Civil Society and the Environmental Problematic in Southern Europe
Karamichas, J. (2003). Civil Society and the Environmental Problematic in Southern Europe. 1-36. Paper presented at ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
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Download date:26. Sep. 2021 Civil Society and the Environmental Problematic in Southern Europe. A Preliminary Investigation of the Greek and Spanish Cases.
John Karamichas University of Kent at Canterbury [email protected] [email protected] Paper prepared for presentation at ECPR joint sessions, Edinburgh 28th March-3rd April 2003.
Draft: Please do not cite without prior permission by the author.
1 The civil societies of Greece and Spain along with those of their southern European neighbours have been customarily seen in the literature as weak, weaker than those of Northern European societies or more emphatically as atrophic. The apparent weakness of the civil societies in those countries have been used as an extremely determining variable by scholars seeking to explain the failure of green parties to establish a strong electoral base in Greece and Spain [Demertzis 1995; Aguilar-Fernández 1994; Holliday 1997]. While this variable cannot be dismissed, it cannot certainly be elevated to the highest position of possible determinants accounting for the failure of eco-political formations. Since, green parties constitute political formations with simultaneously a smaller and wider scope, as they do not represent the environmental movement as a whole and constitute translation of other components of the NSMs [Heijden, van der et al 1992:1] we have to move away from cultural determinants in explaining their failures. As they are political formations participating in electoral politics, more appropriate explanations can be found in the character of political competition, especially the presence of other ‘left-libertarian’ [Kitschelt 1988] or ‘new politics’ [Poguntke 1987] parties and intra-party conflict, the latter being an ingrained characteristic of radical political formations that contrary to mainstream political parties may lead to catastrophic results. Recent case studies on the Greek and Spanish eco-political formations have suggested that the failure of the Greek greens can be mainly attributed to intense factionalist conflict, experienced at the most ‘primordial’ stage of its development [Karamichas 2001; Karamichas & Botetzagias forthcoming] and the lack of success by the Spanish greens to co-optation of NSMs in general and the environmental movement in particular by other political forces, electoral competition by parties of the left and intense internal conflict [Karamichas 2002].
Challenges to the weak civil society thesis have also recently made their presence by students of environmental mobilizations and movements in both Greece and Spain. A study of environmental mobilizations in Greece since the democratic transition goes as far as to make the quite unique, if not heretical claim, that ‘the strong civil society in post-war Greece has been pressuring the state to fulfil its legitimation function’ [Kousis 1994:133]. Developments in the 1990s have increased the scholarly voices challenging the weak civil society thesis. These new accounts differ in their challenge. For instance Close [1998, 1999, 1999b), a student of the Greek EMOs, sides with a developmental logic suggesting that recent developments have led to a strengthening of the Greek civil society. Another commentator [Sotiropoulos 1995, 1996] argues that ‘the leap of NSMs and certain independent professional organizations challenge the generalized thesis regarding the permanent weakness of the Greek civil society. The established view that civil socie ty in Greece is weak is right but it has to be qualified’ [Sotiropoulos 1996:120]. At the same time there is a general
2 challenge toward the Mediterranean Syndrome (hereafter MS) thesis, formulated by La Spina and Sciortino [1993], which seems that it has become the bêtte noir of Southern European students of environmental politics [Kousis, della Porta & Jiménez 2001; Kousis & Dimopoulou 2000; Kousis 2001; Jimenez 2001b).
This paper is attempting to qualify these challenges by adopting the following steps of analysis: first, I am engaging in a critical evaluation of environmental concern in Greece and Spain. Second, I am reviewing the available literature on Greek and Spanish political cultures in general and the contours of their respective civil societies in particular and propose some rules of thumb under which the challenging claims mentioned above will be evaluated on the last section.
Environmental Consciousness in Greece and Spain Starting with the most straightforward and uncomplicated question that one can ask regarding the concern of a nation about the gravity of the environmental problematic, the Greeks appear, rather paradoxically, to profess the highest level of environmental concern in Europe while Spaniards exhibit only average levels of concern, behind Italy and Germany (see Chart 1). Because of the inherent simplicity of the question regarding the urgency and immediacy of environmental protection, the fact that it does not allow for comparisons in relation to other issues of citizens’ concern and it does not test the resilience of that concern in relation to possible solutions which may rely on some sort of personal sacrifice (e.g. environmental taxes, personal commitment etc), the presented data cannot be conclusive as to the actual capacity of the Greek and Spanish peoples to act upon that manifested concern.
Chart 1. The evolution of environmental concern (1986-1999)
120
100 97 97 91 91 89 88 85 84 85 85 84 84 82 82 82 82 80 80 80 74 74 73 72 73 69 70 1986 1988 60 1992 1995 1999
40
20
0 EU Greece Spain Italy Germany
3 Source: Eurobarometer 1995 cited in Casademunt [1999:260]. 1999 data from Eurobarometer [1999, no. 51: 91].
Of course it may be argued that since the question was the same for all the nations participating in the survey, we can still draw some useful conclusions regarding environmental concern in Southern Europe in general and Greece and Spain in particular. Nevertheless, left alone, without any further investigation it merely confirms that the environment has become a valence issue our times everywhere in the western world. An openly admitted lack of concern has become, in the same way with racism, socially sanctioned. The manifested decrease in concern regarding the gravity of environmental problems in Germany, as well as everywhere else in Europe, may on the one hand be related to the general slowness of economic growth and on the other, to an increasing backlash against the apocalyptic discourse characterising various sectors of the ecology movement and perhaps to actual improvements environmental conditions now that policy addresses them.
Data collected by more complicated surveys, where environmental protection is one of many issues to which respondents were asked to attribute importance to, present a quite different picture. Coupling the environmental issue together with economic issues, such as unemployment and inflation, and nation-specific issues, such as relations to Turkey for Greece and the problem of terrorism for Spain, it featured on the top six of the list of problems in all European nations [see Hofrichter & Reif 1990:124-25].1 Considering that, the percentage of citizens in Greece attributing high importance to environmental protection falls below the European average. By Contrast, the Spanish attitudes remain broadly comparable to the European average. Surprisingly, in both countries the percentage of citizenry attributing high saliency to environmental protection is higher than when they were asked about the urgency of environmental protection, as a quick comparison between graph 1 and table 8 reveals. The same attitude is quite evident in other nations as well (Germany for e.g.). This can be explained by the fact that the questions asked are of different quality. Citizens might attribute high saliency to environmental protection without necessarily regarding it as an urgent and immediate step. The overall pattern though, suggests that even in this case the Greek and Spanish publics exhibit high levels of environmental concern that approximate and even exceed the European average.
1 Question wording: ‘I should like to hear your view on some issues and problems. Could you please tell me for each issue or problem whether you consider it to be very important or not very important’?
4 Table 1 Importance of Environmental protection, 1988 and 1989 (percent ‘very important’) Country 1988 1989I 1989II Belgium 88 85 90 Denmark 94 95 97 France 88 94 93 Germany 97 98 98 Greece 85 92 92 Ireland 86 88 91 Italy 92 96 94 Luxembourg 90 94 95 Netherlands 93 93 97 Portugal 81 82 91 Spain 93 92 94 United Kingdom 88 95 93 EC12 91 94 94 Source: Hofrichter & Reif [1990:126].
A similar survey with a slightly different wording of the question2 and capturing the environmental concern as an attribution of importance to ‘nature protection and the struggle against pollution’, brings the ranking of countries back to that presented in Graph 1. The concern of the Greek public for the environment is above the European average for 1983 and 1987 by a significant margin. It also compares favourably with highly advanced societies such as Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Nevertheless, in 1989 that concern falls below the European average. While environmental concern is on the increase in all EC countries, in Greece it actually declined. However, this development has a straightforward explanation. 1989 was the year that Greece experienced the most significant crisis of its post- authoritarian political system, the dominant political party marred by serious accusations of scandals, a number of short-term alternating governments and serious financial problems. The Spanish public remained slightly below the European average.
