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Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Initially, it was a small anti-nuclear protest group composed of Americans and Canadians, peaceniks and hippies, World War II veterans and people barely out of high school. Twenty years later, it was the world's largest environmental NGO, with headquarters in Amsterdam, branches in over forty nations, and a regular presence at international environmental meetings throughout the world. This article will chart Greenpeace's growth throughout its first two decades, in the process examining how the organization became influential at several levels: in local politics in places like Vancouver; at the national level in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Germany; and at global forums such as the International Whaling Commission and various UN-sponsored environmental meetings. It will analyze the combination of activist agency and political op-portunity structures that enabled Greenpeace to gain political influence. I argue that Greenpeace's influence largely stemmed from its engagement with what political scientist Paul Wapner calls "world civic politics," which in this case involves the dissemination of an ecological sensibility that indirectly influences behavior at multiple scales, from individuals, to governments, to multi-lateral organizations. Only in this way could a group with relatively limited resources hope to influence millions of individuals and powerful governments.

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Initially, it was a small anti-nuclear protest group composed of Americans and Canadians, peaceniks and hippies, World War II veterans and people barely out of high school. Twenty years later, it was the world's largest environmental NGO, with headquarters in Amsterdam, branches in over forty nations, and a regular presence at international environmental meetings throughout the world. This article will chart Greenpeace's growth throughout its first two decades, in the process examining how the organization became influential at several levels: in local politics in places like Vancouver; at the national level in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Germany; and at global forums such as the International Whaling Commission and various UN-sponsored environmental meetings. It will analyze the combination of activist agency and political op-portunity structures that enabled Greenpeace to gain political influence. I argue that Greenpeace's influence largely stemmed from its engagement with what political scientist Paul Wapner calls "world civic politics," which in this case involves the dissemination of an ecological sensibility that indirectly influences behavior at multiple scales, from individuals, to governments, to multi-lateral organizations. Only in this way could a group with relatively limited resources hope to influence millions of individuals and powerful governments.

From the mid‐1970s, Greenpeace began to expand its influence beyond its original base in North America. As it did so, it encountered an array of environmentalist and social movement cultures in the various countries in which it sought to set up branches. This article focusses on the establishment of the West German branch in the early 1980s. It analyses the friction Greenpeace — by then an increasingly professional organisation with a hierarchical structure — caused when it entered a West German environmentalist culture that was committed to grass roots democracy and consensus politics.

Die Weltorganisation 'Greenpeace' ist ein international vernetztes, global agierendes und in den Medien allgegenwärtiges Unternehmen. Seine Geschichte, seine Struktur und seine Philosophie fordern alle wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen heraus. Mit »Make It a Green Peace« (so der englischsprachige Titel) liegt erstmalig eine akribisch recherchierte, wissenschaftlich fundierte und zielführende Darstellung vor. Sie verbindet Zeitgeschichte, politische Wissenschaft, Gesellschaftssoziologie, Kulturtheorie und Umweltforschung zu einer kompakten Analyse eines führenden Agenten in der Globalisierung. Die Anfänge von Greenpeace finden sich in der kanadisch-amerikanischen Graswurzelbewegung von Antinuklearbewegung, Friedensbewegung, Hippie-Anarchismus, Quäker-Theorie der Gewaltfreiheit, Pazifismus, New Age-Spiritualität, Indianischer Naturauffassung, Tierschutzbewegung, Medientheorie von Marshall McLuhan u.a. Aus diesem Amalgam hat sich Schritt für Schritt und mit vielen Konflikten eine allgemein politische Organisation herausgebildet, die heute ein globales Weltunternehmen darstellt, gekennzeichnet durch straffe Führung, Zentralisierung, Professionalisierung, Management, Marketing, Öffentlichkeitsarbeit.