Social Cleavages Research Articles

Islamic Populism in Palembang in the 1950s

This study discusses the emergence of Islamic populism in Palembang in the 1950s. In the official narratives of Indonesian history, the political turbulence in Palembang that occurred in the mid-1950s is often associated with a regional Army commander-led rebellion. This research instead finds that Islamic groups played a crucial role in developing the preliminary conditions before the military group took the initiative to pull the trigger. Islamic groups, through their network of ulama, tried to unite all groups opposed to Jakarta’s leadership and communism to incorporate under one umbrella of political identity: Islam. We determine that the emergence of Islamic populism in Palembang was caused by multiple grievances: economic decline, redistribution of welfare to the region, the exclusion of Islamic groups, and the fear of communism. However, Islamic populism only succeeded in uniting factions in the Islamic community but failed to reach other groups because of the social cleavages from previous feuds.

Politics, Parties, People: Field Notes from Electoral Campaigns in Odisha|India

This report is about a critical analysis of elections in Odisha over the past few decades. Diverse social groups in the state have been politicised and mobilised for electoral purposes based on social cleavages, rather than common economic interest, ideology or leadership. A theoretical framework has been developed in almost every district to analyse and trace the processes of tradition and reconfiguration of the electoral landscape. It answers the questions: What message does the state hold for Parliament or assembly elections? How do the people, who belong to a state, respond to national and state leaderships? Our state has been receiving appreciation as a platform where mainstream politics unfolds and, in a significant way, shapes the national politics including the formation and stability of the government at the Centre, a trend that started in the post-Congress polity. But it may raise a lot of questions among the political pundits and strategic gurus about how the new style of election mechanism and campaign approach should be re-looked. “Naveen Raj” continues in Odisha with chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s unmatched leadership not only registering successive wins in elections but also touching minds and hearts. My paper does not waste so many words on the defeat the Congress, India’s oldest political party, in successive elections in the state. It does not also focus much on the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been not accepted by people in Odisha despite changing election slogans from ‘vikash’ (development) to ‘kabastan’ (burial ground) and ‘Pakistan’ from one election to another. My paper attempts to study how leadership and style of approach in electoral politics causes landslide wins for Patnaik and the Biju Janata Dal. In 2019 general and state assembly elections, the Congress was on the backfoot from day one. The fight in Odisha was directly between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Patnaik. The first was known for his outstanding skill of 5P (passion, propaganda, promotion, publicity and progressiveness) and the second for his 3D effect (decency, discipline and difference). I will, however, also take look at lack of 3I (infrastructure, identity and ideology) in the electoral process.

Uma revolução silenciosa: França, 2017-2022

This article shows a profound change in French electoral behaviour, revealed in 2017 and confirmed in 2022. This change can be better explained by structural drivers that replaced traditional left-right cleavages by new cultural and social cleavages, also experienced in other liberal democracies. The consolidation of these new cleavages brings new opportunities to liberal centrist movements but poses serious threats to the traditional social-democratic left in its relation to the working classes. Additionally, this is a favourable political battleground for the far-right electoral growth.

Defenders of the Faith? How shifting social cleavages and the rise of identity politics are reshaping right-wing populists’ attitudes towards religion in the West

ABSTRACT From the display of oversized crosses at the United States Capitol riots, to a new rhetoric centred on defence of the ‘Judaeo-Christian West’ in Europe: right-wing populist movements on both sides of the Atlantic are intensifying their use of Christian symbols and language. Many observers have interpreted such rhetoric as symptomatic of a conservative religious resurgence against secular liberalism and multiculturalism. However, several indicators suggest a more complicated relationship between the populist Right, religion, and secularisation. For instance, in the United States Donald Trump was perceived to be the least religious Republican party candidate in recent history, while in Europe church attendance remains a strong predictor for not voting for right-wing populist parties. Deploying a demand- and supply-side framework to understand the socio-demographic roots behind the rise of right-wing populist movements and the motives behind their references to Christianity, this contribution posits that right-wing populists primarily employ Christianity as a cultural identity marker to mobilise voters around a new post-religious identity cleavage. However, they often remain distanced from Christian doctrine, beliefs, and institutions, and instead seek to combine cultural references to Christianity with secular policies, suggesting a secularisation of Christian symbols rather than a resurgence of religion in western politics.