Table 2 Importance of Environmental protection: Country Pattern, 1983-1987-1989 (Percent ‘very important’).
2 Question wording: ‘Here is a list of problems that people in (your country) are more or less interested in. Could you please tell me for each one, whether you personally consider it a very important problem, important problem, or of little importance, or not important at all?’
5 Country 1983 1987 1989 Belgium 46 57 76 Denmark 79 85 89 France 53 56 68 Germany 64 69 83 Greece 68 67 71 Ireland 37 49 72 Italy 58 68 85 Luxembourg 66 73 78 Netherlands 53 61 83 Portugal - 53 79 Spain - 58 74 United Kingdom 48 53 75 EC12 56 61 78
According to Rohrschneider [1988] there is a useful distinction between an environmental concern resulting from a ‘personal complaint’ about the visible deterioration of local conditions and a deeper ecological concern emanating from threats to the national and global environment. The former type of concern may result in high levels of general concern but it does not lead directly to an alteration of behavioural disposition toward an environmentally compliant behaviour [Rohrschneider 1988:363]. Hofrichter and Reif [1990:133-35] in their study of environmental concern during the 1980s suggest that ‘personal complaint’ is highest in Southern European nations but also in Germany and the lowest in Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Their study is based on calculations of the percentages of those respondents expressing a ‘great deal’ and ‘a fair amount’ of concern [Hofrichter & Reif 1990:134]. Aggregates of national and global concern have been combined under the heading of ‘general concern’ and have been compared to the aggregates of ‘personal complaint’. I have used Eurostat’s [1997] data on global, national and local concern across Europe based on the mean scores of respondent’s positioning of their concern on a scale from 1, ‘not at all’, to 4, ‘a great deal’. The results are presented in table 3.
According to the data presented in table 3, the general concern of the Greek public was lower than the European average throughout the 1980s. The professed concern of the Spanish public was consistently above the European average and compared favourably with that of the Germans, Dutch and Danes but during the 1990s the Greeks expressed the highest levels of general concern in the European Union.
6 Table 3 Complaint about the Situation of the Personal Environment and General Concern about the National and Global Situation (Combined re sults).
F B NL D I L DK IR UK GR E P EUR Personal Complaint3 1982 1.7 1.8 1.6 1.3 1.9 1.6 1.3 1.5 1.5 1.8 … … 1.8 1986 1.6 1.7 1.6 1.3 2.1 1.7 1.3 1.5 1.5 1.9 1.9 2.0 1.8 1988 1.6 1.7 1.6 1.3 2.1 1.7 1.3 1.5 1.6 2.2 2.0 1.9 1.8 1992 2.2 2.2 1.7 1.4 2.4 2.1 1.4 1.7 2.0 2.3 2.3 2.0 2.0 1995 2.1 2.2 1.7 1.4 2.5 2.1 1.4 1.8 1.9 2.3 2.4 2.1 2.1 General Concern4 1982 2.9 2.8 3.1 3.0 3.2 3.0 3.0 2.8 3.0 3.0 … … 3.1 1986 3.0 2.8 3.1 3.2 3.4 3.2 3.2 2.8 3.1 3.0 3.3 3.2 3.2 1988 3.1 2.9 3.3 3.3 3.4 3.2 3.3 2.9 3.1 3.2 3.4 3.1 3.3 1992 3.4 3.4 3.3 3.3 3.5 3.4 3.3 3.2 3.4 3.7 3.5 3.4 3.4 1995 3.2 3.2 3.1 3.2 3.5 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.3 3.8 3.4 3.4 3.3 Source: Eurostat [1997].
Nevertheless, although the Greek and Spanish publics show an increased general concern during the 1990s, they along with the Italians, still have the highest levels of ‘personal complaint’. If Rohrschneider’s assertion holds true, then we should expect to find a more particularist manifestation of environmental concern rather than an ecolo gical or holistic one, the latter being more akin to support for political ecology.
In addition to these, more searching analysis of one item of concern about the Global environment, concern about global warming (the green house effect) produces a more sinister account of the professed high levels of concern of Southern European publics in general and the Greek and Spanish publics in particular. Although, both Greeks and Spaniards profess high levels of concern, most of them feel unable to discuss it while a large percentage said that they have not heard of it [Rüdig 1995:6]. When their actual knowledge of the issue was tested by employing ‘true’ (the greenhouse effect can raise the sea level) and ‘false’ (the greenhouse effect can reduce the deserts) statements and asking respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with them, in 1992, both the Greek and Spanish respondents did badly with less than 30% and 40% disagreeing with the ‘false’ statement respectively. At the same time, less than 40% and 50% respectively agreed with the ‘true’ statement [Rüdig 1995:9]. In
3 Items included: Quality of drinking water, noise, air pollution, waste disposal, lack of green spaces, damage done to the landscape.
4 Items included were: The disappearance of certain types of plants, animals and habitats throughout the world; using up natural resources throughout the world; global warming (greenhouse effect); destruction of the ozone layer; disappearance of tropical forests, pollution of rivers and lakes, pollution of the seas and coasts, air pollution, industrial waste, risks related to the use of nuclear power, urban sprawl, damages caused by tourism, pollution of agricultural origin, harm caused to animals, plants and the natural habitats, development of biotechnology.
7 addition, most Greeks and Spaniards strongly agree with the imposition of an energy tax as a way of combating the greenhouse effect [Rüdig 1995:23-24]. How we can explain the low levels of knowledge of the Greek and Spanish publics with their high levels of expressed concern (especially during the 1990s) about global warming? Two possible explanations are offered by Rüdig [1995:32]:
A cultural explanation, focusing on the perhaps particularly great ‘social’ connotations of the interviewing process eliciting answers which are seen as ‘desirable’, or perhaps a generally higher willingness to express high levels of concern about a whole range of issues, has to be considered. But we also have to consider the possibility that higher levels of concern reflect a higher degree of anticipated personal impacts…One might expect that Southern Mediterranean countries may have more to fear than much of Northern Europe, for example in terms of the effect of climate changes on agriculture and tourism. Whether this really is reflected in the expressed concern is an open question which has to be addressed by further research.
The analysis of Hofrichter and Reif and the data I have presented here suggest that ‘personal complaint’ is the most probable explanation in explaining the contours of environmental consciousness in Greece and Spain.
Furthermore, a study of the 1986 Eurobarometer study by Inglehart [1990:53], the architect of the post-materialist thesis highlights the fact that both the Greek and Spanish publics profess an above the EC average (22%) willingness to join the ecology movement with 50% and 42% respectively. In a study using data collected by CIS during the late 1980s, 38% and 34% of the Spanish public professed a willingness to join nature protection organizations and the ecology movement respectively [García Ferrando 1991:185]. In addition, another study comparing the social values of members of ecological organizations and the general public in Spain has argued that the latter is ‘worried about the quality of the environment in the same way as those who belong to environmental organizations’ with the difference that they still value materialistic pursuits [Herrera 1992:672-73].
Moreover, both Greeks and Spaniards continue along with the Portuguese to show the highest levels of professed willingness to act in order to protect the environment through the 1990s (see charter 2).
8 Chart 25
Professed willingness to act in oder to protect the environment
90 80 70 60 50 Series1 40 30 20 10 0 Greece Spain Italy Portugal Germany EC12
Source: Eurobarometer [1992: no. 37, p. 71].
The following sections will examine the actual practical manifestation of the apparent high levels of environmental consciousness exhibited by the Greek and Spanish publics.
