Social Cleavages Research Articles

Reframing Polarization: Social Groups and “Culture Wars”

ABSTRACTRecent analyses of American politics often invoke the term “culture war” depicting sharp and increasing divisions within the American polity. Most of this research defines culture in terms of values and beliefs about social issues and defines polarization in terms of partisan and issue divisions. I evaluate the claim of worsening “culture wars” by using a conceptualization of political culture that focuses on social groups and measuring polarization as both social group members’ attitudes toward their own social in-groups and out-groups, and the effects of group attitudes on partisanship. Analyzing inter-group attitudes from 1964 to 2012 for social group cleavages defined by race, class, age, sex, and religion shows that polarization in attitudes toward social groups is minimal and generally stable, and most group members feel positively toward out-groups. Partisan and issue polarization seen in prior research do not extend to deep or increasing inter-group hostility that could reinforce issue-based and partisan polarization.

Expansion of Chinese Social Health Insurance: who gets what, when and how?

This article asks ‘who gets what, when and how’ from China's recent social welfare expansion. Little research to date examines the overall landscape of China's social health insurance, which has changed dramatically since 2003, and the distributive consequences and implications thereof. Drawing on public survey data and fieldwork for empirical support, this article finds that China's recent social health insurance expansion does significantly expand people's access to social health insurance. However, the expansion, which entails health insurance fragmentation and increasing benefit disparities, not only reinforces existing social cleavages such as the rural–urban divide, but it also generates new divisions within urbanites and workforce. Moreover, multiple social cleavages that cross-cut class differences have been institutionalized into China's social health insurance system. This reflects authoritarian regimes' ‘divide and rule’ tactic in social welfare provision.

From Formlessness to Structure? The Institutionalization of Competitive Party Systems in Africa

Giovanni Sartori once described African party systems as “formless.” Our contribution challenges this view in an era of resurgent multipartism that swept through the subcontinent in the early 1990s and continues until today. The article brings together contemporary research on African party systems with the wider disciplinary literature on party system institutionalization. Using a data set including all continuous election sequences in Africa from 1950 to 2008, we find that Africa has some of the most volatile party systems ever recorded and yet, tremendous diversity across regimes. We test the relative impact of political institutions, economic performance, the history of party system development, and social cleavage structure on party system institutionalization in Africa. We find that its party systems have been shaped by a set of factors unique to the subcontinent, but some of the general global patterns of party system development hold true in Africa as well.

Iranian Diaspora and the Deccan Sultanates in India: A Study of Sixteenth Century Portuguese Sources

Portuguese sixteenth-century sources provide much information on the countries neighbouring the Portuguese positions in India, chiefly Goa. There are many interesting elements especially on the Sultanate of Bijapur, a little less on that of Ahmadnagar, and only disperse notes on the other sultanates of Deccan, which had scarce relations with the Portuguese. They bear witness to the presence of many Iranians, in the armed forces of the sultanates as well as in their civil administration. Some Portuguese chroniclers were quite sensitive to social cleavages and balance of forces, whilst others only note anecdotic aspects. Even so, they furnish the names of many individuals, and something on their lives, which often complete those provided by the Indo-Persian writers; provided they are compared with the latter, they can be used by researchers with good results. The article also tries to explain why Iranians were more numerous and more influential in the Deccan than in other parts of Moslem India, such as Gujarat. It will be followed by a second one dealing with Iranians in maritime India and around the Indian Ocean.

From Values to Interests? The Evolution of Party Competition in New Democracies

This article explores how social cleavages and party strategies interact to shape the nature of party competition in new democracies. We conceive of political competition on two dimensions: interests and values. Using the example of postcommunist Europe, we show that as the socioeconomic cleavage deepens (reflected in increased income inequality), the salience of the interest dimension increases. Since this development is likely to benefit more leftist than rightist parties, the latter have an incentive to draw voter attention away from interests to values. This strategy is more likely to be successful in the presence of identity-based cleavages, such as ethnic and religious-secular divisions, which can be mobilized on value-based appeals. We confirm that the salience of values increases as a result of increased inequality in ethnically diverse and/or religious societies but decreases in those that are homogeneous and/or secular. This dynamic is largely due to the behavior of rightist parties

