At the end of the sixties an increasing number of people wanted to play a more active role in politics (especially people who had enjoyed a good education) and this was reflected by a growing number of civil-action groups at a local and regional level. These first action groups targeted their protests against the construction of nuclear power stations, in an attempt to prevent or eliminate mismanagement and bad planning. The aim of these groups was to mobilize public opinion and in so doing to influence the political decisions being made by parties in parliament.

On the one hand, civil-action groups promote political involvement and help to break down apathy. They express a growing sense of self-confidence among citizens, who are no longer content to be seen as an object by the state and administrative authorities. On the other hand, civil action groups usually focus on one issue. This is quite natural since unlike political parties they do not have a general mandate from the people. The majority of civil-action groups have objectives that are relatively narrow both in terms of what they want to achieve and in the time it should take. The role played by civil action groups in party democracy and, indeed, their relationship to individual parties can be wide ranging. Some groups adopt a strict policy of neutrality and cooperation to all political parties, while others prefer to become closer to a particular party or even reject the party system altogether. The first civil-action groups emerged at the end of the 1960s. Their number has now grown to several thousand.

There are many reasons for the emergence of civil-action groups: A widespread sense of unease about political parties' lack of closeness to the people; insufficient opportunity to contribute at other levels of political life; rejection of conventional forms of political participation. Involvement in a civil-action group with firmly defined local objectives is more likely to lead to a sense of achievement than activity within a party apparatus, where individuals have little influence. In addition to this, the large political parties are often not in a position to satisfy specific interests because of the need to keep their policies more general in nature.

The increasing number of problems - due to limitations on growth, the recognition of a flip side to technological progress and increasing expectations - combined with the pressure that goes hand in hand with them means that the parties have to develop new concepts to solve these problems. Parties and civil-action groups complement each other rather than canceling each other out. It follows, then, that civil-action groups are not necessarily an indication of crisis in the political system, since in a free society people usually profit from an increase in political activity. On no account do civil-action groups represent a decline of the party democracy, even if they do create a certain amount of uncertainty within the political parties. (...).

[Uwe Backes/Eckhard Jesse, taken from: Informationen zur politischen Bildung 207, Parteiendemokratie, Bonn BpB 1997]

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