The weak civil society thesis. Civil society is simultaneously a very ambiguous and old concept. Trying to trace its exact meaning through the writings of Hegel, Marx and Gramsci, to mention just a few, one is immediately confronted with diverse if not outright conflicting interpretations and usages. The resurrection of the concept after the revolutions of 1989 has led to a very lively debate in the academy regarding its usefulness and it has led to its popularization and incorporation in everyday political discourse, whether to describe the proliferation of NGOs as providers of welfare goods or the emergence of the so called anti-globalization movement, these usages continue rather than resolve its all-apparent ambiguity. Kumar [1993:383] highlights the problem in a very emphatic way:
In seeking to excavate the concept of civil society and put it to use in current conditions, contemporary theorists are evidently mining a rich but highly variegated vein. Civil society has been found in the economy and in the polity; in the area between the family and the state, or the individual and the state; in non-state institutions which
5 The following actions are included: Go on a type of holiday that is less harmful to the environment; take part in a local environmental initiative (for example, cleaning a beach or a park); demonstrate against a project that could harm the environment; financially support an association; be a member of an association for the protection of the environment..
9 organize and educate citizens for political participation; even as an expression of the whole civilizing mission of modern society.
Mainly, for this reason, Kumar [1993:390-91] suggests that the concept of civil society is not only confusing but also unnecessary.6 Social and political science has already developed concepts that can capture the cumulative emphasis on pluralism, diversity and citizens’ rights facilitating political action by individuals, such as ‘constitutionalism, citizenship and democracy’. Is there any particular reason leading us to bundle together these entire concepts under the aegis of such an amorphous catch-all concept as that of civil society is [Kumar 1994:128]?
In a critique of Kumar’s view, Bryant [1993:399] suggests a specific ‘sociological variant’ establishing the boundaries of civil society. This refers to ‘a space or arena between household and state, other than the market, which affords possibilities of concerted action and social self-organization’. Nevertheless, the original concept of civil society was not perceived as a locus counter to the state apparatus per se but rather to the most absolutist and despotic version of it. In fact, Bryant’s ‘sociological variant’, cons idering civil society as a sphere capable of self-regulation, is more akin to the anarchist tradition [Kumar 1994:130]. A similar point is made in the work of Cohen and Arato [1994:423; Cohen 1999] where they argue that the absolute dichotomy between state and society, a widespread perception among advocates of the civil society concept, ‘represents a quintessentially nineteenth-century figure of thought’ echoed mainly in the state abolitionism characterising neo-liberalists and ‘present-day heirs of utopian socialism’ (i.e. anarchists).
These are extremely important points which have been hardly taken into consideration by commentators on the Greek and Spanish civil societies. The contours of the civil society concept are not vigorously analysed and consequently the reader is not aware which version of civil society is used. In other words, if the accepted version is that put forward by Bryant, then any characterisations of the Greek and Spanish civil societies as weak or even more emphatically as ‘atrophic’ are formulated at a distance from the reality and practicalities of parliamentary democracy in the western world. Parliamentary democracy does not by its nature encourage the formation of autonomous and self-regulated/organized spheres of action, since such a development undermines its very foundation and the state apparatus underpinning it, although some parliamentarians of the free-market variety (anarcho-
6See also Seligman [1992:101-44] and the widely cited Keane [1988: particularly his introduction].
10 capitalists, as some commentators call them) advocate such a development, not of course for the benefit of society.
The writings of Schumpeter remind us that the unregulated unleashing of societal forces runs the danger of a resort to totalitarianism. The representative character of western liberal democracy guarantees that the extremes remain at bay. In countries, such as Greece and Spain, where the bitter historical experience reminds that attempts for autonomy has been met with severe repression, the articulation of social demands through the political medium is something that have been imposed into the psyche of their peoples. To put it in another way, the horizontal articulation of demands at the societal level has been beaten out of their system. If, therefore, the advocates of the weak civil society thesis, are basing their position on the most idealistic, albeit popular, formulation of civil society, then the Greek and Spanish societies have been accused of being weak in something that does not characterise any other society. Nevertheless, as we shall see, this is not the case.
Social movement theory suggests that the New Social Movements which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in western Europe are precisely new, not only because of the nature of their demands, but also because the locus of action and its target is the civil society rather than the state, as it was in the case of the old working class movements [Offe 1985; Melucci 1980]. At the same time, NSMs use protest activity as the main medium articulating their demands [Dalton et al. 1990:15]. This is undoubtedly an exaggeration emanating, in my view, from a tendency among social and political scientists to develop general categories in order to facilitate analysis. It is clear that not all of the organizations, networks and groupings composing the NSM triptych of environmental, women’s and peace movements subscribe to this perspective. Students of movements’ politics have continuously identified NSM segments that hardly differ from traditional pressure groups in both their organizational structure and their composition by so called ‘movement entrepreneurs’, having unequivocally instrumental rather than ideological goals. To these we can add, especially in the case of the environmental movement, groups of people directly affected by the adverse environmental impact of certain projects who certainly do not possess the emancipatory views of the core environmental activists, albeit that ‘they may play an important legitimizing function’ for the movement as a whole [see Rucht 1988:309-11]. Moreover, it has been argued that NSMs do not have an exclusive orientation. In contrast, there is not a straightforward choice between a logic aiming at power and a logic aiming at identity maintenance but rather a representation of both logics with different weighting depending on the period of action and the specific current of the movement [Rucht 1990:164]. Thus, reducing the NSM phenomenon only to
11 the most radical currents of the triptych is not only misleading but it also significantly reduces the area of investigation.
With this brief explanation of the character of NSMs, a particular pattern is emerging. On the one hand we have an idealistic conception of civil society and on the other a strong emphasis on NSMs’ characteristics that certainly are not omnipresent in all the manifestations of the phenomenon. Movements that are by choice rejecters of the official political arena are more likely to be found in abundance in societies so advanced that civil society acts as a locus of self-regulation and autonomy. However, at the same time social movements’ sectors suspicious of the state and political apparatus are more likely to be characterised by an adherence to the most libertarian ideological currents. Thus the absence of this radical NSM sector in a given society may not indicate a weakness of civil society but rather a weak ideological development. What is more remarkable throughout the literature on NSMs is that the very subjugation of civil society to systems of corporatist intermediation with their inclusion of selective actors (labour, business interests) was what gave vigour to NSMs in Northern Europe. If the state had accepted these new actors as interlocutors between it and society then the development of NSMs in Northern Europe would have taken a completely different path.
These ideas regarding civil society and the established perception of NSMs as harbingers of new tendencies in citizens’ politics, regularising protest activity and contentious politics in general come in sharp contrast with the classic perspective of ‘civic culture’ put forward in the work of Almond and Verba [1963]. Contrary to the NSM school of thought which is characterised by a celebration of citizens’ action, Almond and Verba [1963:478-79] were suggesting that the ideal citizenry for the maintenance of liberal democracy is one that is ‘active, yet passive; involved, yet not too involved; influential, yet deferential’. Any move of the citizenry to the opposite direction may result in demand overflow, an excessive questioning of elites that may lead to an undermining of democratic institutions. Furthermore, civic culture has been a characteristic of advanced liberal democracies with strong civil societies.
This elitist perspective, emanating from a need to compromise the apparent apathy of the publics examined, evident in the abundant data collected by Almond and Verba, with the survival of democracy is not adequate any more. The challenge to its contours has come from the sweeping tide of protest in Western societies during the 1960s and it has continued in the 1970s and 1980s with the routinization of unconventional political participation among
12 the citizenry of western democracies.7 This highly observable phenomenon has not led to a challenge regarding the strength of civil societies. In Britain, the most paradigmatic case of a developed civic culture in Almond and Verba’s study, the celebrated deferential attitude has certainly declined. The miners’ strikes and the poll tax riots [Eatwell 1997b:64] and the anti- motorway construction mobilizations of the 1990s clearly demonstrate that the British are not the deferential citizens of the 1950s. Nevertheless, the decline of civic culture in Britain and the growing level of unconventional political participation have not led commentators to doubt the strength of the British civil society. Still the British public is characterised by an aversion to the most extreme forms of unconventional action.
