PS 311
Week 7
Karla López de Nava
Is Cleavage Structure Predictable?
What is the genesis of the system of contrasts and cleavages? What are the
conditions for the development of a stable system of cleavages? Why were some conflicts
transformed into political parties and others were not? Is the type of party system
determined by the cleavage structure? These are the principal questions that S.M. Lipset
and S. Rokkan attempt to answer in “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voters
Alignments: An Introduction.”1 Are they successful? Lipset and Rokkan´s model succeeds
in bringing some order into the comparative analysis of conflicts, cleavages and
oppositions, but fails to explain, in a general way, how cleavage structures are created.
Additionally, the mechanism by which cleavages are translated into political parties is
unclear, so Lipset-Rokkan model ends up having weak predictive power. This paper is
organized as follows. First I will briefly summarize Lipset and Rokkan´s model, then I will
describe an alternative way to explain cleavage structure: the rational approach followed by
R. Rogowski (1989). Finally, I will argue that the prediction of cleavage structure in a
society is still an enigma, but that the roles played by political leaders and parties in forging
collective identities, mobilizing groups and sparking already latent cleavages may shed
some light into the question of why some cleavages are more salient than others.
Lipset and Rokkan use the Parsonian Paradigm as the basis of their model. This
paradigm has four functional subsystems or quadrants: The Economy (A), The Polity (G),
The Public or Communities (I), and The Households (L). To explain the cleavage structure,
they focus on the internal differentiation within the (I) quadrant and find a bi-dimensional
cleavage structure: the territorial dimension (l-g) and the functional dimension (a-i) (see
figure1).
1
S.M. Lipset, Party systems and voter alignments: cross national perspectives, New York Free Press, 1967.
1
Figure 1. Possible Interpretation of the Internal Structure of the (I) Quadrant
Within this model, they identify four lines of cleavages (fig 2):
1. Subject vs. Dominant Culture.
2. Church vs. Government
3. Primary vs. Secondary Economy.
4.Workers vs. Employers, Owners.
Figure 2. Four lines of cleavage.
2
Lipset and Rokkan assert that these four cleavages are the product of critical
episodes in history. Cleavages one and two were formed as a result of what they call the
National Revolution, e.g., the French Revolution, that produced conflicts between: (a) the
central nation-building culture and the increasing resistance of the ethnically, linguistically
or religiously distinct subject populations in the peripheries (cleavage 1); and (b) the
centralizing nation-state versus the corporate privileges of the church (cleavage 2).
Cleavages three and four were produced by the Industrial Revolution, which created
conflicts between landed interests and industrial entrepreneurs (cleavage 3), and between
employers and workers (cleavage 4)2.
Lipset and Rokkan suggest that the institutionalization of these conflicts resulted in
parties, yet how these cleavages translated into parties is not entirely clear. Lipset and
Rokkan predict that this transformation depends on the level of a series of thresholds:
legitimation, incorporation, representation and majority power. However, this approach is
both arbitrary and fuzzy. It does not establish how to quantify the level of these thresholds.
It also fails to take into account the restrictions imposed by the institutions and rules of the
political system to aspiring parties;3 and even if it did, it still does not explain why some
groups decide to form a political party and others do not. Lipset and Rokkan “predict” that
the party systems that emerged in Western Europe were “products of sequential interactions
between the National and Industrial Revolutions.” They explain that the differences in
timing and character of these revolutions made for contrasts among the different party
systems in Europe. They end up asserting that the party systems have been stable over the
last decades, almost implying that the cleavage structure has also remained unchanged. This
is extremely questionable, given the new political parties and the social cleavages that have
emerged recently, e.g., the green parties, the anti-globalization movements, the feminist
movements, etc. The original questions therefore remain unanswered: how, when and why
are cleavages formed?
2
They establish that the Russian Revolution was critical for the cleavage between owners and workers, and
also emphasize the effect that the extension of the suffrage had on this cleavage.
3
The model does not take into account (at least not seriously) the effects that “constitutional engineering”
(Sartori, 1994) may have on the party system. For example, the “first past the post” electoral system, given
that it sets the district magnitude to one, establishes high thresholds for aspiring parties to obtain
representation, so it usually ends up restricting the number of parties in the system, because only the large
parties or the locally concentrated ones, can gain representation.
3
Ronald Rogowski, in Commerce and Coalitions, seeks an answer to this enigma
using an entirely different approach. He creates a rational economic model based on the
Stolper and Samuelson Theorem of trade4. The basic logic of the model is that changes in
trade account for changes in society’s cleavage structure. To understand this better, I am
going to briefly summarize the assumptions and the mechanism of their model. They
consider a three factor economy: land, labor and capital. Given the Stolper and Samuelson
theorem they assume that the beneficiaries of a change in the costs of trade (for example a
sudden expansion of trade would make the owners of an abundant factor, say land, the
beneficiaries, and the owners of the scarce factor the victims) will endeavor to do three
things:
1.The beneficiaries will try to continue and accelerate this change, while the victims
will try to halt it.
