Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - General and Comparisons, grade: 1,3, University of Nottingham (School of Politics and International Relations), course: Politics and Society in Europe, a comparative approach, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The emergence of Green parties towards the end of the 1970s was a significant turning point in the development of party systems in Western Europe. Most of them had been highly stable after World War II until the early 1970s. Therefore, in several countries, the Greens were the first to disrupt the stable party systems of the 1950s and 60s. But why Green parties? And why in the 1970s? And why were and are the Greens in some European countries more successful than in others? And why in a few did they almost completely fail? The aim of this essay is to find answers to the questions mentioned, exploring whether value change, party strategy or institutions are the best explanation for the development of Green parties across Europe. Therefore the essay is divided into two main parts. The first rather small one elaborates in which countries in Western Europe Green parties have played a more or less significant role in the past thirty years and in which countries they haven't. This is rather a descriptive approach answering the question of what is to be analysed in the second part. In this second more analytical part of the paper, the different approaches to explain the emergence of Green parties - value change, party stretegy or institutions - are explored searching for the most convincing one. [...]