Actualization of the concept of social cleavages St. Rokkana and S. Lipseate in the context of secession threats

Abstract

The article reviews the key provisions of the theory of social cleavages of Lipset - Rokkana, taking into account the main directions of modern discourse in this field. The article aims to assess the applicability of the concept of Lipset-Rokkan in the context of the study of secession threats to the integrity of the state.The urgency of this approach is determined by the events of modern history, from the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union to the present (Libya, Syria, the East of Ukraine, etc.), which deny sover- eignty over the whole territory of the state as a unchangeable reality. Taking into account the consequences of civil armed confrontation and dispersal of the state, modernity quite rigorously updates the scientific discourse around the phenomenon of schism in all its interconnected aspects.The Lipset-Rokkan model explains the development of the party systems of Western Europe by the existing distinctions between the state and the church, the city and the countryside, the center and periphery, the owners and the hired workers, who became institutionalized at the political level as political alternatives during two "critical" events, in the quality of which the authors determined the revolution.The article presents an overview of five modern trends in the development of the theory of cleavages: 1) the definition of the notion of cleavages, the essence of its features and problems of interpretation; 2) determining the grounds for the emergence of a political split; 3) assessment of the ability to explain the hypothesis of "freezing" and the evolution of party systems of the late XX - early XXI centuries; 4) problems of applying theory to post-Soviet states; 5) identification of the causal link and its direction between the cleavages and the activities of the parties.The author substantiates the possibility of further developing the theory of Lipset-Rokkan in the direction of its greater universalization. To do this, a series of corrective conceptual warnings related to the described areas of discussion are proposed.