Ethnic Identity Formation and Change in Canada: An Introduction

Ethnic Identity Formation and Change in Canada:An Introduction Chedly Belkhodja, Special Guest Editor (bio) This special issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies illustrates the wide range of research related to immigration, ethnicity and diversity in Canada. This issue contains a selection of the papers that were presented at the 3rd Joint Annual Conference of the Ethnic Studies Association in Niagara Falls, November 23-24, 2012. Under the title Ethnic Identity Formation and Change in Canada and Abroad, the conference was an opportunity to hear more than 50 presentations and exchange views and ideas. As guest editor, I hope the reader will be interested in this issue which explores the intersections of diversity and ethnicity in academic disciplines, such as education, sociology, social work, urban studies, and public policy, and contains valuable research related to ethnic and religious communities, francophone minorities, and ethnic diversity in large and medium-sized cities. One common thread in the papers is the influence that liberalism as an ideology and dominant discourse now has on policy formulation, and its impact on the recognition of ethnic and linguistic identities and minorities. But most of the articles also develop another perspective to diversity and ethnicity research. Beyond celebrating the virtues of multiculturalism, they see a need to understand the importance of ongoing change to the ethnic composition of the Canadian population. By focusing on the mobility of immigrants and the mobilization of ethnic communities, the contributions in this issue take a different direction that extends diversity beyond public discourse and perceptions. Growing ethnic diversity in Canada’s largest cities is an evidence of this perspective, and the following two articles present us with case studies in Montreal and Toronto. In the first article, Sandrine Jean and Annick Germain analyze the mobility of immigrant and non-immigrant families in two Montreal neighborhoods: Ahuntsic on the island of Montreal, and Vimont in the suburbs. In the present debate on Quebec’s Charter of Values, this article illustrates the value of research on urban environment transformation and sets our attention on the daily lives of immigrant families. The key findings of this research are the changing dynamics of diversity in urban settings, the impact of migration, and the mobility of immigrants and non-immigrants to new neighborhoods. According to the authors, immigrants are transforming public spaces, such as parks, libraries, and sports facilities. They are also transforming the ethnic composition of neighbourhoods and introducing new social cleavages. [End Page 1] In the second article, Arshia U. Zaidi, Amanda Couture, Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale and Mehek Arif continue the discussion with a qualitative analysis of experiences of second-generation South Asian youth cross-gender relationships in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). In a multicultural country, young immigrants are experiencing diverse relations within their families and ethnic communities, and with the host society. The study presents the situation of a fast-growing immigrant population in a very large city. The authors’ focus is that of the various intersections of religion, gender, and ethnic identification of fifty-six unmarried, second-generation South Asians. The next two papers can be seen as case studies addressing more specific elements in the field of education. Anne-Marie Dionne’s paper is an interesting analysis of the place of diversity in children’s literature. She covers a vast corpus of French children’s multicultural literature and focuses on the notion of intercultural openness in the francophone education system. It seems that ideology plays a role in limiting the production of diversity in children’s books and the accessibility of migrant literature in the society. Dionne’s conclusion underlines the importance of more research to understand the importance of children’s literature in the fabric of a multicultural society. Robin Liu Hopson’s article examines equity policies and practices in the context of postsecondary admissions. She looks at the stories of racialized teachers acting as role models for minority students in an environment still characterized by a largely white majority. With growing numbers of students from visible minorities, the case of faculties of education in Ontario is similar to that of the rest of the country. Equity policies should not be limited to branding and a positive message of cultural...

PARTY IDENTIFICATION IN LITHUANIA: THE OUTCOME OF FAMILY SOCIALISATION, POLITICAL CLEAVAGES, OR HABIT?

