cleavages

Question 1

What are cleavages?

Answer 1

= there is some division in society in which some people have different interests than others

• e.g. gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, geography, language, class, values
• many cleavages are not (strongly) politicized, meaning they remain dormant (e.g. age, gender)

politicized = when people try to get votes, to represent certain interest etc.

main questions = which cleavages become politically salient? why do some become foundational for parties and other don’t?

Question 2

4 types of major cleavages

Answer 2

= Lipset and Rokkan

1. owner vs worker
2. church vs state
3. urban vs rural
4. centre vs periphery (mostly after falling SU, one of the strongest cleavages we see today)

Question 3

overlapping vs cross-cutting cleavages

Answer 3

overlapping cleavages:

• most risky in society: inability to make policy, wider conflict, more polarization
• you have interests that are different from other groups (everything between people divides them)
• e.g. Northern Ireland: center-peripherhy + protestant-catholic -> violence

cross-cutting cleavages:

• different interests groups allign on different issues
• if people have multiple cleavages, they have different alliances, it helps build ties
• e.g. Belgium: regional conflict Flamish vs French speaking + but can allign on economic issues (econ parties/interests allign across the borders of other cleavages)
• shows that some cleavages can become more salient

Question 4

Europe: two revolutions

Answer 4

*importance + sequence revos differs per country

1. National/French revolution -> center-periphery (state.nation-building policy) + church-state (secularism)
2. industrial revolution -> class (industrial vs labor, new poverty, urban class with no voting rights) + urban-rural

class cleavage most dominant in Europe
secularism kinda resolved, but still discussion in how far secularism would go (e.g. in education)

Question 5

Centre-periphery cleavage

Answer 5

reaction to political centralization conflict between more powerful center and weaker periphery, conflict about autonomy, originates in France (national revo)

outcomes:

• secession: Eritrea, Ireland, Pakistan, Slovakia
• substate autonomy / federalism: Belgium, India, Nigeria
• effective absorption into unitary state: France, Italy
• persistent tension: Spain, UK
  *often quasi-federalism: not in constitution, but regional gets power

Question 6

religious cleavage

Answer 6

french/national revolution

• conflict between new elites and the clergy (religious rights and the role of religion in public life)
• can also refer to conflict between different religious dominations

laid basis for christian inspired parties vs liberal parties
e.g. in UK

Question 7

class cleavage

Answer 7

= industrial revo

• owners of capital + established elite vs working class
• conflict about eco conditions, political rights and redistribution
• strength cleavage depend on perceived opportunities of mobility (e.g. US)

present in virtually all democracies: socialist parties

more and more about rich vs poor rather than owner/worker

Question 8

rural-urban cleavage

Answer 8

= industrial revo

• landed aristocracy (old money) vs new industrialists (new money)
• positions in the state and power
• less elitist cleavage will present in Nordic countries: eco differences
• revival as reaction to the Green movement
  BBB: farmers movement with electoral success, can be explained as countermove to growing Green movement = rural-urban re-emerging

Question 9

new cleavages?

Answer 9

after Lipset and Rokkan: silent revolutions (non-economic issues) + transnational cleavage

Question 10

cleavages and ideologies

Answer 10

cleavages -> parties, all parties have ideologies (?!)

parties are the institutions that facilitate the expression of cleavages

ideology = collection of beliefs and values

• of how we should deal with issues (e.g. cleavages)

common heuristic = left and right (originates in France: for monarchy set on the right, against the monarchy set on the left)
*in the US liberal parties are left wing, elsewhere they are right wing

!horseshoe model: both the -isms (left and rightwing ideologies) can be extreme and lead to totalitarian regimes

Question 11

freezing hypothesis

Answer 11

Lipset & Rokkan: same parties and programs around for a long time: 1960s resemble the 1920s

why?

Strengthening party alignment

• pillarization/verzuiling e.g.
• parties became big in society, associated with labor unions, associations, etc. bringing people closer to parties

parties as ‘political entrepreneurs’

• parties based on societal cleavages but also sustain these cleavages as political entrepreneurs
• once in power, keep telling people how important the cleavage is, saying you have to vote for me, otherwise….
• discourse keeps the salient cleavage alive to keep votes

manipulation of electoral rules (through mass suffrage eventually implemented)

• duverger law: majority system leads to a two-party system

Question 12

influence of electoral systems

Answer 12

majority and plurality systems limit the amount of cleavages that can be represented

Question 13

changes since Lipset and Rokkan

Answer 13

Silent Revolution (Inglehart): people born after WW2 were less concerned with material stuff, more on post-material stuff as human rights, democracy, environment

• incorporation by existing parties + new parties
• postmaterialist values mostly with richer + younger voters
• UK??
• emergence of New Left, Social Liberal and Green parties