Increased levels of unconventional political participation are not something new and worthy of special mention in all European cultures. France, for instance, is a setting where contentious politics have a long-established tradition, leading some commentators to wonder whether there any societal groups that have not engaged in some sort of unconventional political activity or another. Nevertheless, the weakness of social groups and conventional channels of participation as well as an apparent ‘aversion to social interaction’ and a collective socialization emphasizing the revolutionary past of the country have been the explanatory variables behind the high propensity of the French to protest rather than a general change of societal attitudes as witnessed in other western European societies [Dalton 1996:73-74]. Thus the French case seems to suggest that unconventional protest activity is inversely related to lack of strong associational ties among the citizenry of a given nation.
As I have already suggested, civil society in both Greece and Spain has been viewed by political scientists and sociologists as extremely weak.8 This cannot be viewed and dismissed as a perspective emanating from some Northern European stereotypes about the Mediterranean peoples. In fact, the most vocal advocates of the weak civil society thesis are Greek and Spanish social scientists. Although this gives some more credibility to their assertions, that does not mean that their perspectives are not influenced by an a priori position regarding the ideal direction that social developments should take in both of these countries. Certainly, if that position is based on the civic culture thesis of Almond & Verba then what can be perceived as adequate citizens’ behaviour is severely confined.
7 Chapter 4 in Dalton [1996] provides an elucidating discussion about the character of unconventional political participation in Western Europe. 8 Among others the following indicative bibliographical references have been consulted for Greece: Charalambis & Demertzis [1993]; Demertzis [1990, 1994b, 1997]; Dimitrakos 1996; Lyrintzis [1984]; Mavrogordatos [1988]; Mouzelis [1980, 1987, 1995]; Pantelidou-Malouta [1990]. For Spain the following have been consulted: Costa Pinto & Núñez [1995]; Gibbons [1999]; Morán & Benedicto [1995]; Mota [1999]; Subirats [1999]. .
13 The broader southern European category into which Greece and Spain have been incorporated should not disguise the fact that these countries are not the same. Without wanting to undervalue the differences between them certain common characteristics of their respective political cultures can certainly be identified. There is a broad consensus that civil society in both countries is weak. Some prominent Greek commentators do not hesitate to be more emphatic and characterise Greek civil society as ‘atrophic’ [Demertzis 1990, 1994b, 1997; Charalambis & Demertzis 1993].9
Atrophic civil society means the absence of strong intermediary ‘bodies’ between the state and the quasi-capitalist market of Greece, as well as the prevalence of the family as one of the central institutions of social, economic and cultural reproduction’ [Demertzis 1997:110].
From the available literature on Greek and Spanish civil societies, it can be deduced that the accepted perception of civil society is one which sees it as a buffer zone or interlocutor between the state and the family, excluding political parties, that functions as a filtering as a filtering device of societal demands to the state apparatus.
The concept of ‘amoral familism’, devised by Edward Banfield [1958] in his famous study of interpersonal relations in an Italian village society, has been expanded and utilised for the other countries of the European South. The primacy of the family unit has not encouraged the development of strong horizontal networks based on common interests and objective social positions but has led to patronage and vertical clientelistic networks. These ingrained attitudes in the Greek and Spanish political cultures are not conducive to the development of reciprocal relationships which encourage trust and consequently associationalism. In this context, collectivity ‘is only a potential source for personal benefit, a respondent for all kinds of claims, demands, or reclamations, never the embodiment of the herald of norms to be listened to and obeyed’ [Tsoukalas 1995:199]. For this reason, the expression of an extremely high concern for politics by the Greek public should be taken with a pinch of salt.
This ever-present and all-consuming preoccupation with politics in Greece is not altogether surprising if one takes into account the extent of state expansion and penetration and the way in which the Leviathan state relates to civil society. For the ordinary citizen in both town and village,
9 Two commentators have also argued that Greece is the only European example where a communist party was developed in advance of a trade union movement [Alexandropoulos 1990; Karampelias 1989].
14 a detailed knowledge of what is currently going on at the level of national as well as local politics is not a matter of purely academic interest. It is in fact a vital necessity in a social environment in which any economic or social project, however trivial, requires for its fruition clientelistically achieved state support, or at least, an equally clientelistically achieved guarantee of state non-obstruction. This being so, it is not at all surprising that Greek villagers, despite their lower educational standards, have a greater knowledge of what goes on in the national political arena than do their counterparts in countries with stronger civil societies [Mouzelis 1995:22]
In the context of clientelism, particularism and excessive atomism (as opposed to individualism) the meaning of politics acquires a very peculiar meaning. When Greeks express a high level of political interest in quantitative surveys, they express this interest in relation to what they perceive the meaning of politics to be [see Pantelidou-Malouta 1990]. This has led commentators on Greek politics to talk of an ‘apolitical over-politicization’. This over-politicization is evident in the mass participation of Greeks in the electoral process and their “passion” 10 about the political process manifested by constant addressing of the state authorities while its apolitical character is evident in the absence of ‘connection with the collective social procedures’ and ‘political dialogue’ [Spourdalakis 1988:110-11].
At the level of political concern, Greek and Spanish attitudes are substantially different. Contrary to the Greeks, the Spanish public exhibit very low levels of interest in politics. In the 1985 comparative study of political behaviour in the countries of the European South, the Spanish public exhibits the lowest concern for politics after Portugal, 3.5% and 0.8% respectively, while the Greek public was in the top position with 23.1%. Consecutive Eurobarometer studies have put Spain at the bottom of the list on this issue together with Italy and Portugal; while Greece has been always in the top five [see Dodos et al 1990:115 and Pantelidou-Malouta 1990:31].11 Thus, although Spain appears in the literature as exhibiting the same negative components (atomism, clientelism, particularism) as characterise Greek political culture, these have not led the Spanish public to an intense acquisition of politic al interest. This may be suggestive that on the one hand, these characteristics do not lead to one-dimensional linear development and, on the other that there has been an over-
10 The quotation marks are from the original. The actual term used by the author is pathos (p????) which can be translated in English as either passion or pathos, the latter indicating a pathological attitude. 11 The Greek case is a very good example of the inadequacies of an exclusively quantitative focus.
15 generalization of some apparent aspects of Southern European political culture which operate with different intensity in each of the nations of the region. On the latter point, a recent study suggests that, contrary to the expectations emanating from the historical tradition of Spanish clientelism, caciquismo, that Spanish political parties will be susceptible to clientelistic practices as a means of securing the consolidation of their electorates, clientelism in democratic Spain may go as far as expanding state employment (especially in the first terms of socialist rule) but it has not been a key feature of electoral mobilization [Hopkin 2001]. The well documented new type of clientelism that characterises post-authoritarian Greece, based on political parties rather than the local notables of the past and which has been codified as ‘bureaucratic clientelism’ [Lyrintzis 1984; Charalambis 1989], is virtually absent in the Spanish case.
The recent formulation of the Mediterranean Syndrome (MS) thesis by La Spina and Sciortino [1993], inspired by Banfield’s ‘amoral familism’, has been used in order to explain the ambivalence of southern European states toward environmental problems and the difficulties experienced in the application of comprehensive environmental policies. The components of the MS are broadly those aspects of Southern European political culture described above with special emphasis on an omnipresent tendency for the sanctioning of uncooperative attitudes, utilization of public positions for private ends, and violation of the law in the absence of severe punishment [La Spina & Sciortino 1993:213]. Nevertheless, they highlight the fact that the MS is not ‘a faithful depiction of the Southern European states’ but ‘rather a structural tendency’. Moreover, they admit that MS in relation to civic culture is articulated in very different ways among individual nations while, in terms of administrative structures and legislative procedures, Spain seems to completely lack any of the MS attributes [La Spina & Sciortino 1993: 115]. The latter emanates, according to the authors, from the fact that both the Spanish executive and the central civil service play by the rules when confronted by serious social conflict. This together with the issue of clientelism as a method of political mobilization seems to suggest that structural characteristics of a society’s political culture do not necessarily correspond with all aspects of the actual social and political praxis. Furthermore, even in the Italian case, the primary inspiration for the development of the MS concept, they argue that MS is not perfectly applicable since ‘if all Italians were amoral familists, no Green Party could have been created’. Nevertheless, the application of the MS is appropriate when ‘the vast majority of legislative processes, administrative behaviours, and citizens’ attitudes are in accordance with it’ [La Spina & Sciortino 1993:232].
