Class Cleavages Research Articles

The Formation of the Class Cleavage Structure in South Korea: Focusing on the Presidential Elections since 2002

The Formation of the Class Cleavage Structure in South Korea: Focusing on the Presidential Elections since 2002

Book Review: Comparative: Political Choice Matters: Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-national Perspective

Book Review: Comparative: Political Choice Matters: Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-national Perspective

Electoral Competition and the New Class Cleavage

AbstractThe class cleavage has been the most important structuring force in most West European countries. In the last decades, the question regarding whether the social class still influences voting behavior has been intensively debated. One strand of literature suggests a transformation of the old class divide into a new – or reformulated – class cleavage. However, there is still little empirical evidence about the circumstances under which this new divide may become important. The present paper contributes to fill this gap, by analyzing in how far electoral competition conditions the strength of the new class cleavage. Applying data from the Swiss National Elections 2007 and 2011 to a comparative analysis across cantons we find that the impact of the new class cleavage on electoral choice varies according to party system polarization. The proportionality of the electoral system, by contrast, does not have a clear conditional effect.

Explaining the multiparty systems of Western Europe prior to the adoption of proportional representation

The literature has difficulty explaining why the number of parties in majoritarian electoral systems often exceeds the two-party predictions associated with Duverger’s Law. To understand why this is the case, I examine several party systems in Western Europe before the adoption of proportional representation. Drawing from the social cleavage approach, I argue that the emergence of multiparty systems was because of the development of the class cleavage, which provided a base of voters sizeable enough to support third parties. However, in countries where the class cleavage became the largest cleavage, the class divide displaced other cleavages and the number of parties began to converge on two. The results show that the effect of the class cleavage was nonlinear, producing the greatest party system fragmentation in countries where class cleavages were present – but not dominant – and smaller in countries where class cleavages were either dominant or non-existent.

Using Manpower Policies to Transform the Force and Society: The Case of the Pakistan Army

Military manpower policies have an impact beyond the garrison. Policymakers have long held that military service can darn social fabrics that have been rent by ethnic, communal, class, and other cleavages, while scholars debate whether and how this occurs. Because military participation has implications for citizenship, marginalized groups have campaigned to be allowed to participate in the military, and leveraged their service to achieve greater enfranchisement. Military service affects the society as a whole in other ways as well: for example, leaders with military experience are less likely than others to prefer military force when other options are available. This paper examines the Pakistan Army, which, with its domination of the state, feared Islamist tendencies, and incessant belligerence toward India, seems to differ markedly from other militaries. But, using army recruitment and household survey data, it shows that even the Pakistan Army has used personnel policies to reshape its force, despite the numerous challenges of such a course. Whereas recent manpower studies dilate upon how socially marginalized groups employ military service to achieve greater access to citizenship, my analysis exposits how an army uses service in its ranks to cajole reluctant citizens into the national project of Pakistan and encumber them with the responsibilities and rights thereof. While this essay provides greater insights into the Pakistan Army specifically by focusing upon this ostensible anomaly, I hope to inform the larger literature on defense politics and the instrumentality of manpower policies.

The 2012 Elections and the Possibility (and Limitation) of Class Cleavage

The 2012 Elections and the Possibility (and Limitation) of Class Cleavage

Embedded in Social Cleavages: An Explanation of the Variation in Timing of Women's Suffrage

Under which conditions did introduction of women's suffrage occur before the First World War (early), and when only after the Second World War (late)? This article analyses necessary and sufficient conditions to explain both early and late introduction of women's suffrage in 14 Western European countries using Rokkan's cleavage theory, which distinguishes between four cleavages: religious, ethnic‐linguistic, class and sectoral. In addition to testing Rokkan's cleavage theory, this study adds a structural dimension to agency‐based studies on the role of the women's movement, which helps to explain why some such movements had much earlier success than others. Finally, this article advances the democratisation literature that takes the timing of the introduction of male suffrage as a proxy for the timing of the introduction of women's suffrage, as the timing of the introduction of male suffrage does not necessarily mean early introduction of women's suffrage. Based on fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the article shows that the absence of an ethnic‐linguistic cleavage is a necessary condition for early introduction of women's suffrage. Moreover, the fuzzy‐set analysis highlights that the absence of a religious cleavage combined with a class cleavage or a sectoral cleavage combined with the absence of a class cleavage is sufficient for early introduction of women's suffrage. Concerning late introduction of women's suffrage, it is the combination of a class cleavage with a religious cleavage or the presence of an ethnic‐linguistic cleavage in the absence of a sectoral cleavage that prove to be sufficient.