Why do people tend to vote for the same political party many years, despite the fact that parties change their electoral programs, their leaders and their candidates in elections? Why do they tend to justify the actions of the party much more easily than others? The answer to those questions is provided by the party identification theory originating in the prominent Michigan school of electoral behaviour research.While there is some evidence that party identification is decreasing in Western countries, the concept is still widely discussed and used in electoral research. There is a huge amount of literature on the measurement issues, changing level of partisanship in US, Europe and other countries, on the determinants and the effects of party identification. The empirical evidence on the formation of the party identification in new democracies, however, is scarce. The case of Lithuania, therefore, is interesting and informative.The aim of the article is to examine the factors of the emergence of party identification in Lithuania, trying to reveal the mechanisms of the formation of partisanship in the emergent state of party system formation. The analysis is based on the data from the representative face-to-face post-electoral survey carried out in 13 November – 10 December 2012 (N = 1500) for the Lithuanian National Election Study.In the first part of the article, the two rival theories of party identification are introduced and hypotheses about the factors of party identification formation are presented. In the second part, the methodological issues of measurement of party identification are discussed and the level of party identification in Lithuania is examined. The third part of the article focuses on the determinants of party identification. Three main hypotheses are tested. The first hypothesis presumes that party identification derives from the political socialisation in family and depends on the party identification of parents. Family socialisation in Lithuania, however, should only have an impact on those who were born after 1972 because they received their political socialisation in democratic regime. The second hypothesis is related to the theory of social cleavages. It states that the probability of having party identification is bigger for those who feel the salient social cleavage in the society and recognize its political relevance. Finally, the third hypothesis, based on the theoretical claim of Philip Converse, is that party identification depends on the length of democratic experience of electorate.Careful analysis of the level of party identification reveals that no less than a third of Lithuanian electorate could be characterised as party identifiers. Only half of them, however, have an affective relation with their party. The partisanship of the others seems to be based on rational evaluation rather than psychological attachment. The three parties that have most of partisan supporters are the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, the Labour Party and the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats.The results of the analysis reveal that consistent party identification of parents has an impact on the party identification of their children. The effect, however, is not different for those who are born before and after 1972. It suggests that this is the effect of social network rather than family socialisation. The probability to have a party identification is higher for those who are most anti-communist as it is the dominant political cleavage in Lithuania. The impact, however, is mediated by age and moderated by interest in politics.The impact of age on party identification is considerable but not consistent with the hypothesis. The theory presumes that the probability to have a party identification should consistently grow until the age of 40 and afterwards it should remain constant. The results of the logistic regression, however, reveal that the highest probability to have a party identification is in the 50–59 age group rather than 30–39, even after controlling other variables such as interest in politics, political sophistication and salience of political cleavages. One possible explanation of this finding suggests that party identification is strongest for the generation that was most active in the formation of democratic political system in Lithuania in 1988–1991.

Peddling Paradise: The Politics of Tourism in Latin America by Kirk S. Bowman (review)

Reviewed by: Peddling Paradise: The Politics of Tourism in Latin America by Kirk S. Bowman Edward L. Jackiewicz Peddling Paradise: The Politics of Tourism in Latin America. Kirk S. Bowman. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013. 187 pp., maps, diagrams, notes and index. $55.00 cloth (ISBN 978-1-58826-897-6) This book sets out to solve three “puzzles” related to the development of international tourism in Latin America. The first is why has the state’s role continued to grow in the tourism sector when it has contracted in nearly every other sector in this region? Second, why are there such widespread differences in the ability of countries to attract international tourists? Finally, why do some countries follow an inclusionary model with better distributional effects while others follow an enclave model that do not adequately distribute resources? (p. 3). The author acknowledges that this book was more than ten years in the making, including 39 trips and more than 1000 interviews; and as a result provides some rich primary data. The book is divided into 8 chapters, several of which provide a conceptual and theoretical foundation for the text. Two of these chapters are comparative case studies. The first of these chapters is a national level comparison of recent tourism development in Brazil and Argentina; the second is an urban level comparison of tourism in the cities of Buenos Aires, Havana, and Rio de Janeiro. I begin this review with a brief overview of each chapter followed by a summary of thoughts and takeaways. [End Page 241] Chapter 1 introduces the book and its major objectives while also providing some baseline statistics to set up the discussion of tourism in Latin America. Chapter 2 wisely offers some key definitions used throughout the text as well as basic assumptions made by the author, such as every Latin American country has sufficient local cultural and natural tourism endowments appealing to international tourists (p. 14). The author also provides a detailed overview of the methods employed and the lenses utilized to guide the research. This chapter also brings to the fore his emphasis on state capacity, openly influenced by the work of Evelyn Huber. Chapter 3 begins with an evolution of international tourism in Latin America emphasizing the rapid growth of arrivals during the past two decades highlighting the changing demands of potential tourists to go beyond beach activities to experience the unique “essence” of destinations whether its food, nature, nightlife, sport, archaeology or urban life. The chapter emphasizes the increasing importance of tourism to national economies and the role of the state in this process. Chapter 4 goes more in-depth about the role of the state in promoting tourism development. The author devises a three-level typology of state capacity-holistic, hollow, and rhetorical—based on accumulation and legitimacy (p. 51). This discussion is framed by the ‘paradox of plenty’ concept whereby countries with abundant natural resources tend to underachieve with regard to long term development and the inability of many Latin American governments to multi-task, that is deal with issues of national security, for example, while trying to promote tourism. Chapter 5 examines the social structure related to tourism development. Specifically, the author cites crime as an example that can alter demand but also entice countries to promote an enclave-based tourism model despite its poor ability to distribute resources throughout a country. Moreover, he explains how countries with wide social cleavages have great difficulty forging more inclusive tourism development models. Chapters 6 and 7 offer up case studies at two different geographic scales that illustrate the uneven impacts of tourism throughout the region. Chapter 6 traces the different trajectories of Brazil and Argentina over the past decade. The author shows that despite Brazil’s superior natural and cultural endowments and Argentina’s political and economic struggles at the beginning of the century, Argentina has done a much better job of luring tourists to the point where international arrivals were about equal in these countries. According to the author, the bulk of the blame for Brazil’s poor performance is the inability for the state to promote tourism in a meaningful way. Significantly, he adds, Argentina made international...