16 These are extremely important statements which, although they do not challenge the overall picture in the literature regarding Southern European political culture in general, and those of Greece and Spain in particular, they offer us an important hindsight into the paths that an investigation seeking to incorporate the environmental problematic in the debate should take.
The statement regarding the presence of a green party in Italian politics as an indicator that not all Italians confront to the negative aspects of Italian political culture is of extreme importance. A similar statement would not be misleading for the Greek and Spanish cases either. Indeed, all political culture scholars recognise the broad generalization that the very notion of a national political culture contains. The following statement by a student of Greek political culture is indicative of the levelling character of an unquestioned adherence to a national political culture.
Only through the study of specific characteristics of specific social groupings that compose Greek society can we contribute toward the sketching of the physiognomy of Greek political culture as a whole without simplistic and levellin g schemata, which, at the end of the day, in reality do not represent either socially and politically anything but an imaginary type of ‘average Greek’, without sex, age and social position [Pantelidou-Malouta 1990:20].
Although, the study of political culture in both Greece and Spain is a relatively recent scholarly engagement and thus is likely to proceed in the same incremental way that studies concerning other nations have proceeded, there are already signs of attempts to rectify the situation. Nevertheless, the inclusion of specific social and political subcultures is virtually absent.
More precisely there is no incorporation of NSMs and other citizen initiatives into the study of political cultures in Southern Europe. In fact, the perception regarding the weak civil society in both Greece and Spain has been mostly substantiated through studies of trade unions. The weakness of civil society in these countries has become an undoubted truism end the explanatory variable for other weaknesses and failures of societal groupings and political formations, in a way that often disguises the validity of other parameters. For example, the failure of green parties in Greece and Spain to establish a strong electoral presence is often attributed to the general weakness of civil society in these nations and other related value parameters. As I have already pointed out, this perspective reduces what is a very specific
17 manifestation of environmental concern to the more general which is the environmental movement as a whole.
This wider scope of green parties is precisely what is neglected by the overwhelming focus on cultural facets by some studies of the trajectory of green parties in Greece and Spain. Without an examination of the configuration of NSMs in both countries and their relationship with the established political forces, particularly those on the left of the political spectrum, any conclusions regarding the trajectory of their respective green political formations are likely to be incomplete.
In addition, the all-apparent primacy of political parties in both countries as interlocutors between the state and society is not a satisfying explanatory variable for the unsuccessful trajectory of green parties. An illustrative example comes from Kitschelt’s [1989] groundbreaking study on the logic of green party formation through the case studies of two very well known and researched green parties, namely the German and Belgian green parties. He makes the following statement:
Political scientists have called both West Germany and Belgium “party states” or “particracies” because in them well-organized, cohesive parties provide the medium through which interest groups, legislatures, and the executive branch interact in the process of political formation. Political clientelism and proportional representation of the established parties in the career bureaucracy are common. Parties wield considerable control over the mass media, the judiciary, and educational institutions. Moreover they provide important channels for interest groups to participate in policy making [Kitschelt 1989:28].
This is a statement of paramount importance, since it does not merely discount the validity of particracy and clientelism as a factor impeding the formation and development of green parties but it actually values them as facilitating conditions.
Rather unintentionally, the MS thesis brings in to mind spontaneous peasant uprisings against state authorities or their local representatives and ballads about bandits and other villain/heroes fighting in the mountains against injustice, for freedom or personal matters of honour. The history of the Italian South and Sicily, the loci of Banfield’s research, are full of examples of what Hobsbawn [2000] has termed ‘social bandits’. The same is true for Greek and Spanish popular history.
18
The Klepht (thief) that Greek school children recognise as the freedom fighter to whom they owe their freedom from the Ottoman yoke did not hesitate to switch sides and become an amartolos (sinner), i.e. a Christian fighter employed by the local Ottoman ruler or Pasha. Allegiance to a nation in its making was not stronger than allegiance to the locality of his operation to stop him from pledging submission to a strong advancing Ottoman army at least until better days came by. His refusal to march to the battlefield in the orderly fashion characterising the art of warfare in Napoleonic Europe and his preference to duck and take cover or retreat in the face of superior forces (guerrilla tactics) were perceived by some of the foreign volunteers (Philhellenes) as cowardice [Brewer 2001]. The refusal of the Hydriot seamen to set sail unless they received advance payment and their insistence on going through their immediate democratic procedure of leadership election and their habitual resort to piracy are additional historical indications of that very autonomous and individualistic spirit that the Greek nation-state would have to combat, whether through coercion or persuasion (quid pro quo clientelism), in its project of imaginary nationhood construction since its inception. This brief historical retrospection has its importance when one considers the inevitable historicity entailed in any deep engagement with national political cultures. A characteristic comment by a Greek scholar on the multi tasking engagement of many modern Greeks (a jack of all trades, specialist in nothing) is quite revealing of this tendency for historical connections.
If collective productive rationality is a function of concrete organizational expertise within long-term maximizing strategies, compulsive versatility is coterminous with lesser specialization within short-term maximizing tactics. Like their forefathers, who seldom missed a chance to lower their official merchant banner when hoisting the black flag seemed more profitable, Greeks today still prefer opportunistic economic buccaneering to organized market warfare [Tsoukalas 1995:204-205].
Spain as well has its own fascinating history of local uprisings and villain/heroes. The authority of the Madrid state has for a long time been the authority of a foreign power encroaching upon the autonomy of local networks. The bandoleros of Andalusia, the proxies of local grievances which developed in popular uprisings, were probably the closer approximation to the Klepht of Greece with all the apparent differences of the Iberian and Balkan contexts. A few decades after their disappearance in the late 19th century, the legacy of the bandoleros gave way to a new two-dimensional manifestation of both local
19 disgruntlement and of class divisions and oppression with the anarchist guerrilla in the agricultural regions of Spain, Andalusia in particular, and anarcho-syndicalism in the industrial regions such as Catalonia. Widespread regional disparities combined with an increase in unemployment and loss of real wage value, the cruel oppression of the infamous Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and the absence of strong leadership among the peasantry, combined with the weakness of the Spanish state, are the key explanatory variables for the widespread diffusion of anarchist ideas and praxis in Spain as opposed to Northern Europe [see Hatjimichalis 1987:128-29].12.
The developments after that are too well documented and known to require any further presentation here (simultaneous suppression by both fascist and Stalinist forces during the civil war). It is important, though, to highlight the important contribution toward new theorization and social praxis such as self-management, decentralization and anti- statism/regionalism, ideas and perspectives which have been popularised in sections of the European left after the 1960s.
These are aspects from a distant past which have nevertheless left a strong legacy in the collective memory of the Greek and Spanish people. The years of repression following the civil wars in both countries may have led to a decline of a possibility of localism/regionalism acquiring strong ideological contours, as it did in the past with communism13 in Greece and anarchism in Spain, but the strong identification with the locality as opposed to the central state has remained a strong characteristic of both cultures.14
These strong legacies of local resistance have been enriched with new elements in post- authoritarian Greece and Spain. The combination of these legacies with the development of
12 Similar activities by anarchists were also widespread in southern France, in the Mezzogiorno (Italy) and the Peloponnesus and Crete (Greece) but in these cases the response of the state was swift and effective in smashing them at an early stage [Hatjimichalis 1987:129]. 13 It may be true that the Greek resistance was communist-led but the thousands of peasants participating in the ranks of ELAS had certainly a much different conception of changes they wanted than the sclerotic leadership of KKE. 14 This apparent lack of trust of the central state manifested in complete defiance to some of its directives and its representatives is certainly a negative aspect for the stabilization of liberal western democracies. From an anarchist perspective is celebratory quality if not a commonsensical attitude. When one reviews neo-liberals like Fukuyama [1995], trust seems to be used as a substitute for desperation. Furthermore, a point that is missed quite often in this discussion is that defiance of authority has had some very positive historical manifestations when one thinks about the French soldiers who took strike action on the battlefield during WWI in defiance of unreasonable orders, those French citizens who protected thousands of Jews in defiance of the Vichy regime [Scott 1999:276] or the ordinary Greek conscript who defied the orders of fifth columnist elements for immediate capitulation to the invading German army during WWII. Therefore distrust has some positive characteristics not only under extreme circumstances but also, as Warren [1999:310] suggests, as an essential ‘healthy suspicion of power upon which the vitality of democracy depends’.
