The development of the Swiss green party

Abstract

The Swiss Green Party is neither well known nor well understood, yet its development has been impressive and significant. Environmentalism began locally in the 1970s and by the mid‐1980s had generated an expanding national party, the GPS, with a firm electoral base. The general elections of October 1991 showed that the party had gone on successfully to survive a recent decline in the salience of environmental issues and its first electoral losses at cantonal level. Its success rests in part on a flexible federal organisational base and a programme that has widened to include a wide range of Swiss issues as well as strategic and tactical green concerns. This has shown itself in a relatively restrained political style. Its limitations lie in its effects on the political agenda and its inability to penetrate the magic circle of government. This reflects the way in which the Swiss political system has both encouraged the emergence of the GPS but also places barriers in the way of its future development. Problem push environmental concerns played a larger part in its development than new electors or values.