Cleavage politics and democratic resilience

Abstract

In this years Stein Rokkan Lecture, will explore how party politics in European democracies has deeply transformed over the past decades. Silja Haumlusermann will interpret this transformation through the lens of cleavage theory and highlight the specific insights that this particular lens yields for our understanding of the transformation of both left- and right-wing political parties in Europe. Cleavage theory's emphasis on structural foundations and collective identities allows for a more valid assessment of similarities across countries despite party system fragmentation, of the stability and prospective development of party competition in Europe, and of the policy demands related to the cleavage. Prospectively, I will argue that we need a truly comparative analysis to study whether these processes of cleavage formation are conducive to democratic erosion or resilience.