Cleavage (politics)

The cleavages in Lipset and Rokkan's classical theory have its origins in two developments in 19th century Western Europe. Various parties have claimed to represent either interest, though this may or may not be genuine. Socialist parties such as the British Labour Party, Argentinian Socialist Party and the Swedish Democratic Workers' Party represent the left while the British Conservative Party and the Republican Party in the United States represent the right. • Conflict between industrial and agricultural sectors on trade policies such as continued state exercise of control over tariffs, against freedom of control for industrial enterprise. This creates agrarian and peasant parties such as the Australian Country Party, Finnish Centre Party and Polish Peasants People's Party. Lipset and Rokkan claim that the political parties that emerged in Western Europe during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century were formed on the base of these structural cleavages in societies. At the time of writing their essay (1967), they observed that these party systems had, for the biggest part, not changed. Parties then still seemed to be based on the aforementioned four cleavages, making many European party systems seem 'frozen'. Barbara Geddes extended Lipset and Rokkan's argument to Latin American states, finding that Lipset and Rokkan's argument did not successfully explain the party systems there even though the cases were consistent with the initial conditions outlined by Lipset and Rokkan in their study of mostly European party stems. There have been noteworthy exceptions to Lipset and Rokkan's theory of Western European party systems, however. As the authors claim, the fascist or national-socialist authoritarian politics of for example Spain, Italy and Germany were not based on these historical cleavages. Thus, not all Western European states had had 'frozen party systems' for the period concerned. == New cleavages ==

From the 1960s onwards, the party systems discussed in Lipset and Rokkan's theory partially 'unfroze' as the traditional cleavages seemed to become less deterministic for voting behaviors than before. A second theory is one linked to class affiliations. Historically, those who identify as working class would tend to vote for left or left leaning parties, while those in a stronger economic position would vote for parties on the right of the political spectrum. Ronald Inglehart argues that the rise of affluence, particularly in the middle classes, has led to voting behaviour and party affiliations no longer being primarily based on class. While this brings into question the continued existence of the Left-Right cleavage, it also leaves room for voters to based their vote on factors other than class, such a concerns regarding the environment or immigration. In an attempt to appeal to a wider variety of voters it has been argued that parties on both sides of the political spectrum have consciously moved their policy further toward the centre ground, ensuring the support of a wider variety of voters that transcends class divisions. As argued by several scholars, the following new political cleavages have seemed to gain importance in the late 20th and early 21st century: • Winners versus losers of globalization: a cleavage introduced by political sociologist Hanspeter Kriesi. This cleavage has emerged because globalization supposedly affects citizens within Western European states differently. Due to the increased global circulation of goods and services, migration rates have increased and low-income jobs have partially been relocated to low-income settings. which could reinforce support for populist protest parties that favor trade barriers to protect local manufacturing and 'locals first' policies in the labor market. This ideology is represented by political parties such as the UK Independence Party, National Rally in France and Danish People's Party. • Materialism versus post-materialism: this cleavage stems from post-materialist theory by political scientist Ronald Inglehart. In his theory, Inglehart hypothesizes that a political cleavage emerges between generations over policy priorities due to different sets of values. On the one hand Inglehart claims that mostly younger generations, such as the 'generation X', have developed post-materialist values such as belonging, self-expression and the overall quality of life. This transformation has occurred since the late 1960s, with the New Left that arose in this period espousing libertarian and universalistic values, and a populist right reaction arising from the 1980s espousing traditionalist and communitarian ones. This is known as Populism and many examples from the 2020s can be highlighted: the election of several populist presidents and parties (Erdogan in Turkey, Trump in the US, The Five Stars Movement in Italy), the vote of citizens (the 2016-UK-referendum leading to the Brexit). This can be explained by the rise of the influence of values upon voting behavior. Citizens do not only take into account economics parameters, but also cultural ones. This new trend, the Authoritarian populist-Libertarian pluralist cleavage, is slowly replacing the former Western-countries political cleavage which is the Left-Right fight. The term for this new cleavage was coined by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. It has been argued that the pattern that can be seen emerging in terms of election outcomes in America and across Europe is as a result of this new cleavage. However, Raul Gomez argues that, while structural changes can increase the salience of cultural issues, their actual political consequences will depend on how individual political parties respond to them. ==See also==