Political Representation of Societal Cleavages

Abstract

It is commonly admitted that political oppositions – or, at least, some of them – are linked to societal cleavages. The theory of cleavages has not been much developed since S. M. Lipset and S. Rokkan famous analyzes published in late 1960s. This theory certainly needs to be revisited. New religious cleavages have appeared during the last forty years and it seems difficult to assume that they may be all brought down to state building conflicts. There are also new seemingly "ethnical" divides in western political systems that could not be taken into account in the Lipset and Rokkan' s typology. Authors have written about struggles between public and private sectors, generations, and intellectual versus economic bourgeoisie. Lipset and Rokkan mainly thought of "macro" cleavages. One may add that there are also meso ones, such as oppositions between landlords and tenants for instance. The interesting problem is not only to set apart "new" or ignored societal cleavages. We also need to specify the distinct characteristics of a social cleavage. May we equate every social conflict or opposition of interests to a "cleavage"? The Rokkanian tradition seems to share a more limited view. In this view, a cleavage appears as a social and historical construction. Il exists through real social groups mobilized in various organizations – among others political parties, trade-unions, associations, and clubs – at various levels, from the grass roots to the national and transnational ones. Another problem is then to understand at what conditions social interests are constructed and handled by collective organizations, within the political system, and especially within the institutional political sub-system. An empirical problem, and, perhaps, a problem to start with, is to identify indicators of "organic" links between individual and collective political actors and social groups. What are the proper ways of identifying political representation of a definite side of a social divide? Can we take into account backgrounds of political actors (party leaders, MPs, political personnel, local elected officials, candidates), activists, followers, and voters? programs? funding? legislative behaviors? The panel aims at starting a network of scholars interested in an international comparative research program in this field. Empirical, but also theoretical, methodological, and programmatic presentations would be welcomed.

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