Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage

Cleavage Theory and European Crises

• This article explores how immigration, integration, and trade have led to a critical juncture in European political development, impacting political parties and systems, similar to the junctures identified by Lipset and Rokkan.

Key Arguments

• Party systems change during episodic breaks from the past.
• Political parties exhibit programmatic inflexibility.
• Party system change occurs through the emergence of new parties.

Transnational Cleavage

• A new cleavage has emerged, driven by a political reaction against European integration and immigration.
• This cleavage involves defending national political, social, and economic ways of life against external influences like migration, trade, and supranational rule.
• The crises have led to the breakthrough of radical right parties and rejection of EU membership in some countries.

Core Claims of Cleavage Theory

• Party systems are determined by exogenous social forces during episodic breaks.
• Political parties are programmatically inflexible.
• Party system change results from the rise of new parties.

Rise of Transnational Cleavage

• The weakening of national sovereignty, increased international economic exchange, increased immigration and cultural/economic insecurity have fueled the rise of a transnational cleavage. Mainstream political parties generally remained fixed on these issues, while voters shifted.

Cleavage Theory: Then and Now

• Cleavage theory, originating in Lipset and Rokkan (1967), views national party systems as expressions of underlying social conflicts.
• Lipset and Rokkan focused on cleavages arising from the national revolution (center vs. periphery, state vs. church) and the industrial revolution (urban vs. rural, worker vs. employer).

Key Questions Addressed by Cleavage Theory

1. What are the fundamental divisions in a society?
2. Which distinctions become the bases for cleavages?
3. How do cleavages interact to shape voter preferences?
4. How are voter preferences expressed in party formation and competition?
5. How are cleavages mediated by the rules of the game and party strategies?

Constraints on Political Parties

• Strategic flexibility is limited by a durable voter constituency, decentralized decision-making, a self-selected cadre of activists, a self-replicating leadership, and a distinct programmatic reputation.
• Parties seek local maxima in competing for votes and may try to subsume, blur, or ignore issues rather than shifting positions at the conflict dimension level.
• Dynamism in party systems comes from the growth of new political parties.

Institutionalization of Cleavages

• New parties are formed alongside a new cleavage, making them actors in shaping social divisions rather than subjects of pre-existing groups.
• Cleavage theory focuses on the interaction of cleavages, not the replacement of one by another.
• The transformation of national states around the turn of the 21st century has changed the landscape. Territorial identity was thought to be declining, but nationalism has resurfaced.

Transnational Cleavage: Institutional Departure

• Major reforms in the early 1990s lowered the cost of international trade and migration while dispersing authority from central states.
• The Maastricht Treaty (1993) expanded EU authority, facilitated labor mobility, created a common currency, and established EU citizenship.
• The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 opened trade and movement within the EU.
• The World Trade Organization (1994) and other regional trade organizations increased.
• Transnationalism, rooted in the Thatcher-Reagan years, gained consensus across the mainstream left and right.
• Neoclassical economics suggests that diminishing barriers to trade and investment and introducing common standards can increase economic growth.
• Multilevel governance, both below and above the central state, is seen as functionally efficient for providing public goods.
• European integration led to debates about national culture, language and sovereignty.
• The Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) measured party positions on a GAL versus TAN dimension related to support for Europe.
• Transnationalism favored those with mobile assets; those who felt left behind resented the dilution of citizenship rights and protections.
• Nationalism became a refuge for the insecure who sought identity through group affiliation.
• Opposition to transnationalism is a populist reaction against elites who disregard national borders.

The Social Basis

• Conflict over Europe intersected the left-right divide and became part of a larger cultural conflict.
• Winners of globalization favored transnational integration, while losers sought demarcation.
• Education emerged as a structuring factor, shaping both economic security and worldview.
• Individuals with limited education were more likely to have an exclusive national identity and be Euroskeptic.
• Panel data suggested that individuals who attend university are predisposed to having cosmopolitan attitudes.

Euro Crisis and Migration Crisis

• These crises intensified divisions within mainstream parties and led to a surge in protest parties.
• Chancellor Merkel's response to the Lehman Brothers collapse, emphasizing national action, transformed the economic crisis into a European crisis.
• Governments were caught between functional logic toward fiscal union and domestic resistance, resulting in incremental reforms and austerity.
• The European Central Bank provided liquidity.
• The outcome was a North-South divide between creditor and debtor nations.
• The salience of European integration and immigration increased, particularly among parties with extreme positions.
• Expert estimates showed that the salience of European integration has increased markedly since 2006, from a mean of 4.60 to 5.93 in 2014 (p = .000).
• Party salience on immigration in 2010 was considerably higher in North-western and Southern Europe than in Central/Eastern Europe (6.63, 6.23 and 4.09 respectively, on a 0 to 10 scale).
• Mass surveys showed increased public concern about immigration, with the overall figure rising from 15% in spring 2014 to 28% in spring 2016.

Sticky Political Parties

• Change comes in the form of new parties challenging existing parties on a new cleavage.
• Positional maneuverability is limited by activists, leaders, and embedded reputations.
• Parties adapt well to gradual change but struggle with major shifts.
• Expert evaluations of party positioning on immigration go back to 2006. Over the period 2006 to 2014, similar stability was detected. Of 140 parties that were tracked over the period, only three shifted more than two points in any one direction on immigration. The average absolute change over this period was 0.59 on immigration and 0.55 on European integration, both on a seven-point scale.
• The average raw change over this eight-year period is just -0.02 points on immigration and +0.05 points on European integration.
• Coding of party manifestos at the level of an individual issue might produce greater change than expert evaluation at a more general dimensional level.
• Experts serve as Bayesians updating their judgments with party manifestos and speeches.
• Voters rely on generalized conceptions of party identity.
• Sharp tensions within mainstream parties, growth of challenging parties can be expected in this scenario.
• Serious internal dissent is highest among parties that take a middling position on European integration in 2014.

Rise of Parties on the Transnational Cleavage

• Moderate parties have declined across Europe. Social democratic, Christian democratic, conservative, and liberal parties fell from 75% in the first national election after 2000 to 64% in the national election prior to January 2017.

• A new transnational cleavage has emerged, pitting libertarian, universalistic values against nationalism and particularism.

• Europe and immigration are flashpoints in this cleavage.

• TAN and GAL parties have opposing views on Europe and immigration, with TAN parties defending the nation and GAL parties supporting transnationalism.

• TAN and GAL parties take more extreme positions on Europe and immigration than mainstream parties.

• Areas in Northern Europe have seen many TAN and GAL parties emerge.

• The UK’s plurality system raised the party entry and exacerbated conflict within parties.

• Southern European countries have seen the rise of radical left parties in response to the crises.

• Radical right parties have grown in Eastern Europe.

Conclusion

• Cleavage theory explains party system change as a disruptive process, with existing parties constrained by prior divisions.
• The crises of the past decade are a critical juncture for Europe.
• The crises reveal sharply, and provoke a theoretical challenge: how can one put short-term strategic response and long- term cleavage constraints on the same page?
• Change has occurred because voters have turned to parties with distinctive profiles on the new cleavage.
• Radical TAN parties frame competition on transnational issues, while green parties take opposite positions.
• Prior cleavages diminish but do not disappear.
• The transnational cleavage has different expressions across Europe, reflecting the economic and migration crises and prior cleavages.
• Functional pressures towards transnationalism are likely to persist, even if the EU fails, immigration stops, and trade declines.