of democratization occurring in that society as a whole. Miranda Schreurs's book, by contrast, seeks to understand how national differences affect international environmental politics, as well as how international developments influence domestic policy communities.

Schreurs begins Environmental Politics in Japan, Germany and the United States by describing the different environmental policy approaches used in each of her three cases. She argues that Germany can be classified as a “green social welfare state” that emphasizes precaution and the necessity of government regulation. By contrast, the United States has become increasingly neoliberal in its approach to dealing with environmental problems and tends to rely on cost–benefit techniques and market-based solutions. Japanese environmental politics borrows from both of these models. The government emphasizes the importance of the market but is willing to intervene and negotiate with industry when necessary.

Having set up the empirical puzzle, Schreurs spends the rest of the book analyzing why the environmental movements look so different in each country, how these differences affect policy, and how participation in global environmental regimes has changed the strategies and goals of domestic environmental actors.

She argues that these questions largely can be answered by examining the differing institutional environments within which the movements developed and operate. In Germany, for example, a proportional representation electoral system gave rise to an influential parliamentary Green Party. She emphasizes the role the party has played in fostering a consultative policy community made up of industry, environmentalists, and government officials. In the United States, laws favorable to the formation of nonprofit groups have facilitated the creation of large, well-financed, environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Their ability to shape policy, however, is hindered by the pluralist political system that often pits them against even larger and better financed business groups. While environmental NGOs find it difficult to influence Congress, they have been able to make good use of the powerful U.S. courts.

The courts also played a key role in the development of Japan's early environmental movement. Local citizen groups used the courts to force the government to address industrial pollution problems after a series of well-publicized, human health–related industrial disasters. Laws unfavorable to the formation of nonprofit groups, as well as electoral laws that do not favor the formation of new parties, however, made it difficult for these local citizen groups to organize at the national level. As a result, the environmental movement in Japan has remained weak and fragmented.

Schreurs argues, however, that these differences in environmental communities only partially influence national policy outcomes. Particularly in Germany and Japan, where governments are willing and able to act in the absence of citizen mobilization, environmental groups have not always been the driving force behind environmental policy change.

Schreurs then examines one of these extramovement sources of policy change, the influence of global environmental politics. She argues that international policymaking processes have reinforced the environmental movement in Germany and almost reinvented the NGO community in Japan. The Japanese government has sought to build up its environmental NGOs so that they can participate in this increasingly important area of international relations. Perhaps the author's most interesting observation, one she unfortunately does not seek to explain, is that the United States has seemed much less willing and capable of learning from outside its borders.

Schreurs does an excellent job of outlining the development of environmental politics in her three country cases. The institutional analysis she uses to explain her cases is well supported, although hardly groundbreaking. The arguments laid out in the book are weakened to a certain extent by her use of evidence and her selection of policy cases. She is well known for her work on Japan and Germany. Perhaps as a result, she devotes less space to the U.S. case, and her analysis appears somewhat underdeveloped.

Her choice of policy cases is also problematic. She examines three international policy regimes—acid rain, stratospheric ozone depletion, and global warming—to illustrate the three countries' different approaches. Although they provide a good reference point for comparison, they may not be particularly representative of national environmental policymaking processes. The United States, for example, is simply more wary than Germany or Japan of multilateral cooperation of all kinds, not just environmental agreements. She also uses cases that focus on industrial air pollution, where Germany has often taken a leadership role. Had she examined nature-protection policies, it would have been hard to present Germany as anything but a laggard.

Dryzek et al. begin their analysis in Green States and Social Movements with a very similar set of questions. They too are interested in exploring how different national structures affect the nature of environmental movements and the movements' influence on policy outcomes. They take a more historic view of the question and argue that states have long been molded by social movements. The state's core tasks have been expanded over time to incorporate the demands of different social movements. The bourgeoisie helped make economic growth part of the state's core mission, and the working class movement was responsible for the creation of the welfare state.

While all states share common core tasks, they differ in their approach to dealing with social movements. Dryzek et al. argue that states can be categorized according to two criteria: inclusive versus exclusive and passive versus active. Using these criteria, they contend that their country cases represent four different types: expansive corporatism in Norway (actively inclusive), pluralism in the United States (passively inclusive), authoritarian liberalism in the UK (actively exclusive) and legal corporatism in Germany (passively exclusive). These differences help explain variations in the strength of the environmental movement in the four countries under study.

The authors argue that movement inclusion in state policymaking processes is only successful when that movement can align its interests with a core state imperative. If it fails, inclusion will result in co-optation and minimal policy influence. For this reason, the most successful environmental movements are found in passively exclusive states, in this case, Germany. This type of state neither tries to crush the movement as an actively exclusive state would nor does it succeed in co-opting movements as actively inclusive states do. Thus, ironically, the undemocratic elements of the exclusive state help facilitate a healthy, innovative, and vibrant movement.

Additionally, Dryzek et al. claim that environmental movements in passively exclusive states help democratize society through their engagement in civil society. Not surprisingly, they also argue that a green state, in which environmental conservation becomes a core imperative, is most likely to occur in Germany where the passively exclusive state has fostered a viable oppositional public sphere.

The authors are least convincing in supporting these last two claims. They do not fully develop their arguments about democracy and social movements, and they fail to justify why the promotion of environmentalism entails grassroots democracy in a way not necessary for other social movements. In a footnote they state, “Countries such as Germany and Norway show that a welfare state can be sustained without an oppositional sphere” (p. 194). This claim is neither logically compelling nor supported by the facts. The trimming back of the welfare state in Germany and other continental European countries has clearly coincided with the decline of the labor movement.

Because both books employ a similar institutional explanatory framework, they suffer from a common weakness. Institutions and state structures are important for explaining national variations in environmental politics, but it is hard to imagine that they are solely responsible for them. One obvious variable that neither book considers is the role of culture. At times its absence seems glaring. Dryzek et al., for example, argue that the actively inclusive Norwegian state has muted the independent voice of its environmental movement. They never mention the value of consensus seeking that pervades most accounts of Norwegian politics.

Similarly, both books miss a key element of the rise of the environmental movement in Germany. The comparative strength of the German environmental movement has its roots in postwar German history. The postwar generation had more reason to question the values of their parents than their counterparts in other advanced industrial democracies. This clash of values helps explain the depth of the movement's social critique, as well as its long-standing commitment to grassroots democracy.

Despite these flaws, these two very worthwhile books go a long way in addressing an important but underresearched topic in comparative politics. They also come to surprisingly similar conclusions. Both agree that the German environmental movement has been the most influential of the ones they examine. They also agree that the United States has lost its position as an environmental pioneer and is quickly becoming an environmental laggard. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, both books argue that differences between national environmental movements and policy outcomes can largely be explained by domestic state structures and institutions.