Cleavages, Ideologies & Political Parties

What are cleavages?

• Certain division in society - different interests —> creating a collective identity among those on each side of the divide

  • Age

  • Gender

  • Religion

  • Ideology

  • Language

  • Geography

• Many cleavages are not strongly politicized, meaning they remain dormant

  • Age

  • Gender

• Main questions for political scientists: which cleavages become politically salient?

• Political parties "establish regular channels for the expression of conflicting interests in democratic nation-states"

• In authoritarian (and some hybrid) regimes cleavages may be present but cannot be a source of political competition; they are suppressed

Political cleavages

Lipset & Rokkan

• Owner/worker

• Church/state

• Urban/rural

• Center/periphery

  • Emerging the most strongly in the most recent decades

overlapping vs cross-cutting cleavages

• Overlapping: most risky, lead to instability, violent conflict

  • Ex. Northern Ireland: center/periphery + Protestants/catholics

• Cross-cutting: different interest groups —> can align

  • Multiple aspects of you so you can decide on what is most important in the moment to align with someone you might not agree with everything on

  • Ex. Belgium: Dutch speaking north vs French speaking south —> can align on certain issues (economic)

Europe - two revolutions

• Importance (and sequence) of cleavage differed per country

  • Lead to different cleavages being politicized

1. French (national) revolution

   • Center/periphery

   • Church/state

2. Industrial Revolution

   • Owner/worker → Class

   • Urban/rural

• Silent revolution —> material to post-material

Center/periphery cleavage

• Originated in France/National revolution

• Reaction to political centralization

• Conflict between more powerful center and weaker periphery

• Conflict about autonomy; cultural rights and privileges

• Outcomes:

  • Secession (Eritrea, Ireland, Pakistan)

  • Substrate autonomy/federalism (Belgium, India, Nigeria)

  • Effective absorption into unitary state (France, Italy)

  • Persistent tension (Indonesia, Spain, UK)

• Creates regional / secessionist parties

Religious cleavage

• Originated in French Revolution

• Originally: conflict between new elites (secular) and the clergy

• But also refers to conflict between religious denominations (Catholic/Protestant, Hindu/Muslim)

• Conflict centers on religious rights and role of religion in the public life

  • Education

• Created confessional/conservative vs liberal parties

Class cleavage

• Origin in Industrial revolution

• Owners of capital and established elites vs working class

• Conflict about economic conditions, political rights and redistribution

• Present in virtually all democracies

• Strength depends on perceived opportunities of mobility

  • Ex USA

• Created socialist/social democratic/communist parties

Rural/urban cleavage

• Landed aristocracy vs new industrialists

• Old money vs new money

• Positions in the state and power

• Mostly resolved through social mobility for new industrialists

• Less elitist cleavage still present Nordic countries: economic differences

• Revival as reaction to green movement?

Cleavages and ideologies

• Party formation around dominant cleavages, supported by ideology: how to tackle cleavages?

• Can be invoked to mobilize people around cleavages

• Common heuristic: left and right

  • Cultural left and right

• Shifting meaning:

  • Republican (left) vs. monarchist (right)

  • Progressive (left) vs. conservative (right)

  • Secular (left) vs. confessional (right)

  • State-led economy (left) vs. free market laissez faire (right)

Ideology

collection of beliefs and values

Measuring ideologies

Freezing hypothesis

• Lipset & Rokkan: Same parties and programmes around for a long time. The 1960s resembles the 1920s: Why?

• Strenghtening party alignment (e.g. pillarization or 'Verzuiling)

• Parties based on societal cleavages but also sustain these cleavages as 'political entrepreneurs'

  • Parties created different groups within their party for people to join to spread ideology and create people that are strongly associated with said party

• Manipulation electoral rules (though mass suffrage eventually implemented)

Influence of electoral system

• Affect the composition of the party system (Duverger's Law, 1954)

• Majority / plurality systems tend to result in two-party competition
  → FPTP/SMD, two-round system, alternative vote

• Proportional / mixed systems facilitate multi-party system
  → List PR, single transferable vote, mixed member proportional

• Majority & plurality systems limit the number of cleavages that can be expressed in party competition

The ‘Silent Revolution’

1960s - 1970s

• Inglehart: value change in postindustrial democracies

• Shift from material to post-material values

• Post-material values:

  • Democracy

  • Human rights (women,
    LGBTQ+)

  • Environment

  • Pacifism

• Post-material values prominent among younger and wealthy voters

• Postmaterialism and party system change: emergence of New
  Left, Social Liberal and Green parties => political entrepreneurs!

• New parties in PR systems; incorporation of ideological elements into existing parties in majoritarian systems

A new transnational cleavage?