Electoral Institutions and Identity Based Clientelism in Jordan

In contexts where social cleavages are universally salient, how can political alliances across social identity groups be forged? A wealth of research examines the effects of either electoral rules or social identity on electoral behavior, but the interplay between these two factors is understudied. This article leverages original datasets of tribal voting coalitions, parliamentarian constituent casework logs, and a national survey in Jordan to demonstrate how institutions interact with social identity to shape distributive politics. Within single non-transferable vote districts (SNTV), representatives win their seats based on tribal support and practice tribal favoritism in service provision. On the contrary, elected officials in single member plurality districts (SMDs) cobble together more diverse coalitions to win their seats and distribute state benefits more evenly between in-group and out-group members. Bolstering these findings, data from a 2014 nationwide survey show that a history of having tribal connections with parliamentarians’ augments voter turnout in SNTV districts, whereas it has no relationship with voter turnout in SMDs. This article offers an understanding of why politicians build electoral coalitions and distribute clientelistic benefits within or across social identity groups with important implications for the consideration of electoral institutional design in developing countries.

Creating the Conditions for Intergenerational Justice: Social Capital and Compliance

Creating the Conditions for Intergenerational Justice: Social Capital and Compliance

Independence and Constitution: The Spanish Nationalization of Personal Experience During the Peninsular War and its Aftermath

The deconstruction of the ‘War of Independence’ (1808–1814) as a Spanish nationalist myth was a necessary step in advancing our knowledge of the history of the Age of Revolutions in Spain and of Spanish nation-building itself. However, it set aside those who had in fact experienced those events through a genuine Spanish nationalized lens. Using a corpus of autobiographical sources written between the 1780s and the 1830s, this paper argues that political concepts of Spanish nationhood were already available before the liberal revolution unleashed by the French invasion, that anti-liberals used the language of nationhood in their ego-documents too, and that ideas of independence and constitution pervaded social cleavages and ideological divides. Arguably, then, the War of Independence had both mythical and real dimensions in terms of the history of national identities. Therefore, the great issue in nineteenth-century Spanish nation-building would have not been a congenital ‘lack’ or ‘weakness’ of nationhood but an intense cultural war for its definition along political lines.

Manifestos and Voting Behavior in Third-Wave Democracies: Evidence from Ghana

Custom to pluralistic societies in emergent democracies, political mythology holds that since Ghana's Fourth Republic's inception, electoral outcomes have been fundamentally determined by ethno-political identification and other social cleavages to political parties. However, despite the potential influence of party manifesto contents in determining electoral outcomes, very little is known about the value of party manifestos in shaping voting behavior in the history of elections in the Fourth Republic. This is unfortunate because such knowledge can inform both the academic study of electoral politics and voting behavior. This article, rooted in the classical work on economic voting at both the individual and aggregate levels, presents original results from interviews with voters who participated in all the three recently held elections under study. Through interviews with 11,600 respondents from 116 constituencies and across all 16 regions, the study finds that the voting pattern in recent elections is not consistent with the popular ethno-social dynamics of Ghana's electoral politics. The results imply that party identification remains a significant determinant of voting decisions; nonetheless, the manifesto contents of political parties have become pivotal in shaping voting behavior rather than voting patterns based on socio-psychological notions and political party alignments. It concludes that voter inducement (kind or cash) in election periods is less relevant in structuring voting behavior. Further, it concludes that unless a major realignment occurs, electorates prefer a party with policies that maximize their utilities or will lead to the most considerable average benefit, as there is no reason to vote for a policy with idiosyncratic benefits or values. Thus, parties' policy blueprints or manifesto contents have become strong mobilizers and key determining factors for voters. As such, political parties need to invest in developing concrete policy programs that resonate with the citizenry to spur successful electoral outcomes.