Społeczne zróżnicowanie umiejętności informatycznych. Redukcja czy reprodukcja nierówności społecznych?

Artykuł porusza kwestię relacji między korzystaniem z globalnej sieci internetowej a stratyfikacją społeczną. Wbrew wielu utopijnym twierdzeniom korzystanie z technologii jest raczej osadzone w już istniejących społecznych podziałach i stosunkach dominacji, niż przyczynia się do ich zniwelowania. Problem ten, zwany „cyfrowym podziałem”, ewoluował od prostych rozróżnień na użytkowników i nieużytkowników sieci w stronę ujęć wielowymiarowych, wskazujących na nierówności wśród samych internautów. Czerpiąc z teorii Pierre’a Bourdieu, autor artykułu analizuje dane na temat aktywności internetowych mieszkańców Wrocławia. Wyniki wskazują, że nawet przy kontroli zmiennej „dostęp do Internetu”, status socjoekonomiczny (i pozycja klasowa) jest istotnym predykatorem sposobu wykorzystania sieci w życiu codziennym. To osoby uprzywilejowane społecznie w większej mierze angażują się w czynności zwiększające ich zasoby. Zidentyfikowano dwa typy orientacji internetowych: informacyjno-utylitarny i komunikacyjno-rozrywkowy, oba skorelowane z takimi wskaźnikami struktury społecznej, jak: pozycja klasowa, kapitał kulturowy czy ekonomiczny. Wszystko to prowadzi do wniosku, że korzystanie z omawianej technologii nie może być analizowane w oderwaniu od kontekstu społecznego i kulturowego, w którym jest ona osadzona.

Social cleavages and political dealignment in contemporary Chile, 1995–2009

There is abundant research on how social cleavages shape political preferences in developed countries with uninterrupted democracies, but we know less about this topic for middle income countries with recently restored democracies. In this analysis of the Chilean case, we examine with Latinobarometer survey data from 1995 to 2009 the evolution of social cleavages as shapers of political preferences (measured with a left–right self-placement scale). We find a general process of dealignment across time, indicated by the decreasing association between political preferences on the one hand, and class, religion and regime preferences on the other. We tentatively link dealignment at the mass level to the strategies pursued by political parties operating in a political and economic context that encourages ideological moderation and convergence to the centre. These strategies weaken the differentiated signals needed for sustaining an aligned citizenry.

Social Choice and Social Unemployment-Income Cleavages: New Insights from Happiness Research

The nexus between income and happiness is very much disputed. Many cross-sectional studies seem to be in support of a positive relationship. Yet, the failure of most studies to find a similar link between increases in income through time and happiness in developed countries of the western hemisphere sparked an intense debate over the issue. Starting from the fact that the theoretical basis in happiness research has been comparatively weak, we develop a novel theoretical approach that allows us to identify distributional consequences of unemployment as a key factor in the nexus. Social cleavages rooted therein imply a bias in the social choice between private and public goods with the bias and thus the importance for happiness conditional on the level of per-capita income. Our theory is backed by corresponding empirical evidence in international data: controlling for a number of variables, we find that, in low-income countries, subjective well-being significantly depends on income per capita; however, in high-income countries, the unemployment-related distribution is more important as a determinant, with significance shifting from the level of per-capita income to cleavages associated with unemployment. Our findings thus emphasizes the relevance of the income-satiation hypothesis found in many longitudinal studies also in cross-sectional perspective.

