Abstract (eng)
This paper investigates the German movement against agricultural biotechnology in the context of the European multi level system. Therefore various theoretical approaches are combined to outline changes in the mode of state government within the context of Europeanization especially with reference to Beate Kohler-Koch et al., secondly the role of science and expertise in the regulation of new technologies as Sheila Jasanoff is concerned with, thirdly, the possibilities of participation of civil society in the European system and fourthly theoretical approaches concerned with new social movements, especially conducted by Dieter Rucht and Donatella della Porta.
The main question is how the movement against agricultural biotechnology is acting within the multidimensional policy space of the EU, which means that all levels have to be mentioned − the European scale as well as the national and the regional one. Chapter 4 and 5 in this sense are describing the political context in the period from 1998 to 2009, to show which political changes and reforms, discourses and developments have been preceded.
Methodologically the empirical research is based upon a combination of a quantitative Protest Event Analysis, where newspaper articles from two dailies „Die Welt“ and „Die Tageszeitung“ are used as source to code the different protest events during the period mentioned above, and qualitative interviews with movement participants and NGO experts, held during the „Grüne Woche“ in January 2010.
The aim is to show, that the influence of the movement grew by the integration of conservative rural activists pressuring the CSU to turn its position from pro to a very rigid refusing one. The broadening of movement participants however did not affect the activity repertoire, that because as Woods argues, the new rural movement also has a more progressive than reactionary spin. To conclude, new modes of participation have to be found, to recreate coherence between international (expert-) regulation and civil participation which implies the need for further inquiry.