• Hooghe & Marks (2018): response to immigration (and EU-integration)

• The winners vs. the losers of globalization

• Focus on:

  • immigration and multiculturalism

  • globalization and nationalism

  • culture and identity

  • majoritarian vs. liberal democracy

  • climate change (3) Covid-19 (3)

• In some countries incorporated into existing party system (lUK, US)

• In others; emergence of new parties (France, Italy) (partly due to slow responding mainstream parties)

New conceptualization left-right

• Multiple dimensions of left and right

  • Not just economical but cultural

Transformation of cleavages

• Lipset and Rokkan: the "freezing hypothesis"

  • Alignment: party identification on the basis of cleavage structures & ideologies

• Recent decades

  • Realignment: shifting party identification on the basis of changing cleavages, resulting in (dramatic) changes in party system

  • Dealignment: declining party identification that is not replaced with a new one

    • Concern of today

Realignment

electoral volatility

Party vote changes from one election to the next

Dealignment

decreasing turnout

• Not enough change for voters

• Generational change?

Cleavages in New democracies

• Cleavages can explain party systems in New Democracies, but different cleavages

• Explanations:

  • No large-scale internal processes of state formation

  • No contestation for suffrage rights (exception: South Africa)

  • Greater role for individual politicians due to the absence of strong social organizations

• Results:

  • High electoral volatility

  • Personalistic politics

  • Ethnic parties

  • Valence programmes & clientelistic politics

Ideology not necessarily absent

• Former communist states are still going to have communist ideology to some degree

• Dots on the graph show parties that were not around for a very long time —> electoral volatility

The ethnic party cleavage

• Associated strongly with African parties

• But similarities centre-periphery cleavage (cfr. Ireland,
  Belgium

• Roots of political saliency ethnicity?

• Most common cleavage in new democracies —> identity/ethnic

 

Colonial and post-colonial dynamics

• Lack of nation-building?

• Or anti-nation-building?

• Colonial ruler clumped together ethnic groups into one state —> no nation building

  • Also active policy against nation building

Heightening ethnic divides

• Belgian colonial rule in Rwanda & Burundi (Urundi)

• Tutsi minority, but

  • 'tall, majestic, natural rulers'

• Hutu majority, but

  • 'short, stubby, smiling fools'

• Ethnic identity cards policy

• Certain regions of Africa were more economically interesting to colonizers —> Europe developing these areas more so their trade would go more smoothly

  • Created cleavages from the moment of independence due to some groups being richer bc of the development made by the colonizers

• Belgium treated the different ethnic groups differently creating cleavages

  • Actively pitting people against each other

Prevention cross-cutting cleavages

• Only cultural associations allowed under colonial rule => narrow bases early political mobilization

• Colonizers would prevent any sort of political association —> would only be allowed to practice culture

  • This led to them only being able to relate to their own ethnic groups limiting any way of cross-cutting cleavages

• Leaders of Congo: 250 political parties (ethnic groups)

• Ghana: already had elections and parties

  • Able to create larger, non-ethnic parties

Authoritarian rule and third wave

• Leaders claimed to fight for 'nationalism' but held on to power and often advantaged own group

• Stewart (2002) 'Horizontal Inequalities: A Neglected Dimension of Development'

  • Inequality based on cultural group status (political, socio-economic, cultural)

  • Different from vertical inequality like Gini

Third wave of democratization

Return of multiparty democracy in the 1990s: return ethnic voting, though variation

Multi-ethnic/ethnic Congress parties

• Not always clear majority ethnic group

• Need to establish coalitions, not based on programmes but based on sharing state resources

  • Coalitions built but made up clientelism and corruption

• Campaigns based on valence issues (development, better roads, anti-corruption, employment), but mostly identity, personality, and clientelism

Clientelism

• Clientelism: reciprocal relation between patron (politician) and client (voter)

• Client offers patron political support in exchange for material benefits

  • Jobs (patronage)

  • Food

  • Money (vote-buying)

  • Permits, loans

• Often juxtaposed to programmatic politics (but..)

Clientelism and democracy

• Negative connotations

• Exclusive nature (ethnic bias)

• Use of state resources to retain incumbency

• But also: competitive clientelism

  • The competitiveness lead to more welfare and money for the people during the election period

    • Can be used in a democratic system

• Example of Ghana:

  • Competitive

  • Turnover

  • Stability

Authoritarian regime: cleavages and conflict

• Societal cleavages not channelled through multiparty competition

• Alternative dynamics:

  • Violent conflict

  • Mass protests

• Questions on (and predictions of?) political instability and regime change