Conclusion: environmental protest transformed?

Despite the institutionalization of environmentalism, it appears that there was no universal or monotonic decline of environmental protests during the decade 1988–97. Patterns of the incidence of protest varied considerably and remained nationally idiosyncratic, with protest appearing to decline and become less confrontational in Greece, whereas it rose and became more confrontational in Britain, and declined only to revive sharply in Germany, Spain, and Italy. Considerable cross‐national variations in the issues and the forms of protest tended to persist over time. There was no evidence of any Europeanization of environmental protest in the shape of either a convergence of national patterns or a rise of protest mobilized on the level of, stimulated by, or targeted at the European Union and its institutions. On the basis of a protest event analysis of newspaper reports during a decade in which environmental protest was no longer novel, there is little or no evidence of the demobilization of environmentalism during the decade, and some that the institutionalization of environmental activism may be self‐limiting.