20 omnipresent and simultaneously inefficient state apparatuses (giants with feet of clay) distributing selective benefits through vertical networks to specific constituencies has led to confrontational situations when the externally induced attempts for modernization collide with established interests and privileges developed as part of the peculiar and parasitic process of state legitimization. These social eruptions do not constitute evidence of a strong civil society but rather what has been termed a ‘defensive’ political culture or society, a term which has been used among others to describe the reaction of traditional segments in new primarily nation-states to the processes of western modernization [see Katsoulis 1988: cf. 1].
The concept of defensive political culture has many hermeneutic usages. Katsoulis [1988:36- 37] has used it to encompass, in the Greek context, the general feeling of weakness toward the protection of national interests against the encroaching interests of the Great powers in Greece and the broader region and the consequent construction of a ‘defensive’ culture and politics in the relationship between Greeks and foreigners manifested in the past as anti- communism and after the collapse of the colonels as anti-westernism in general and anti- Americanism in particular. Other scholars have used defensiveness as a qualitative additive to the generally weak character of Greek civil society [Mouzelis 1980:262-64; Kioukias 1993:54]. It might be the case that Greek civil society is extremely defective in acting as a buffer zone stabilizing state/society relations, but it is also true that state paternalism and the vertical clientelistic networks supporting it are occasionally disrupted by the emergence of ‘horizontal’ organizations which are nevertheless equally weak and precarious as the state apparatus is. Intensive local mobilizations, far from indicating a proactive siphoning of societal demands, as is the case of strong civil societies, indicate the exact opposite, the absence of strong intermediary actions.
Although, this formulation has been used for the Greek context, it can be applied, with some caution, in the Spanish case as well. The over-emphasis that studies in regime transition in Spain have paid to the pacted nature of its transition to democracy has neglected the strength given to opposition leaders to the regime in their negotiations by intensive mobilizations [Tarrow 1995:231-36]. The widespread student, workers and neighbourhood mobilizations of the late 1960s and 1970s in Spain have been initiated by spontaneously formed grass roots movements controlled for the most part by themselves before left political parties took a more active role in directing them [Castells 1983; Giner & Sevilla 1980]. These mobilizations were of course tied to the context of regime crises and transition, in other words they are of a transitory nature destined to subside with the completion of regime transition. Furthermore, in both the Greek and Spanish cases the discourse of ‘change’, paying homage to decentralization and self-management, put forward by their respective socialist parties had
21 the effect of co-opting them and thus defusing their potential radicalism. Hatjimichalis’ [1987:286] study of regionalism in Southern Europe explains regional mobilizations as a result of loss of state legitimacy due to contradictory interventionist practices, on the one hand supporting through patronage networks parasitic economic activities and, on the other, through the call for rationalization and restructuring of the process of capital accumulation seeking to reorganize them. This analysis is consistent with the idea of a weak but defensive civil society that I identified earlier with the difference that, in the Spanish state, we have the presence of strong regional ethnic cultures such as those of the Basque Country and Catalonia, regions with the highest per capita incomes in the country and strong regional elites, which give a distinctive character to mobilizations that have occurred there.
Strong legacies of popular resistance resurface when the state undermines its defective legitimacy structures in its attempt to modernize. Under this guise of defensiveness we should vie w certain regional movements that emerged in parts of Greece and Spain during the 1970s and 1980s.
Setting the parameters. Summarizing the preceding analysis, we can identify the following contours of the weak civil society thesis in relation to Greece and Spain: Both the Greek and Spanish societies are lacking strong intermediary structures between the state and the family. The citizenry of both countries is characterised by an excessive atomism and particularism. Collective action and associationalism are selected as a means for the achievement of goals broadly subscribing to that very atomism; as such is usually defensive rather than proactive and suggestive. To challenge these very well entrenched positions we need to identify evidence pointing to the following directions:
1) An increase or a tendency for increase of associational membership of EMOs.
2) The inclusion of EMOs in intermediary structures affecting policy making by the state apparatus.
3) The strengthening of already existing or the emergence of new intermediary structures operating as interlocutors between society and the state.
Environmental mobilizations and movements in Greece and Spain during the 1970s and 1980s.
22 The transition from authoritarian rule has been characterised by intensive mobilizations in both countries but in different degrees and importance. The semi-openness of the authoritarian regimes during the early 1970s allowed for a number of mobilizations to take place. The local opposition to the expansion of oil refineries in agricultural land in Megara, Greece, in 1973, led to widespread mobilizations which were violently suppressed [Louloudis 1987; Schizas 1993]. Contrary to Greece, in Spain as early as 1970 the first signs of an emergent eco-political perspective begun to emerge with the foundation of AEORMA, which contrary to the conservationism of ADENA, emphasized a more combative discourse which included themes such as the construction of nuclear reactors and motorways. During the 1970s there was a notable increase of nature protection organizations and with the death of Franco there was a proliferation of eco-political groupings, such as AEPDEN (AEDENAT) and DEPANA, the latter making a clear eco-political statement along with a nationalist position that would characterise the Spanish ecology movement to the present [Fernández 1999:53-54; Casal 1989; Tello 2000: 222].
In addition, this period witnessed the development of both a Marxist and an anarchist current in Spanish ecological thought and praxis. The former became well known outside Spain with the prominent presence in its ranks of Martinez Alier, in collaboration with foreign academics constructed, a socialist perception of the environmental problematic utilising and expanding upon existing Marxist theorisation and leading in the editorship of well known journals such as Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and its Spanish counterpart, Ecología Política (Political Ecology). At the same time, a perspective ‘hypercritical of what [it regarded] as the authoritarian left…aspiring to the formulation of an autonomous ecological discourse from the Marxist tradition’ began to emerge [Recio 1992:82]. All these emerging perspectives were combined with dominant views relevant to the Spanish context, such as the emerging ‘nationalist’ perspective. At that earlier period of transition the Spanish ecology movement was characterised by a wealth of organizations adhering to various ideological perspectives and characteristics. This fact has led commentators to describe it as ‘pluralistic’ [Recio 1992:82] and ‘polyphyletic’ [Folch 1998:83]. The widespread nuclear mobilizations of the period which continued with more intensity during the early 1980s [see Fernández 1999: chapter 4] position the Spanish ecology movement closer to the Northern European experience than its Greek counterpart.
In contrast, in Greece evidence of an eco-political discourse began to appear in the early 1980s after the mobilizations of Niochori (1980/81). This can partly be attributed to the fact that the only to date attempt to build a nuclear reactor in Greece (Karystos 1977/79) was averted after extensive mobilizations [Louloudis 1987]. The first significant eco-political
23 organizations were founded in the early 1980s and more particularly after the electoral victory of PASOK in 1981. 15
In both countries the discourse of ‘change’ (allaghi/cambio), employed by their respective socialist parties, making reference to aspects of the NSM discourse such as ‘self- organization’ [see Botopoulos 1994] would have an immense impact in the trajectory of NSMs16, in general, and the environmental movement, in particular, in both Greece and Spain. Characteristically, with the electoral victory of PASOK in 1981, a significant number of ecological initiatives and committees, active during the transition period, ceased to exist [see Tremopoulos 1992:21-21]. In addition, most of the professional organizations active during the transition period on environmental issues became ‘less willing to facilitate environmental activities’, mainly due to the employment of many of their members by the new administration [Stevis 1993:89]. The evident limitations of the socialist discourse would be the variable mostly encouraging the passage of the movement to political ecology in the Greek case.
