The German Green party is in the midst of a major identity crisis -- struggling between the ideals that have been the motor of its very existence and the pragmatism required of a junior coalition partner of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's (barely) left of center government. A new generation of Greens, arguably more interested in holding on to power and expanding electoral support among a generation of new voters that shows more interest in professional advancement, wealth and security than their counterparts one or two decades ago, has emerged. They have just released a position paper that calls for a pragmatic shift to the center of the political landscape, away from the radical calls of the early Greens back in the 1980s for a nonviolent, just, safer and environmentally responsible society.

This is only the pinnacle of a steady movement of major German (and other European) party systems to flock from the left and right to a comfortable, quasi-conservative, yet young and dynamic, middle ground, away from ideology, away from core values, principles and deeply felt beliefs about how society ought to function. Such an approach offers little room for radical statements and it calls for conformity and pragmatic politicking. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is a master of this trade, and his approach, particularly in the context of the recent NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, seems to have struck a chord among a new generation of Green Party members. The leftwing of the Green Party is about to release its counterposition paper, and the internal wrangling over the fate of the Greens could greatly change the political landscape (and political culture) of Germany.

If any party in Germany ever represented the force of ideas over the force of tradition and establishment, it was the Greens. Due to their very presence and steady growth, the Greens forced the established parties to "retaliate" with similar ideas and programs to avoid losing the young cohort of German voters. Green agendas slowly but surely were thus absorbed by the established parties and their programs. The Greens as a movement opposed nuclear power, military force, the arms race, environmental pollution, poverty, oppression and power and elite politics. The Greens as a party lost much of that ideational power, but they were still able to reconcile old ideals with the limitations of actual access to and possession of political power. Even as a governing coalition partner the Greens preserved some of their ideals, making them an often difficult coalition partner for the governing Social Democrats under Schroeder.