In the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s, France, like other European countries and the United States, was rocked by a new wave of social movements. The early development of a strong antinuclear movement during the 1970s made France the prototypical country for new social movements (NSMs). However, in the 1980s, these French NSMs experienced a strong decline.

In this book, Jan Willem Duyvendak compares the surprising development of these NSMs in France - for peace, the environment, an end to nuclear technology, solidarity, squatters' rights, women's rights, and gay rights - to the development of similar campaigns in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Although all of these countries share more or less the same economic characteristics, they have different political traditions. Duyvendak finds that by the 1980s, the new social movements were weaker in France because of France's tradition of "old" political conflicts.

He concludes that because France was still beset with political splits between center-periphery and urban-country as well as religious and class strife, the development of French society during the 1980s took place at the expense of these new social movements.