Reflections on the Institutionalization of Protest: The West German Peace Movements

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Abstract
Massive demonstrations occurring in the Federal Republic of Germany in opposition to the deployment of Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles are rooted in a thirty-year tradition of peace protest. Protest experiences acquired during the campaign against German rearmament and the early deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in the 1950s fused with those gleaned by student activists in the 1960s and environmentalists in the 1970s. Protest issues have begun to converge over three decades, producing an antinuclear groundswell for which the German “Greens” have become a political clearing house of sorts. For West Germany, the significance of the peace movement lies in the changes in national attitudes toward citizen participation, its commitment to NATO, and the ramifications for inter-German relations. For the global community, the significance rests with changing attitudes toward a collective security system that operates at the expense of national interests and, possibly, national survival.

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