Interview: Steffen Mau and Helmut K. Anheier

In this interview, Steffen Mau and Helmut K. Anheier discuss Professor Mau’s writing on postcommunist East Germany, the nature of modern borders, the quantification of the social, and the current state of the social sciences. They explore the lingering social cleavages in unified Germany, discuss how borders have expanded and transformed since the end of the Cold War, and ask what changes are needed to keep the social sciences relevant for the twenty-first century.

Belief traps: Tackling the inertia of harmful beliefs.

Beliefs can be highly resilient in the sense that they are not easily abandoned in the face of counterevidence. This has the advantage of guiding consistent behavior and judgments but may also have destructive consequences for individuals, nature, and society. For instance, pathological beliefs can sustain psychiatric disorders, the belief that rhinoceros horn is an aphrodisiac may drive a species extinct, beliefs about gender or race may fuel discrimination, and belief in conspiracy theories can undermine democracy. Here, we present a unifying framework of how self-amplifying feedbacks shape the inertia of beliefs on levels ranging from neuronal networks to social systems. Sustained exposure to counterevidence can destabilize rigid beliefs but requires organized rational override as in cognitive behavioral therapy for pathological beliefs or institutional control of discrimination to reduce racial biases. Black-and-white thinking is a major risk factor for the formation of resilient beliefs associated with psychiatric disorders as well as prejudices and conspiracy thinking. Such dichotomous thinking is characteristic of a lack of cognitive resources, which may be exacerbated by stress. This could help explain why conspiracy thinking and psychiatric disorders tend to peak during crises. A corollary is that addressing social factors such as poverty, social cleavage, and lack of education may be the most effective way to prevent the emergence of rigid beliefs, and thus of problems ranging from psychiatric disorders to prejudices, conspiracy theories, and posttruth politics.

Germany’s Contested Civil Society in a Time of Politization

Abstract Growing efforts to shrink civil societies’ scope of action are evident around the globe. Germany’s civil society has not been fully immune from this, but analysing whether there is a shrinking civic space requires a twofold perspective. While having a high democratic state standard and a rather supportive environment, there is also a discourse of whether it is legitimate for civil society organisations (CSO) to be politically active, following controversial recent lawsuits against CSOs on that ground. Additionally, there is an increasing atmosphere of hate and demonization from some social groups against civil society activists that impede their work and scope of action. Accordingly, there is an ongoing discussion whether Germany’s civil society is affected by the shrinking space phenomenon or not. To capture and theoretically comprehend these processes in Germany, I argue that these signs of “shrinking spaces” should rather be understood as a contestation that is the outcome of a growing re-politicization of civil society in the last 15 years. It is rooted in a new wave of politicization in which democracy is no longer an undisputed paradigm. Against this background, over the last decade, civil society has become again a terrain of contestation where different views and options are expressed and collide, but that is also attacked from the outside. Two main changes, I argue, have driven forward the politicization of civil society: first, a new social cleavage that is exploited by (right-wing) populism and, second, the claim for more direct participation in the democratic systems by the citizens which produced new political opportunity structures of good governance that allow more CSOs to advocate. While this process emancipated many CSOs, it also brought forth different contestations about legitimate participation. In this way, one can simultaneously observe a shrinking and a growing space for civil society in Germany.

Social polarization: towards the text mining study

This article suggests a way to concretize the concept of social polarization, which will be most suitable for a) empirical operatio­nalization; b) a complete description of existing social conflicts; c) will be consistent with existing sociological theories. The implementation of this task opens the way to studying this phenomenon through the method of text mining. We see two main problems with the concept of social polarization in sociology: (1) Social polarization is used as a beautiful metaphor to describe contemporary political situations, not as a strong operationalized concept. The concept must create vast opportunities to study social reality, interpret more processes; (2) The mathematic interpretation of social polarization is conducted on somewhat idealized distributions; there is a lack of real empirical data verification. These two problems also create one big problem: mathematical conceptualization of social polarization and empirical studies of social polarization are unrelated. We propose a way to solve this problem through the construction of our social polarization theoretical framework. The way that allowed us to do this was in the concretization of social polarization and its connection with sociological theories of conflict. The article’s key idea is to show that this concept is suitable for operationalization for two reasons: its ability to describe the causes and nature of social conflicts and its measurability.
 This article also discusses the main modern social polarization theories, their features, advantages, and disadvantages. Since the concept of social polarization is mostly the focus of political science research, the author’s goal was to find opportunities to use this concept in sociology and the ideas that will allow it. There are currently two approaches to studying this issue: the party association approach and the opinion-based group approach. An important task, which was also solved in this article, is the concept’s connection with the sociological concepts of conflict. The path was found using the concept of Lipset and Rokkan. This concept’s key advantage is the combination of social inequality, conflict, attitudes, and social distance. Typically, these concepts are used separately to explain social cleavages. The concept of polarization, in this case, allows them to be integrated into a single whole