Transnational cleavage: winners vs losers globalization + pro-immigration vs against

• new parties emerge (e.g. in France and Italy, partly bc mainstream parties reacted slowly)
• parties redefine their programs around this (e.g. in UK, US)

focus on:
- immigration and multiculturalism
- globalization and nationalism
- culture and identity
- majoritarian vs. liberal democracy
- climate change (?) Covid-19 (?)

changes -> new conceptualization left-right: economic left and right but also cultural left and right

Question 14

transformation of cleavages

Answer 14

Freezing hypothesis:

• allignment: party identification on the basis of cleavage structure and ideologies

Recent decades:

• realignment = shifting party identification on the basis of changing cleavages, resulting in (dramatic) changes in party system = growing electoral volatility
• dealignment = declining party identification that is not replaced with a new one (-> not voting) = decreasing turnout
  people vote too much, see too little influence
  generational change?

electoral volatility = Pederson index: party vote change from one party to the next

Question 15

new democracies - most common cleavage

Answer 15

identity/ethnic cleavages

• associated strongly with African parties
• is not very different from center-periphery, cultural cleavages
• roots of political saliency ethnicity?

((ethnic cleavage often overlaps with language, center-periphery, religious cleavages) notes by Iago)

Question 16

new democracies

Answer 16

Eastern Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin-America

cleavages can explain party systems in new democracies, but its diff types of cleavages (different revolutions)

why diff cleavages?

• no large scale internal process of state formation
• no contestation for suffrage rights (exc: South Africa) : all came around the same time
• greater role for individual politicians due to absence of strong social organizations

results:

• high electoral volatility (new parties emerge, but don’t necessarily stick around)
• personalistic politics
• ethnic parties
• valence programs + clientelistic politics
  valence program = something that no one can be against: less poverty, corruption etc.

ideology not necessarily absent, e.g. communist parties still always go for bigger role state

Question 17

new democracies: colonial and post-colonial dynamics

Answer 17

more groups than states

lack of nation-building?
colonialism put people together without binding them together as a nation -> independence led to return individual identities

active policies against nationbuilding, heigthening ethnic divides

• e.g. Belgian colonial rule in Rwanda and Burundi influenced by social science theories of racial classifications: Tutsi minority trained in French and governing + Hutu majority (“short, stubby, smiling fools”) seen as future farmers

colonial rule = prevention cross-cutting cleavages: only cultural associations allowed under colonial rule, narrow bases early political mobilization

• people could only organize for independence with people from their own ethnic group
  -> Congo independence -> 250 parties (each ethnic group wanted own party)
  -> Ghana: formation political parties already allowed before independence -> parties with multiple ethnic groups

Question 18

new democracies: authoritarian rule

Answer 18

leaders claimed to fight for ‘nationalism’ but held on to power + advantaged their own group (-> civil wars)

• Tanzania exception: leader chose national language that was not association with a specific ethnic group

Stewart: horizontal inequalities, a neglected dimension of development

• inequality based on cultural group status
• rich tend to belong to one political group, the poor to another
• is different from vertical inequality like GINI: one group could be small percentage population and large amount money, one group could be smal percentage population with large % money

instability -> no democracies

Question 19

new democracies - third wave democratization

Answer 19

(re)turn to multiparty democracy in the 90s, return ethnic voting, but variation (e.g. South Africa not always ethnic voting, although now more ethnic nationalism)

Question 20

new democracies - ethnic parties + clientelism

Answer 20

multi-ethnic / ethnic parties:

• not always clear majority ethnic group, often a coalition of ethnic groups
• not build on a program, but on clientelism and on corruption
• campaigns based on valence issues (better roads, employment etc)
• feeding this = state resources

!unity build not on programs, but on clientelism (if we work together, you can take this ministry, i will take this, and we will distribute resources among ourselves)

mass clientelism = reciprocal relationship between a patron (politician) and client (voter)

• jobs = patronage
• money = vote buying
• permits, loans, food
• juxtaposted to programmatic politics: we want dev. roads, we’ll offer aid, but only if you vote for the right party

elite clientelism = i give you something, you give me something, we won’t bother each other

clientelism seen as problem for democracy: exlcusive nature + use of state resources

Question 21

horizontal inequality

Answer 21

= inequality based on cultural group status

• rich tend to belong to one political group, the poor to another
• is different from vertical inequality where the whole society is unequal, with horizontal inequality different groups are unequal

Question 22

(article Lipset and Rokkan) 4 critical lines of cleavage

Answer 22

l-g axis = territorial dimension of national cleavage structure
a-i axis = functional dimension (conflicts cut across the territorial units of the nation)