Bastions of White Privilege? Reflections on the Racialization of Alternative Food Networks

It is something of an accepted truth that alternative food networks (AFNs) are bastions of the affluent middle and upper classes. No one else, it is assumed, could afford the premium prices routinely attached to organic, fair trade and other ethically produced foodstuffs. In Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics, David Goodman, Melanie DuPuis and Michael Goodman ask us to think beyond income-based inequality and to consider how a range of other social cleavages may be reflected in and shape AFNs. They argue that race, in particular, has been inadequately problematized both by alternative food movements and by the scholars that study them. Certainly, many have argued that the social standards embedded within various eco-certifications are too weak, allowing, for example, the exploitation of migrant labour on organic farms in the US (e.g. Allen, 2008). But few have looked seriously or critically at the racial composition or dynamics of AFNs. To put it rather crudely, AFNs are not simply the domain of the affluent middle classes, the authors argue, they are the domain of the privileged white middle classes.

Fitting Demand and Supply: How Identification Brings Appeals and Motives Together

In this article, participants in two demonstrations are compared. The demonstrations took place in two different squares in Amsterdam, on the same day, opposing the same governmental policy. Everything was the same except the organizers and their appeals: labor unions with an appeal in terms of threatened interests, on the one hand, and an anti-neoliberalism alliance with an appeal in terms of violated principles on the other. We hypothesize that social cleavages shape mobilizing structures and mobilization potentials. Thereby, this study takes an important yet rarely tested assumption in social movement literature seriously: namely, that grievances are socially constructed. If indeed grievances are socially constructed, one would expect that organizers rooted in different cleavages issue different appeals that resonate with different motives. What made individuals who were protesting the same governmental policy participate in one square rather than in the other? Organizational embeddedness, identification, and appeals that resonate with people's grievances provide the answer to that question. To test our hypotheses, we conducted surveys at both demonstrations; survey questionnaires were randomly distributed. The findings supported our assumptions regarding the influence of the diverging mobilizing contexts on the dynamics of protest participation and revealed the crucial role of identity processes.

Party politics & social cleavages in Turkey

Party politics & social cleavages in Turkey

A fundamental cause approach to the study of disparities in lung cancer and pancreatic cancer mortality in the United States

This study examines how associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and lung and pancreatic cancer mortality have changed over time in the U.S. The fundamental cause hypothesis predicts as diseases become more preventable due to innovation in medical knowledge or technology, individuals with greater access to resources will disproportionately benefit, triggering the formation or worsening of health disparities along social cleavages. We examine socioeconomic disparities in mortality due to lung cancer, a disease that became increasingly preventable with the development and dissemination of knowledge of the causal link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, and compare it to that of pancreatic cancer, a disease for which there have been no major prevention or treatment innovations. County-level disease-specific mortality rates for those ≥45 years, adjusted for sex, race, and age during 1968–2009 are derived from death certificate and population data from the National Center for Health Statistics. SES is measured using five county-level variables from four decennial censuses, interpolating values for intercensal years. Negative binomial regression was used to model mortality. Results suggest the impact of SES on lung cancer mortality increases 0.5% per year during this period. Although lung cancer mortality rates are initially higher in higher SES counties, by 1980 persons in lower SES counties are at greater risk and by 2009 the difference in mortality between counties with SES one SD above compared to one SD below average was 33 people per 100,000. In contrast, we find a small but significant reverse SES gradient in pancreatic cancer mortality that does not change over time. These data support the fundamental cause hypothesis: social conditions influencing access to resources more greatly impact mortality when preventative knowledge exists. Public health interventions and policies should facilitate more equitable distribution of new health-enhancing knowledge and faster uptake and utilization among lower SES groups.