The triple differential vulnerability of female entrepreneurs to climate risk in sub‐Saharan Africa: Gendered barriers and enablers to private sector adaptation

AbstractThe ability of businesses to adapt effectively to climate change is highly influenced by the external business enabling environment. Constraints to adaptive capacity are experienced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across sub‐Saharan Africa, regardless of the gender of the business owner. However, gender is a critical social cleavage through which differences in adaptive capacity manifest and in Africa most entrepreneurs are women. We conduct a systematic review to synthesize existing knowledge on differential vulnerability of female entrepreneurs in Africa to climate risk, in relation to their sensitivity to extreme climate events and their adaptive capacity. We synthesize this literature using a vulnerability analysis approach that situates vulnerability and adaptive capacity within the context of the wider climate risk framework denoted in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. In doing so, we identify gendered barriers and enablers to private sector adaptation and suggest women entrepreneurs face a “triple differential vulnerability” to climate change, wherein they: (1) are often more sensitive to climate risk, as a result of their concentration in certain sectors and types of enterprises (e.g., micro SMEs in the agricultural sector in remote regions); (2) face additional barriers to adaptation in the business environment, including access to finance, technologies, (climate and adaptation) information and supportive policies; and (3) are also often concurrently on the frontline of managing climate risk at household levels. Since various forms of inequality often create compounding experiences of discrimination and vulnerability, we pay particular attention to how factors of differential vulnerability intersect, amplify, and reproduce.This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation

Religion-as-Ethnicity and the Emerging Hindu Vote in India

Religious division formed the basis for the subcontinent’s partition and has continued to be a major social cleavage in local relations. Yet remarkably religious parties have rarely been successful in India. This may be changing with an ascendant Bharatiya Janata Party mobilizing the Hindu vote. Accordingly, this article seeks to explicate the conditions under which successful religious parties may emerge. In order to do so, I conceive of electoral mobilization on religion as a form of ethnic mobilization, what I refer to as religion-as-ethnicity voting. I argue that religion-as-ethnicity voting emerges when the religious group meets certain spatial demographic criteria (density and pivotality) and when a governing party representing these interests can use state power to reify boundaries between religious groups. I use this framework to explain the emergence of the Hindu vote in the Indian state of Assam.

Discourse, Difference, and Divergence: Exploring Media Representations and Online Public Sentiments toward Marginalized Urban Communities in Jamaica during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Despite lacking the resources to adequately adhere to public health protocols, urban residents belonging to impoverished communities in Kingston, Jamaica were prominently featured in local news reports that highlighted their breaches of social distancing. These reports generated an overwhelmingly prejudiced online social discourse, characterized by derogatory and dehumanizing remarks. This research aims to explore the ways media representations of calls for social distancing have unearthed latent social cleavages and contributed to the othering of Kingston’s poor. A thematic analysis was used to understand the nature of the public response to these news reports. The comments were manually coded, and emergent themes were classified based on the sentiments expressed. The comments generated evoked class, place, race, and political tensions, potentially perpetuating the public perception of vulnerable groups as the ‘threatening other’. These comments possibly represent deeper problems associated with the social divergence of Jamaican society. The lack of sensitivity exhibited shows a general disregard for the stark social realities commonly experienced by subaltern groups. These findings suggest media coverage promoting public safety, while important, may inadvertently lead to heightened social tensions and perpetuate social stigmas against marginalized groups, potentially stirring social divergence and countering efforts toward inclusiveness and integration.