National Revolution ->

1. subject vs dominant culture = conflict between central nation-building culture and increasing resistance of the ethnically/linguistically/religiously distinct subject populations in the provinces and the peripheries
2. church vs government = conflict between centralizing, standardizing, mobilizing nation-state and the historically established corporate privileges of the church

Industrial Revolution ->

3. primary vs secondary economy = conflict between landed interests and the rising class of industrial entrepreneurs
4. workers vs employers/owners

Question 23

(article Lipset and Rokkan) - thresholds for cleavages to become politically salient

Answer 23

thresholds in the path of any movement pressing forward new sets of demands within a political system

1. legitimation (is the protest recognized the right of petition, criticism and opposition)
2. incorporation (do participants have political citizenship?)
3. representation (must it join older movements to get access to representative organs or can it gain representation on its own)
4. majority power (built-in checks and counterforces against numerical majority rule vs victory at the polls give party/alliance power to bring major structural changes)

Question 24

(article Bornschier - cleavages in old and new democracies) = problem with freezing hypothesis

Answer 24

1980s new value conflicts

mobilization new actors means that the links between social groups and parties of the established structure of conflict must have weakened

dealignment = social groups abandon the party they supported = the weakening of the established structure of conflict

• structural = long term evolution of social structure weakens the grip of the established cleavages (e.g. post-industrial econ. -> shrinking traditional working class)
• behavioral = links between social groups and ideological party blocks formed by cleavages change bc old conflicts are pacified or new divisions are strong enough to disrupt the prevalent patterns of conflict
  (parties can take up positions on new issues, but their supporters are often divided on it -> party doesn’t pick a side)

realignment = the process of forging new links between parties and social groups

Question 25

(article Bornschier - cleavages in old and new democracies) durability of cleavages influenced by

Answer 25

1. degree of polarization
2. stability of alignments between parties and voters
3. congruence between programmatic positions of parties and their electorates

Question 26

(article Bornschier - cleavages in old and new democracies) - what social structural basis could make a long-term structuring of politics along value based conflicts plausible?

Answer 26

(value divide can’t be a cleavage as long as it isn’t anchored in social structure)

1. class antagonisms with new/growing middle class
2. differences in education
3. state-market cleavage + winners-losers (globalization) cleavage

Question 27

(article Bornschier - cleavages in old and new democracies) - formation of new cleavages in new democracies

Answer 27

different critical junctures and class dependency

Latin America = many parties older than those of 3d wave democratization countries, but absence cleavages as in the “developed world” bc:

1. religious homogeneity
2. early state consolidation under colonial rule
3. coincidence of industrial and landed interests

-> no strong class-based parties (even though there high inequality) + predominance of catch-all parties

within L-A regional differences, influenced by timing and magnitude of suffrage extensions (determine homogeneity of social groups)
- e.g. Brazil universal suffrage before establishment working class -> not much class-based parties

highlight importance agency of political elites (bc less strong secondary organizations): parties chose which cleavages they make salient

Question 28

(article Erdman: western european bias and the african labyrinth)

why the western european model doesn’t work for Africa

Answer 28

focus on formal institutions , they don’t play a big role in social/political processes of the parties in Africa

parties are diff: programs and ideologies don’t differ much + find support through patronage/clientelism + important function of organizing opposition (bc not many gov. checks)

most dominant cleavage = ethnic/regional identity = supported by ethnic patronage based on public resources

• parties are not ethnic parties (those are exceptional: usually many ethnicities together), but mobilize along lines of ethnic identities/morality/solidarities
  *ethnic party = party dominated by one ethnic group with a particularistic agenda

!! we shouldn’t create an African typologie: would lead to marginalization, useful typology (when incl. hegemonic parties (state parties that were part of authoritarian regimes + held ground) = Diamond’s

Question 29

(article Erdman: western european bias and the african labyrinth) ethnic parties and ethnic congress parties

Answer 29

• goals: both particularistic (ethnic group interest)
• electoral strategy:
  
  • ethnic party = mobilizes with appeals to ethnic group benefit and threat + clientelism
  • ethnic congress = clientelistic loyalties and exchanges among constituent groups + appeals to national integration
• organizational structures and linkages
  
  • ethnic party = ranges between weak organization with traditional community ties to mass personal organizations
  • ethnic congress = coalitional or federative based on ethnic or regional elites and local notables
• social basis
  
  • ethnic party = single ethnic, regional or national group
  • ethnic congress = coalition of more or less distinct ethnic and regional groups

Question 30

(Iago notes) translation cleavages into parties depends on

Answer 30

1. legitimation (is the system democratic?): recognized opposition, rule of law, etc.
2. incorporation: right to vote etc.
3. representation: electoral system influences how many parties can compete
4. majority power: checks on executive power