Continuidad y cambios en una vieja democracia de partidos: Uruguay (1910-2010)

Este artículo revisita la vieja democracia de partidos uruguaya - la más antigua y una de las pocas de América Latina retomando críticamente aportes señeros y propuestas propias, para señalar cambios y continuidades en el correr de cien años. Tratando de no caer en el excepcionalismo, el texto hilvana referencias comparativas, que encuadran la originalidad del caso uruguayo y permiten resaltar el potencial que su análisis tiene para la Política Comparada. La primera parte repasa el modelo genético y los rasgos típicos del régimen, que explican sus ventajas comparativas: los factores originarios, la matriz poliárquica, el presidencialismo pluralista, una democracia consociational sui generis, hecha de partidos políticos y no de clivajes sociales. La segunda parte aborda la gran transformación que sigue a la transición democrática de los 1980, mostrando un sistema de partidos que cambia sin desarticularse, recomponiendo su estructura plural y competitiva. El texto evoca la transición liberal de los 1990 y la reforma constitucional de 1996, el fin del bipartidismo tradicional, el perfil de predominante que alcanza el Frente Amplio y su debut con un gobierno de tipo social democrático, comparable a las social democracias "tardías" de Europa Meridional. En todos estos lances, la centenaria democracia de partidos uruguaya - que en su momento no pudo evitar la dictadura 1973-1984 - vuelve a hacer la diferencia y al cabo de un proceso histórico largo y gradual, termina acuñando una nueva norma política.

A Historical Trend of Ethnic Cleavages in Contemporary Iran

The goal of this study is evaluation social and historical content of social cleavage in contemporary Iran. Analytical framework rooted in Rokan theory. Rokan believed that social cleavage appearance post of revolutions. Method of study was historical comparatives. The method of this research is comparative historical in which we used of historical documents and data. In this field, I have compared data of indexes of socio-economic of ethnic states. Assessment of data and documents show that social cleavages and particularly ethnic cleavages rise after Reza shah revolution. He established centralized and dictated government and divided society of Iran and institutionalization the inequality in social structure. Sense of deprivation about inequality and suited circumstance activated ethnic cleavage in Iran. Decrease of inequality and justice could decrease of social deprivation and deactivated social cleavages.

Explaining Government Turnover inAsian Democracies

What explains the Japanese experience of one‐party‐dominated democracy over the past five decades? More generally, and looking acrossAsian democracies, what explains variations in the degree of political volatility? We propose a theory of government turnover rate that not only explains political rigidity inJapan and the experience of precarious democracy inThailand and thePhilippines, but also explains changes of government in otherAsian democracies. Political volatility, defined as the rate of government turnover, ranges from very low, as seen in one‐party‐dominated democracies, to very high, as seen in troubled democracies that regularly suffer democratic breakdowns. With our theory, we argue that three major factors contribute interactively to political volatility: executive type, distributive power, and social cleavage. Through a comparative analysis of allAsian democracies, we conclude that the mechanisms resulting in political volatility can be generalized in a unifying theoretical framework.

Social Cleavages and Civil War Onset

This paper addresses the false dichotomy of ‘greed–grievance’ regarding the onset of civil wars, providing a theory that specifies the interaction of economic and identity-based factors within a two-stage causal process. The sociological concept of overlapping versus cross-cutting social cleavages is applied to explain the origins of the potential for ethnic civil war, as the overlap of ethnic cleavages with material cleavages fuels an in-group/out-group ideology. Such situations can, however, exist for decades without the onset of war, thus it is necessary to delineate this question from the necessarily separate, temporal question of the timing of the outbreak of such wars as a second stage. Catalysts such as economic decline and adverse regime change provide the variables that, in the presence of a social structure of overlapping social cleavages, exacerbate existing intergroup tensions to the point of organized violence, or are mitigated by the lack of major cleavages or the presence of cross-cutting cleavages. Evidence from cases is provided, followed by a discussion of the implications of this theory for further research.

Party Agency and the Religious—Secular Cleavage in Post-Communist Countries: The Case of Romania

Research focusing on several post-communist countries has found evidence of social cleavage effects on political behaviour similar to those found in Western Europe. In some post-communist countries, however, social cleavage effects appear far weaker (if at all). To understand why this is the case, I perform a case study of Romania, focusing on the religious—secular cleavage. Drawing upon research that emphasises the role of parties in forming cleavages, I argue that the reason for the absence of social cleavage effects is due to party competition for the same group of voters by parties from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum. By shifting their positions, some parties have prevented the appearance of cleavages by shaping individuals' perceptions of the parties and, in doing so, have even altered individuals' own left—right self-placements.