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).

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.


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?

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 trade[4]. 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-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

High Low

Economy Advanced / Abundant:
Capital
Land
Scarce:
Labor

Class cleavage

/ Abundant:
Capital
Labor
Scarce:
Land
Urban-Rural Cleavage
Economy Backward / Abundant:
Land
Scarce:
Capital
Labor
Urban-Rural Cleavage / Abundant:
Labor
Scarce:
Capital
Land

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 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?

1

[1] S.M. Lipset, Party systems and voter alignments: cross national perspectives, New York Free Press, 1967.

[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.

[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.

[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).