Essay About Large Increases And Cleavage Structure

Cleavage Structure, Interest Groups, and Interest Intermediation
Cleavage Structure, Interest Groups, and Interest Intermediation
striving to maintain local
powers & privileges (periphery)
b. The struggle can end in:
(1) secession (Ireland from UK),
(2) absorption of periphery & its gradual fading as distinct
(Bretton or Occitan in France),
(3) local autonomy (some Spanish & Italian regions),
(4) or retention of diffuse, persistent tension (e.g., Germany,
except Bavaria which is more 3)
c. Only last two likely to result in this cleavage being reflected
in party system
2. Nation-Building II: Church v. State
a. Conflict b/w (Catholic) Churchs claim of rights &
privileges, esp. its supremacy in certain moral areas, vs.
state consolidators; central issue often education
b. Resolution depends centrally on nations history & role in
Protestant Ref. & later secularist movements:
(1) Where Protestant movements allied with state & won, party
system does not usually reflect Church-State cleavage (e.g.,
UK, Scandinavia)
(2) Where Catholicism continued to dominate, Church-State
cleavage tended to persist (e.g., Latin Europe)
(3) Where secularists most momentum (e.g., France), party
system often evolved anti-clerical elements
3. Industrial Revolution I: Urban v. Rural
a. Conflict b/w traditionally dominant rural interests & new
commercial & industrial classes
b. These have almost universally faded (basically because
urban interests won), but
(1) …in some places agrarian parties emerged, & these often
persisted if leading strategists allowed party flexibility from
its early aims & purposes, (e.g., Sweden, Finland)
(2) …split has seen rebirth in reverse as urban decline began,
(e.g., US, UK)
(3) …some rebirth also in conflicts over agricultural
protectionism (e.g., esp. Europe & Japan)
4. Industrial Revolution II: Labor v. Employers
a. Increased concentration of production, & the accompanying
increased organization of labor & employers as a group, led
to almost-inherently-organized conflict
b. Resolution occurred by two patterns:
(1) Where workers rose & the bourgeoisie adopted an
accommodative strategy, Socialist parties arose as the
representatives of labor (e.g., UK, Sweden)
(2) Where workers rose & the bourgeoisie adopted a stonewalling
and/or repressive strategy, Communist parties arose as the
representatives of labor (e.g., France, Italy, Germany, Spain)
B. Argument: The pattern of how these conflicts arose in
each country & how they had been or were being resolved
at time mass democracy arrived was frozen. I.e., cleavage
structure is frozen in party system by mid-20th Century
because:
1. Underlying conflicts persist & groups involved have
developed collective identities
2. Major new political entities typically can arise only w/
large increases in suffrage & universal suffrage was mostly
completed by then.