Using Manpower Policies to Transform the Force and Society: The Case of the Pakistan Army

Military manpower policies have an impact beyond the garrison. Policy makers have long held that military service can darn social fabrics that have been rent by ethnic, communal, class, and other cleavages, while scholars debate whether and how this occurs. Because military participation has implications for citizenship, marginalized groups have campaigned to be allowed to participate in the military, and leveraged their service to achieve greater enfranchisement. Military service affects the society in a whole in other ways as well: for example, leaders with military experience are less likely than other to prefer military force when other options are available. This paper examines the Pakistan army, which, with its domination of the state, feared Islamist tendencies, and incessant belligerence towards India, seems to differ markedly from other militaries. But, using army recruitment and household survey data, we show that even the Pakistan army has used personnel policies to reshape its force, despite the numerous challenges of such a course.

Political Cleavages in the Basque Country: Meaning and Salience

The Basque party system has typically been described as organized along two cross-cutting cleavages: a nationalist struggle and a less salient class conflict. While there is consensus on the nature of the nationalist division, what remains of the historical class cleavage is unclear. Two competing hypotheses on the nature of the class cleavage are put forward: the class cleavage has ‘realigned’ along the new social classes of post-industrial society, and the class cleavage is best understood as a ‘frozen’ cleavage. It is shown that the freezing hypothesis best captures the nature of the class cleavage in the Basque Country today, and that once ‘left’ and ‘right’ are understood along these lines, the nationalist cleavage becomes more salient.

Social Protection and the Politicization of Class Cleavages During Latin America’s Left Turn

Why and how do class cleavages become politicized in party systems? The recent tenure of left governments in South America has seen the party system realigned along the class cleavage in Venezuela but not in Brazil or Chile. This article argues that different approaches to expanding social protection—“mobilizational” in Venezuela and “technocratic” in Brazil and Chile—explain divergent outcomes. Mobilizational policies incentivized social organization among beneficiaries and allowed for linkages between these organizations and left parties, facilitating credit claiming and recruitment by the left. Technocratic policies targeted atomized beneficiaries with no room for partisan involvement, making credit claiming and recruitment difficult. Case-based evidence illustrates these mechanisms whereas survey analysis using genetic matching confirms that mobilizational and technocratic programs exerted strikingly different effects on support for left parties. The broader contribution is to theorize a new form of class-based political mobilization in Latin America, also being implemented in other countries.

Homogenizing "Old" and "New" Social Movements: A Comparison of Partipants in May Day and Climate Change Demonstrations

We assess whether the distinction between old and new social movements still holds by examining the social class and value orientations of participants in old and new social movement protests. We argue that new cleavages have emerged from globalization, affecting not only electoral politics, but also contentious politics, and thereby having a homogenization effect on the structural basis of movements of the left. Moreover, we hypothesize that traditional cleavages, such as class mediate the homogenization effect of new cleavages. We look at participants in May Day and climate change demonstrations in Belgium and Sweden, two countries that differ in terms of strength of class cleavage. Results show that there is evidence of homogenization between old and new social movements and that this effect is more important when the class cleavage is stronger.

Place, race and exclusion: university student voices in post-apartheid South Africa

The slogan ‘no education without representation’ symbolised a belief in the anti-apartheid movement that without a democratic government, South Africa's people could not receive an inclusive education. Since the end of official apartheid in 1994, the education system has faced new transformative aims focused on ending racial separation and inequality. This article seeks, in three main ways, to contribute to debates over the progress made. First, post-apartheid policy is explored. Desegregation of schools and universities is seen as a key goal but is shown not to have led simplistically to inclusion. Second, three concepts of ‘place’ are considered as analytical tools in the study of inclusion. These are shown to hold different but relevant interpretations of how ‘place’ can influence processes of in- and exclusion. Third, the voices of students at the Universities of Cape Town and the Western Cape set out how students experience, negotiate and participate in campus in- and exclusion. Racial inequalities and divisions are seen to be reproduced as primary fault-lines of exclusion, but new class cleavages and recognition of other social differences are partly disrupting this traditional picture. The article considers the implications for both inclusive education in South Africa and wider geographical engagements.

