Chapter three analyzes how non-party or state actors countered official environmental claims, developed alternative narratives, and challenged authority. In the GDR, Church-based environmentalism evolved on the fringes of society and in a transnational context. Environmental engagement, its impetuses, and its forms led to a critique with theological underpinnings as well as practical frustration about degradation. Church-based activists fostered contacts with independent actors to the east and west, establishing networks across central Europe. In the FRG, the environmental movement became formalized in the Green Party, which underscored the SED’s inability to adapt. In the Soviet bloc, Poland modeled a less repressive attitude toward society that opened opportunities for independent actors, especially Solidarność, which the SED feared would undermine the entire bloc’s security. The SED increasingly distrusted neighboring countries and the potential impact of their reforms at home. The GDR’s position as hinge between east and west became a liability for domestic stability.

Chapter 5 examines the case of EU nanotechnology policy, showing that the mobilisation of ethics experts acted as atool to check the rise of a potential political conflict on ‘nanos’. By showcasing that a new type of experts representing a diversity of voices had been consulted, EU policymakers ensured that policy remained formulated within a closed community ofactors. They also successfully framed other environmental and health safety concerns as technical, rather than ethical, issues, thus allowing for a compartmentalisation of ethics and a technicalisation of the debate. The mobilisation of ethics experts helped check the rise of conflict because expert knowledge was produced in an iterative process between experts and policymakers. Policymakers gave substantial information to the EGE experts, and informed them about the tenets of the policy debate as well as its policy preferences. But orchestration was facilitated by an embedding of experts into ongoing policy debates and narratives. EU policymakers and ethics experts worked together in various crossing points, such as conferences, workshops and roundtables, where a common way of looking at the issue was developed.

In many democratic countries, talented individuals run for the nation’s top elected office under the banner of newly formed parties. Once in a while, these individuals manage to win. In France, for example, a new party called En Marche! was formed on April 6, 2016. The party’s full name, “La République En Marche!” roughly translates as “The Republic on the Move!” This party backed Emmanuel Macron for the French presidency in 2017. Macron received 24 percent of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election on April 23, placing first out of five candidates. A second-round runoff with the top two candidates was then held, and Macron was elected President with 66.1 percent of the vote. In the legislative elections of June 2017, En Marche! also won a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, the French parliament.