The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (113 page)

Political questions are raised by many of the pre-Classical Greek poets and thinkers, from Homer's thoughts on kingship (probably mid- to late eighth century BC), to the Athenian poet and lawgiver Solon
c.
600 BC. Nevertheless it is not until the mid-fifth century BC that
sophists
such as Protagoras and Antiphon introduced systematic political theory, supported by rational argument; their central concern was the relation between ‘
nature
’ and ‘convention’ and the question of whether obedience to the state's laws and conventions was to the individual's advantage. A keen interest in these and other political questions can also be found around this time in the works of the Athenian tragedians, and the historians Herodotus and
Thucydides
. Methods of political analysis were greatly developed by
Socrates
, and Greek political thinking in general reaches its culmination in the fourth century BC with the radical idealism of
Plato
and the more conservative and pragmatic work of
Aristotle
A number of historical reasons help explain why this relatively brief flourishing of systematic and practical political thought in Greece occurred when it did. By the mid-fifth century the independent city-state or
polis
(from which our word ‘politics’ derives), was well established as the basic unit of political organization in Greece, and the many different forms that the
polis
took—from the oligarchical and military regime of Sparta to the radical participatory democracy of Athens—prompted comparisons and the question of which form was best. Increasing travel and the nascent disciplines of history and anthropology provided further data for comparison, and the continuing practice of colonization around the Mediterranean gave real urgency to the question of how the
polis
should be structured, and provided a field for political experiment and theorizing. Nor is it a matter of chance that such theorizing tended to originate in Athens: her participatory democracy (albeit limited to adult freeborn males) both encouraged political debate and offered the practical experience to inform such debate. Furthermore, though democracy was generally in the ascendant at Athens, oligarchical factions remained powerful and the tensions between the two parties required each to produce political theories in its support. Young men of either party who desired political influence required training in political rhetoric and argument, and the sophists arose partly to supply such needs.
Thus Greek political thought was intimately linked to the existence of the
polis
as a self-governing unit; and when Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great destroyed the autonomy of the
polis
in the last forty years of the fourth century BC, serious practical contributions to Greek political thought largely ceased. After this, philosophy tended to concentrate on the individual in isolation (as for instance in the philosophy of Epicurus ), rather than on relations between the individual and the state. The intriguing Stoic notion of the ‘cosmopolis’ (perhaps influenced by Alexander's own ambitions to create a world-state) was not intended as a practical manifesto for reform. It is rather a utopian vision in which all separate states and political and economic institutions have crumbled, and individuals are united by the ties of friendship alone.
Historical circumstances also account for many of the issues prevalent in Greek political theory: the range of data available gives rise to a tendency to rank constitutions and a corresponding tendency to create fictional ideal states (as opposed to the Stoic world community) to serve as the blueprints for such rankings: Plato's
Republic
and
Laws
and the last two books of Aristotle's
Politics
are notable examples. The very different criteria for citizenship employed by the different states also prompted the question of what citizenship really meant and who was eligible for it. As a result of the constant tensions between oligarchic and democratic factions the issue of stability was crucial for Plato and Aristotle ; in contrast, the accent in Athenian democracy on individual participation raised the sense of the individual's importance, and highlighted the question of relations between individual and state.
Most significant of all in determining the themes of Greek political theory was the nature of the
polis
itself. Indeed, Aristotle's claim that ‘man is a political animal’, meaning that man is the kind of animal which naturally lives in a
polis
, suggests that political theory can only operate within such a context; he may also be implying that political theory is thus distinctively Greek. The most salient feature of the
polis
is that it was perceived as an association of people bonded together by a shared way of life and a shared morality. The whole was more important than any of its parts, and it remained a whole owing to the cohesive influence of its educational system, the purpose of which was to educate the young to be good citizens, sharing the state's moral code.