A Tale of Two Communities

Sociologists of development are increasingly interested in better understanding the reasons for intracountry variation of development outcomes, often focusing on community-level studies. I draw on extensive fieldwork in two return-refugee communities in rural, postwar Guatemala to explain why some community development initiatives succeed while others fail. I attribute this divergence to the presence of embedded brokerage, a new form of brokerage that is particularly useful in the context of aid relationships, which frequently cross transnational cleavages of class, power, and privilege. In particular, I argue that when brokers who are embedded in both the sending and receiving communities facilitate aid relationships, the outcome is more successful. This study demonstrates how embedded brokers responded to community initiative, attracted specialized funding, and helped institutionalize key development values in one community. In contrast, the absence of brokers in the second community contributed to the absence of community initiative, the delivery of generic projects and the failure to institutionalize development values.

Facilitating Intractable Political Transformation of Armed Rebel Groups: Bridging Gaps between Transformation and Peace Agreements

This working paper intends to systematically evaluate the post-agreement negotiation process and how political transformation of armed rebel groups is promoted or inhibited by factors (referred to as stumbling blocks) to be found in the post-agreement environment. How is the expected political transformation itself paradoxically inhibiting rebel groups to assume political leadership? What factors are usually disregarded in the political transformation because they are very obvious or because they do not go along existing assumptions and concepts of political transformation? Similarly important is the question how complexities in the political transformation process are to be coped with.To answer the above questions, I intend first to evaluate various concepts of political transformation. What is understood with political transformation? Why is political transformation inevitably equated with the transition of armed groups to political parties? How can this “Eurocentric” conceptualization be applicable to various conflict contexts where similar historical foundations of a party system are simply missing? The establishment of political parties in Europe was oriented to the ideological and socio-economic class cleavages and is not primarily linked to nation-building. European political parties did not arise from armed rebellion. Therefore, expecting the smooth transformation of rebel groups to political parties in non-European conflict cases is not only misleading, but also unfair, particularly when developmental programs and aids are to be given under the condition of successful transformation of armed rebel groups to political parties. Defining successful political transformation primarily as a situation where armed rebel groups have emerged as political parties limits the prospects of sustainable peace. It merely involves a simplistic and formalistic application of European terms in non-European conflict contexts. How is political transformation conducted? Are there alternative measurements of successful political transformation? Are clans and warlords per definition debarred from political transition? These questions are answered through the introduction of the phases of political transformation.Furthermore, while I deal with political transformation as a concept, I aim to use the Mindanao conflict as a case study to understand the complexity of political transformation. The intractability of the conflict in Southern Philippines is highly attributed to the failure of Moro rebel groups to assume political leadership in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Mediated peace agreements have led to the formation of several break-away factions who in turn undermine the legitimacy of the rebel group they broke away from and maintaining the level of violence in the conflict area. The Mindanao case shows several attempts of armed rebel groups to assume political leadership in an autonomous government, but due to several stumbling blocks their attempts have failed. Is the constitutional framework within which peace processes are forced to move inhibiting political transformation? Is the de facto failure to disarm the MNLF and the armed Moro rebellion in general preventing political liberalization? How can a hypothetically disarmed MNLF or MILF develop political maturity when opposing (break-away) groups within the rebellion movement remain armed? In the light of the (almost) impossibility of disarmament of established rebel groups, it should be then asked whether political transformation is ever possible in the absence of DDR? The most important question refers to how political transformation of armed rebel groups can be actually addressed during negotiations?Finally, the ultimate goal of this paper is to come up with recommendations on how to facilitate political transformation of armed rebel groups such as the MNLF and MILF by formulating strategies to cope up with the complexity of political transformation. Using again the categories: actors, issues, structures, processes and outcomes as used above allows a more comprehensive and systematic analysis of the stumbling blocks providing resources when formulating strategies.

The block-weighted cleavage salience index

In their seminal book, Bartolini and Mair (1990: 44–5) proposed the cleavage salience index (CS) to capture ‘the salience of the cleavage, that is, its importance and weight within the general context of the electoral behaviour of a given country and/or period’. In this article, we demonstrate theoretically and empirically that the CS index cannot be used to measure and compare the strength of cleavages over time and for different cleavages. The reason is fairly straightforward; the index does not take into account the actual, absolute level of electoral support for the cleavage block parties, which influences the potential range of the index values. As a better alternative to the original CS index, we propose the block-weighted cleavage salience index (WCS) and provide empirical data about class and religious cleavages in 11 European multiparty systems from 1950 to 2010.