2.Because the beneficiaries will suddenly increase their wealth they will be able to
expand their political influence.
3.And because of this increase in political influence they will devise mechanisms to
surmount the collective action problems in order to implement their political
preferences.
Rogowski predicts that the cleavages will depend on the scarcity or abundance of
land, labor and capital. He states that the abundance of capital determines the economy. An
economy that has abundant capital is considered advanced, whereas an economy with low
capital is considered backward. He assumes that there is a trade-off between land and labor
in every society. It is rare to see an economy with these two factors simultaneously
abundant. He presents different cleavage scenarios, supposing an expansion of trade, that
vary depending on the scarcity of these factors (Figure 3). In the first left quadrant, he
predicts that the cleavage will be one of class. Land and Capital owners (agriculture and
capitalists) will benefit from the trade expansion, while urban workers will be harmed and
demand protectionism. In the second quadrant to the right, the cleavage will be of a rural-
4
The theorem states that in almost any society, protection benefits (and liberalization of trade harms) owners
of factors, as well as producers who use those factors, in which, relative to the rest of the world, that society is
poorly endowed. On the other hand, protection harms (and liberalization benefits) owners of factors and the
producers who use them, in which, the society has them in abundance relatively to the rest of the world.
4
urban character. Urban workers (labor) and capitalists will be free trade assertive while
agriculture (local land owners) will adopt a defensive strategy. A similar picture but in
reverse mode can be seen in the lower left quadrangle: land owners will benefit from the
trade expansion while capitalists, urban industries, and workers will be defensive and
demand protection, thus creating a rural-urban type of cleavage. In the lower right
quadrangle, workers will be the winners of the trade expansion while capitalists and land
owners will be defensive and demand protection.
Figure 3. Predicted Effects of Expanding Exposure to Trade
Land-Labor Ratio
Economy
Advanced
Economy
Backward
High
Abundant:
Capital
Land
Low
Abundant:
Capital
Labor
Scarce:
Labor
Scarce:
Land
Class cleavage
Abundant:
Land
Urban-Rural
Cleavage
Abundant:
Labor
Scarce:
Capital
Labor
Scarce:
Capital
Land
Urban-Rural Cleavage
Class cleavage
As one can see, this model suggests that the cleavage structure of a society will
depend on the changes in the “openness of its economy” given the land-labor ratio and the
quantity of capital available. Although Rogowski manages to give sound empirical
evidence and good historical examples of the effects of a change in trade in the cleavage
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structure, it succeeds on explaining only two types of cleavages, leaving the source of all
other cleavages (religious, ethnic, etc.) undetermined. 5
Lipset and Rokkan use historical junctures to explain cleavage structure; in contrast,
Rogowski uses changes in the costs and risks of trade (given scarcity of some factors) as
the independent variable accounting for the cleavage structure. These are extremely
different approaches but they have one thing in common: both fail to consider the role
played by political parties and politicians in diminishing, igniting, or mobilizing latent
cleavages.
A. Przeworski and J. Sprague (1986) touch on this point: “class is salient in any
society, if, when, and only to the extent to which it is important to political parties which
mobilize workers”.
6
This view may not explain how cleavages are created but it sheds
some light into how politicians can mobilize already latent cleavages and make them
salient. Politicians and political parties have the power to incorporate certain conflict
demands into their agendas, having a diminishing effect on the conflict; at the same time,
they have the capacity to organize and mobilize certain groups deepening some cleavages,
some times, to the brink of war. The discourse on race purity by Hitler, or the ethnic
discourse by Milosevic, or the religious discourse by fundamentalist parties are some
examples of the power of cleavage manipulation that political leaders possess. Politicians
can placate, cut across, or reinforce existing cleavages, thus it is important to consider their
actions when studying the cleavage structure. This variable may help to understand the
salience of some cleavages, although it does not predict when, how, and what type of
cleavages will be created. Is it possible to predict cleavage structure?
5
This paper is not concerned with the origins or justification of the welfare state, but it is interesting to note
that Rogowski’s model establishes some of the incentives that would ask for a welfare state. Depending on
the abundance of land, labor and capital, there may be sectors or classes in an economy that can be harmed
with an expansion of trade. Naturally, they will demand protection, and this may explain why there is
evidence that the more open is an economy, the bigger and the more intervensionist is its government.
(Rodrik, 1998,
6
A. Przeworski and J. Sprague, Paper Stones: a history of electoral socialism, University of Chicago Press,
1986 (pgs.10-11).
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