Although, as I have already indicated political ecology in Spain made an earlier appearance than in Greece, the abstract promise of ‘change’ by PSOE had a similar effect to that of its Greek counterpart. With the end of Francoist regime, members of the ecology movement, especially those of a more technocratic perception of the environmental problematic, joined the socialist party. To those we should add those who, as active members, were already involved in various ecological organizations. At the end of 1978, PSOE helped in a crucial way the very well known ecologists, Artemio Precioso and Pedro Costa Morata, in the foundation of CESE (centre for Socio-ecological Studies) [Costa Morata 1995:5].
At that stage PSOE’s attitude toward the ecologists was one of utilization for the advent to power, similar to that performed by PASOK in Greece. As in the Greek case, the Spanish socialists seemed very willing to support the ecologists as part of the oppositional propaganda, only to show a much more hostile attitude than their Greek counterparts, when in office. The welcoming hand of PSOE paid dividends. Prominent ecologists agree that the hope brought by PSOE’s victory in 1982 and its new administration in reversing or cancelling the deleterious effects of the projects initiated by the Franco regime, and continued by its democratic proxy in the five years government of UCD and the absence of a strongly articulated autonomous ecological movement discourse, led many activists to collaborate
15 See for details the works of Louloudis [1987:17-18]; Schizas [1993]; Stevis [1993:89-90]. 16 See among others, for the women’s movement the works of Athanasatou [1995]; Kaplan [1992:191:228]; Kyriazis [1995]; Stamiris [1986]; Threlfall 1985, 1989; Valiente Fernández 2001.
24 with PSOE after its elevation to office [Recio 1992:83; Compomanes 1993; Cabal 1996: Chapter 3]. In the first year of the socialist administration, the choice of these ecologists seemed vindicated. One of the first acts of PSOE in government was to pass a moratorium on nuclear energy/weapons [Cabal 1996: chapter 3] but that was due ‘to economic conditions rather than a policy-reorientation and again disregarded movement demands [Jiménez 1999:154].
In both Greece and Spain the attempts to co-ordinate their respective movements were largely unsuccessful. The meetings that were held for that purpose in Greece between 1982 and 1985 (Aegina 1982, Athens 1983, Plakentia 1983 EPOIZO 1985) failed to produce results due to the intense ideological differences among the participants [Louloudis 1987; Schizas 1993]. In contrast to the Greek case, in Spain attempts to co-ordinate the movement and outline its values and demands can be traced back to the years immediately preceding the de facto end of authoritarianism with the death of Franco. The first attempt of this kind took place in Benidorm in a two days meeting organized by AEORMA (15th-15th June, 1974). The Manifiesto de Benidorm contains a significant list of urgent environmental problems while making a link with social consequences and suggesting concrete policy proposals (support for public transport, halt in motorway and nuclear plant construction, environmental education in schools). The meeting of Benidorm was followed by the gatherings of Pamplona (September 1974), La Coruña (May 1975) and Oviedo (September 1975) characterised by intense divisions between the conservationist and eco-political perspectives characterising the movement [Fernández 1999:58].
Nevertheless, the most important manifestos constituting a standard reference in the history of the Spanish ecology movement were produced later in the gatherings of Valsaín (Segovia) and Cercedilla (Madrid) in 1977 and, most importantly, in Daimiel in 1978. The gathering of Valsaín, organised under the auspices of AEPDEN, produced the foundation of the Federation of the Ecological Movement as well as a manifesto stating explicitly the purpose of unifying all the currents of the Spanish ecology movement [see for details Fernández 1999; Costa Morata 1984;].
The two day gathering of Cercedilla (17th-18th September) managed to create a co-ordinating committee for the Federation and a Secretariat. The manifesto produced and signed after this laborious exercise on immediate-democracy and consensus building reaffirmed the earlier expressed intention for the creation of ‘an organization without hierarchies or centralised
25 powers that respects the variety of the movement’ [Fernández 1999:61] 17. Nevertheless, the Federation founded in Valsaín and Cercedilla did not really operate. The only co-ordinating organization that has managed to operate at a state level has been CODA (Coordinating Committee for the Protection of Birds and their Habitats), founded in Daimiel [Tello 2000:222]. The manifesto signed there can be compared to the previous ones in the sense of making similar radical and holistic statements regarding the environmental problematic [see paragraph cited in page 8].18 Nevertheless, the manifesto did not achieve the unity of the ecology groups but rather operated as a statement of conviction. On the other hand, the foundation of CODA achieved unity, initially of fourteen groups, because of its simple and specific message of nature protection. That is not to say that the eco-political critique of the system was absent but that conservationism was highlighted over the other aspects. Thus, regardless of the legacy left by the manifesto of Daimiel, what was achieved there was rather a partial unity of environmentalism rather than of political ecology.
Apart from these identified differences, there is also a difference in the character of environmental mobilizations between the two countries. In Greece environmental mobilizations during the 1970s and 1980s took place predominantly at the local level and were of a Nimby character. It may be the case that so called Nimby mobilizations have taken place elsewhere in Europe, but the problematic character of state legitimacy in Greece combined with the low level of associationalism set Greek mobilizations apart from those in other European contexts. These early mobilizations do not seek to make the state fulfil its legitimation function, namely the application of its own environmental laws and policies (EIA for example) but to defend their local constituencies from the adverse effects of modernising projects on their health and livelihood, the latter often based on unplanned and environmentally destructive tourist activities.19 This perspective is consistent with Hofrichter and Reif’s argument that during the 1980s Southern Europeans have exhibited environmentalism more of personal complaint rather than a global environmental concern.
17 Alvarez-Junco [1994:326] in a brief footnote (no. 25) states that there was a split between those he calls ‘políticos’ and ‘genuine environmentalists’. The former were controlled by ORT.. Although this event is not mentioned as such in the rest of the literature it is still an important detail that highlights the affiliation of a great number of ecologists with revolutionary Marxist organizations. I have a problem with Alvarez-Junco’s categorization (políticos versus genuine), because it simplifies a lot the divisions in the ecology movement and gives an opinion about the authenticity of environmental concern in terms of how political or non-political this concern is. I can infer from the rest of the article that he holds this view due to the influence that Melucci’s ‘New Social Movements’ paradigm has in his analysis. 18 The whole manifesto in Cabal [1996: Annex 1]. For reports on the gathering see Fernández [1999] and Costa Morata [1984]. 19 The Colonels regime numerous licenses for tourist developments based on purely personalistic criteria and absolutely no application of planning procedures.
26 Indeed, if one closely examines the environmental mobilizations that took place in Greece during the 1970s, the aforementioned points are confirmed. The concern leading to the mobilizations is certainly confined to the personal complaint category, but in addition there were strong economic motivations either out in the open (demands for tourist development) or more undercover20. In addition, the vast majority of those mobilizations were successful through party mediation, especially that of PASOK, rather than the efforts of the mobilizers themselves [Louloudis 1987; Alexandropoulos & Serdedakis 2000; Spanou 1995; Botetzagias 2001]. This party mediation does not suggest a politicization of environmental issues akin to the involvement of parties of the extra-parliamentary left in environmental conflicts in Northern Europe, but what later, with PASOK in power, would be proved to be a mismatch between rhetoric and action, a typical characteristic of populist political formations. .