Educational and class cleavages in voting behaviour in Belgium: The effect of income, EGP class and education on party choice in Flanders and Wallonia

This study compares the effect of EGP class, income and level of education on voting behaviour in Flanders and Wallonia and tests to what extent these effects are mediated by economic and cultural attitudes. Rather than using a left/right dichotomy or a one-dimensional left/right continuum, as is common in research on cleavage voting, we distinguish the main different parties in both regions. Using data from the 2008 European Social Survey, our Multinomial Logistic Regression analyses indicate some regional variation. We find that education generally plays a more important role in party choice in Flanders than in Wallonia, whereas income and EGP class are only relevant for party choice in Wallonia. These effects remain even when economic and cultural attitudes are controlled for. Furthermore, our analyses indicate that preferences for traditional left- or right-wing parties are influenced not only by economic concerns but also by education and cultural attitudes. Similarly, preferences for new left- or right-wing parties are affected by both education and income, as well as by attitudes towards economic and cultural issues, especially in Flanders. These results highlight the need to include all parties simultaneously when studying cleavage voting in multiparty systems.

ELEIÇÕES PRESIDENCIAIS, CLIVAGEM DE CLASSE E DECLÍNIO DA GRANDE IMPRENSA

O artigo faz um balanço das eleições presidenciais de 2006 e 2010 tendo como foco analítico três dimensões: as estratégias de campanha, a cobertura da grande imprensa escrita e o comportamento do eleitor. A partir dessas dimensões, discute os resultados eleitorais, a agenda-setting do processo eleitoral e a influência da mídia para argumentar que, nesses dois pleitos: 1) houve um descolamento entre a agenda política da classe AB e a chamada “nova classe média” e os “pobres”; 2) o voto foi predominantemente “governista”, estruturado por uma clivagem de classe e orientado pelo voto pragmático e retrospectivo; e, finalmente, 3) que a influência da grande imprensa escrita ficou restrita às classes AB, que constituem seu público leitor por excelência e as principais parcelas do eleitorado oposicionista.

Las escuelas étnicas de la comunidad francesa. El caso argentino, 1880-1950

Based on unpublished French information, this text analyses the main characteristics and the historical evolution of French schools in Argentina between 1880 and 1950. It begins by establishing an analytical and operational definition of the concept of ethnic schools, and proceeds to study the causes of the weakness of these institutions, distinguishing between those related to pre-migratory conditions (such as levels of illiteracy and of adoption of French national identity by emigrants, French policies towards Latin America) and those taking place after migration (the evolution of the Argentine public education system, the class cleavage inside the immigrant community, the expectation of return-migration, etc.).

Ethnic Heterogeneity in the Social Bases of Voting at the 2010 British General Election

This paper investigates whether in 2010 ethnic minorities continued to give overwhelming support to Labour or whether the Conservatives made inroads, especially among the more middle‐class or entrepreneurial sections of the ethnic minority electorate. Does ethnicity over‐ride other social cleavages such as the class cleavage? Or does religion, especially Islam, now represent a cross‐cutting cleavage alongside ethnicity? Using a major new survey, the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES), substantial variation was found between ethnic minorities in their level of support for Labour, although overall minority support for Labour remains double that of White British voters. In general the Conservatives have failed to make greater inroads than would be expected on the basis of uniform swing. Ethnicity does not in general ‘trump’ social class, although there are other ways in which the predictors of ethnic minority turnout and party choice differ from those of the majority group. Overall considerable heterogeneity is found in patterns of ethnic minority electoral behaviour and in the predictors of that behaviour.

Parent involvement as professionalization: professionals' struggle for power in Dutch urban deprived areas

Parent involvement policies have been central in the Dutch push towards educational governance. How the implementation of these policies plays out on the ground is context‐dependent. The ethnic and class cleavages impacting the Dutch educational system should be taken into account. On the basis of 50 in‐depth interviews with teachers, social workers and school managers in secondary education, we analyse what ‘parent involvement’ becomes in Dutch urban deprived areas. We characterize our respondents as ‘hybrid professionals’, constantly manoeuvring to establish and expand professional content. Parent involvement policies in context turn out to be vital stakes in our respondents' attempts to ‘become better professionals’. Policy goals and responsibilities for success or failure become displaced in the process.