Solidarity Meanings and Cleavage Politics in the German Post-War Manifestos

The concept of solidarity is one of the many concepts that are hard to define but intuitively understood. At the same time, it has a certain political attractiveness, as it has the power to morally up-value whatever it is put together (‘solidary taxes’ sounds better than just ‘taxes’). For that, parties try to scoop up this attractive term for themselves, as well as make their preferred meaning or application of the concept dominant in the political discourse (cf. Gallie 1956). The way parties differ in their understanding of the concept is not random, though. It can depend upon changes over time, political ideology of the party, social structure of its constituencies, voter base and interests thereof, their position in the government or the opposition, or influenced by their political opponents or allies. For all these reasons, these differences are not random. In specific, I claim that most of the ways the concept is used in the language of politics can be explained with the un-freezing and opening-up of the cleavage structure (Lipset/Rokkan 1967), in particular with the raise of the New Left and the New Right. I define typical uses of solidarity each category of cleavages (5 for old cleavages, 6 for New Left and 5 for New Right, e.g. class solidarity for the economic cleavage, environmental protection framed as solidarity with future generations for New Left, solidarity with German minorities abroad for New Right) and test them on the German post-war electoral and party manifestos.