Local mobilizations in the late 1980s in Greece such as those of over the Kalamas’ River affair (1987-1990), the Aegean island of Milos (1988-1989) and Astakos in west-central Greece (1989-1990), although taking place during PASOK’s governance but in a period where there were no illusions about rhetorical limitations of its discourse, the mobilized locals failed to take advantage of intermediary structures, such as the courts, to channel their complaints [Kousis 1993; 1994; 1997]. Furthermore, the projects that the locals opposed in all three cases were sustainable development projects (a municipal sewage treatment plant, a toxics storage treatment facility and a geothermal powerplant using renewable energy). In all cases the locals distrusted the reports of company and state experts on the environmental impact of the projects and in one case, Milos, the local struggle committee employed an Athens based laboratory to conduct research which challenged the experts’ report [Kousis 1997].21 In the context of the ‘Risk Society’ [Beck 1992], mistrust of experts and public authorities is increasingly normal. Nevertheless, in the Greek case mistrust of authorities is characteristic of the defensive character of Greece’s civil society rather than a development of a post-industrial society where conflicts are created over unequal ‘risk distribution’. Although, it might have been tempting to suggest that advance post-industrial societies are exhibiting Southern European characteristics, the absence in the latter of strong environmental EMOs with high levels of associational membership (only 3% of the Greek public) acting as channels for environmental complaints deter us making any such claim. In addition, the demands of those mobilizations (threats to health and livelihood) once more highlight the ‘personal complaint’ character of the Greek environmental concern.
20 Spanou [1995:282-83] makes that point for the successful mobilizations of Megara (1973) and Methana (1975) where environmentally harmful projects were aborted while they were allowed to go ahead in other areas close by, in the face of similar mobilizations, by competing companies. 21 For a more detailed analysis of the mobilizations at Milos see Kousis [1993].
27 In Spain, local environmental mobilizations in the same period are characterised by the same Nimby concern and are organized predominantly by local committees. Nevertheless, in the Spanish case there is a strong involvement of nature protection organizations (Doñana for example) and the extra-parliamentary parties of the left which largely controlled the ecology movement at the time. Furthermore, the environmental mobilizations in the Basque country should be viewed in the context of the left-nationalist movement [see Ibarra & Rivas 1996; Barcena, Ibarra & Zubiaga 1997].
Overly it can be argued that the intensive mobilizations of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the high level of participation by the Spanish public, do not signify a challenge to the weak civil society thesis, although the level of mobilizations and their intensity can be put on a par with those of the same period in Northern Europe due to the increase number of anti-nuclear mobilizations. Those mobilizations, as has been already indicated can be attributed to the effects of regime openness. Furthermore, those early mobilizations were characterised by an intensive politicization due to the deep involvement of radical left-wing groups which consequently controlled the environmental movement. Similarly to the Greek case, this intense ‘politicization’ prevented the development of permanent networks of co-operation among different environmental organizations [Jiménez 1999].
This fact combined with the moderation of the Spanish public in that period [Maravall 1982] explains the low level of participation in the fledgling environmental movement. PSOE’s election in power in 1982 coincides with a decline in both environmental mobilizations and the number of participants in protest indicating the strong impact of PSOE’s overtures to the environmental movement. The level of participation has remained relatively stagnant throughout the period of socialist rule while the number of mobilizations has significantly increased since the early 1990s [Jiménez 1999: 161]. A comparative study of mobilizations during the 1980s which includes Spain [Koopmans 1996:41] suggests convincingly that the high level of unconventional participation in Spain during that period is inversely related to the low levels of associational membership. According to the same study, associational membership of NSMs in Spain has been during the 1980s was only 21% while for countries with lower levels of unconventional mobilizations associational membership was: 48.8% for the Netherlands, 44.1% for Britain and for the ‘contentious’ French, 25.1%, a figure close to that of Spain. In addition, the high levels of NSM-related unconventional mobilizations in Spain can be mainly attributed to one mobilizing issue, the Anti-NATO campaign. Furthermore, the study of Garcia Ferrando 1991:185] has found out that the associational membership of nature protection and ecological organizations is a very limited 1%. The
28 same percentage of associational membership of environmental organizations in Spain has been duplicated in the Eurobarometer studies of the period.
The disappointment resulting from the failure of the anti-NATO campaign had as an effect ‘the demise of a generation of radical left-wing activists’ and the disappearance of most of the extra-parliamentary left parties which were monopolizing NSM mobilizations since the transition [Jiménez 1999:150]. The de-politicization of the environmental movement resulting from the above development opened new opportunities for its co-ordination and strengthening of its organization which was manifested in the 1990s. The same de- politicization of the environmental movement also took place in Greece after the demise of its Green party in 1992.
Environmental mobilizations and movements in Greece and Spain during the 1990s. During the 1990s there was no increase in the absolute number of EMOs operating in Greece which are still approximately 200. There is, though, a qualitative difference, the virtual absence of political ecology organizations and a complete turn to institutionalization [Ale xandropoulos & Serdedakis 2000]. In addition, there is an openness of state structures to the participation of environmental NGOs which can be attributed to pressures from the EU and the need of the Greek bureaucracy to compensate for its lack of environmental expertise. Furthermore, inert structures that used to be tied to the state apparatus, such as the Council of State and local prefectures have acquired autonomy. The former has been very active in cancelling environmentally harmful projects by invoking the widely abused article 24 of the Greek constitution [Papaspyrou 1999; Karakostas 1995] either on its own initiative or after action brought by citizens’ groups. Prefecture councils have been given extensive powers and their members are directly ele cted instead of state appointed after the decentralizing measures of 1996. As a consequence they have increasingly active in highlighting environmental complaints. In addition, EMOs have been more active in initiating environmental mobilizations and utilizing both the national opportunities offered by the opening of intermediary structures by also in bringing their cases at the supra-national level, such EU bodies and transnational EMOs. In addition, membership of EMOs has increased to 6% [Eurobarometer 1995], an encouraging sign but still far below the EU average. These are the changes that led Close [1998; 1999; 199b] to conclude that the environmental problematic has operated toward the strengthening of the Greek civil society.
In Spain, the de-politicization of EMOs after the failure of the anti-NATO campaign failure has led to a watering down of the intense ideological conflicts of the past and a much better co-ordination of the movement. Currently, the co-ordination of the movement is in the hands
29 of Ecologistas en Acción, founded in 1998 [Jiménez 199b]. Nevertheless, a more recent work has suggested that Ecologistas en Acción have been converted to an ‘accessory’ of environmental themes of IU [Grau Creus 2000:96]. The early acceptance of EU environmental legislation in Spanish policy with its admission to the Common Market because the two were perceived as interrelated in 1986, to the regret of the Spanish government [Morata & Font 1998], and the further strengthening of the Autonomous Communities in their ability to formulate relatively independent policy from Madrid [Jiménez 1999; Grau Creus 2000] has elevated EMOs into partners with public environmental agencies at both regional and state level. Environmental mobilizations and other unconventional activities have remained high for most of the 1990s but this time, as one commentator suggests it is utilized as a standard method of attracting media attention rather as compensation for lack of political opportunities [Jiménez 1999]. Membership of EMOs, such as Greenpeace, COAD, AEDENAT, Federación de Amigos de la Tierra, ADENA-WWF- España and others has reached 170,000 affiliated members while the membership of ecological and pacifist groups is estimated at 4% [Mota 1999:44 & 54]. This is undoubtedly an increase in associational membership but nevertheless is still far below the Northern European pattern.
Concluding remarks Developments in both Greece and Spain indicate that the environmental problematic has contributed to a developmental process which had strengthen their respective civil societies. There is evidence pointing to the development of intermediary structures for the filtering of environmental demands and a strengthening of the role of EMOs. Nevertheless, the low levels of associational membership still characterising Greek and Spanish EMOs does not allow us to challenge neither the weak civil society thesis nor the MS. The recent challenges to the latter seem to be based on the misconception that MS inhibits the coming together of citizens for short term mobilizations. As the analysis of MS in this paper has shown, La Spina and Sciortino were referring to the coming together of citizens in permanent organizations, namely associational membership. Should they had referred to what the challengers wrongly perceived the MS to be, La Spina and Sciortino would have been responsible for the development of an extremely ahistorical concept.
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