Such a positive role for the state gave plenty of material to those sophists, such as Antiphon , who believed that the state acted as a shackle on the true nature and freedom of the individual. To thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle , who accepted the
polis
as the natural and best context for man (though neither was entirely happy with any of the models currently on offer, and particularly not that of democratic Athens), it meant that political theory had a strongly ethical flavour and that the role of education was paramount, whereas such modern watchwords as representation and the protection of rights were barely considered. Their stress on training the individual to function correctly in the whole leads directly to the authoritarian tendencies of their very different visions of what that whole should be like.
AH 

 
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Green parties grew out of the concern for the ecological stability of the planet and the quality of life in industrial societies which sharpened perceptibly in the 1970s. The German greens,
Die Grünen
, were the most successful and influential; their movement grew out of a wide range of ‘grass roots’ and ‘outsider’ organizations which developed ‘lists’ of approved candidates at local elections and constituted themselves as a party in 1980. It was a remarkably successful party for a time. In 1983 it crossed the 5 per cent threshold in
Bundestag
elections and took twentyseven seats; at its peak in 1987 it had 8.2 per cent of the vote and 46 seats. Its best known figure was Petra Kelly (1947–92).
Many countries, including most in Western Europe, developed green parties during this period. Several existing parties renamed themselves as greens, including the Ecology Party in Britain and the Values Party in New Zealand. This partly was out of respectful imitation of
Die Grünen
, but also because the image of greenness, with its connotations of freshness and nature, was thought to have proved so powerful. It also carried the advantage, as a colour, of a certain ideological freshness; although the colour of Islam and of some nationalist movements, it was not tainted with images of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ in politics, unlike blue, red, black, white, and others.
The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 proved a fillip to the green cause in many countries and green parties met with considerable electoral success in the late 1980s. In the elections to the European parliament in 1989 most green parties achieved record performances, including a remarkable 14.9 per cent of the vote in Britain. But this proved to be a peak; during the 1990s nearly all green parties went into sharp decline, even the most successful losing their parliamentary seats, in Germany in 1990 and in Sweden in 1991 although they returned here in 1994. The first wave of green success was over.
In an important sense, the green parties always contained the seeds of their own destruction. Like some forms of nationalism they attracted such a wide variety of ideological views that, though they could function as a protest vote or a peripheral influence on policy, their deep divisions were bound to become apparent as they reached legislative or executive positions. Most of the people who voted for them were ‘mere environmentalists’ who wanted more government concern for the quality of landscape and nature conservation (in Britain, at the peak of the green vote, most green supporters had previously voted Conservative). But more active supporters were far more radical and concerned to change the basis of society; this radicalism contained conflicting elements of libertarianism, feminism, neo-Marxism, paganism, and reactionary anti-industrialism. Among
Die Grünen
these complex divisions came to focus on a relatively simple tactical distinction between ‘
realos
’ and ‘
fundis
’, realists and fundamentalists. The former wanted real influence on policy, specifically environmental policy, and were prepared to compromise in order to achieve it, while the latter were not prepared to compromise with a society based on principles radically different from their own. In most cases they achieved their aim of maintaining the green movement as a radical cultural and social force, but which lost its role as an influential political party. See also
ecology
.
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In the early 1960s developments in agricultural production, sponsored by international funding agencies, led to what came to be called the Green Revolution. These developments emphasized hybrid seeds, mechanization, and pest control as answers to the agricultural backwardness of the Third World. High-yielding varieties, first developed by international agro-scientists in Mexico, were promoted, as was the use of pesticides, and economies of scale of production, which could be successful only through mechanization of agriculture. This initiative did result in much better production figures across a range of Third World countries. However, the Green Revolution has been criticized by environmentalists and others for resulting in environmental disasters in the countries where it was most effective. Mechanization of agriculture, where successful, led to changing work and social patterns, an exacerbation of class divisions in society, and the displacement of minority groups like tribal peoples and politically marginalized groups such as women from agricultural production. Further, new types of crops were not resistant to local diseases and required high levels of pesticides which polluted the local waterways, impoverished the land, and also increased the dependency of many Third World countries on the West with import of pesticides. Moreover the commercialization of agriculture led to the exporting of food out of the local areas, increasing the dependence of producers on market forces that did not always benefit the majority of producers.
SR