Expanding the measurement of culture with a sample of two billion humans

Culture has played a pivotal role in human evolution. Yet, the ability of social scientists to study culture is limited by the currently available measurement instruments. Scholars of culture must regularly choose between scalable but sparse survey-based methods or restricted but rich ethnographic methods. Here, we demonstrate that massive online social networks can advance the study of human culture by providing quantitative, scalable and high-resolution measurement of behaviourally revealed cultural values and preferences. We employ data across nearly 60 000 topic dimensions drawn from two billion Facebook users across 225 countries and territories. We first validate that cultural distances calculated from this measurement instrument correspond to traditional survey-based and objective measures of cross-national cultural differences. We then demonstrate that this expanded measure enables rich insight into the cultural landscape globally at previously impossible resolution. We analyse the importance of national borders in shaping culture and compare subnational divisiveness with gender divisiveness across countries. Our measure enables detailed investigation into the geopolitical stability of countries, social cleavages within small- and large-scale human groups, the integration of migrant populations and the disaffection of certain population groups from the political process, among myriad other potential future applications.

Distrust of Artificial Intelligence: Sources & Responses from Computer Science & Law

Abstract Social distrust of AI stems in part from incomplete and faulty data sources, inappropriate redeployment of data, and frequently exposed errors that reflect and amplify existing social cleavages and failures, such as racial and gender biases. Other sources of distrust include the lack of “ground truth” against which to measure the results of learned algorithms, divergence of interests between those affected and those designing the tools, invasion of individual privacy, and the inapplicability of measures such as transparency and participation that build trust in other institutions. Needed steps to increase trust in AI systems include involvement of broader and diverse stakeholders in decisions around selection of uses, data, and predictors; investment in methods of recourse for errors and bias commensurate with the risks of errors and bias; and regulation prompting competition for trust.

Podziały społeczne i ich upolitycznienie jako przykłady toksycznych struktur władzy?

The article reflects the burgeoning academic interest in social cleavages and various ways of their politicization. It addresses their origins, identification, interpretation and also — to a limited extent — the ways they can be applied to politics. The article shows that cleavages are historical and social constructs that exist in time. On the other hand, they also confirm the existence of real divisions and inequalities already present in a social structure. The divisions discussed in the paper are, first of all, distinguished through the existing inequalities, their depth, and then the politicization and social-political consequences. At the same time, the cleavages, as phenomena observed at a group level, can also by symptomatic of asymmetric intergroup relations. They are most often manifested through inequalities of power, creation of unfair hierarchies, and structures of domination. Such an approach makes it possible to discuss the authoritative dimension of the cleavages, their asymmetries and implications for social development.

Ethnic Cleavages and Vote Choice in Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago is mostly split between two main ethnic groups of African and Indian origins, yet there is little empirical research on the importance of these social cleavages in voting behaviour in the country. One branch of scholarly work on ethnic voting suggests that individuals use social identities as heuristics to evaluate candidates. However, another line of research has found that the role of ethnicity in elections is declining in specific contexts. This manuscript explores the importance of ethnic cleavages in voting patterns in Trinidad and Tobago. We use the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) surveys and conduct a series of probit models to test which factors influence voting the most in the twin-islands. We find that ethnicity is the main factor associated with voters’ choice, but other factors that are associated with voting decisions, such as voters’ political ideology, education, and place of residence. These findings inform the ongoing debate on the importance of ethnicity in voting behaviour.

State Policy Regimes and Associational Roles in Technology Development: A Tale of Two Metropolises

The lead trade associations of the bio-pharma and semiconductor industries have differed systematically in their roles in facilitating the development of innovation networks between Shanghai and Shenzhen, two prominent high-tech metropolises in China. Divergent associational roles stem from variations in the regional state policy regime that has exerted differential shaping influence on the structure of social cleavages and strength of reciprocity norms among member firms and on their willingness to actively and cooperatively engage in association-led networking activities. The bio-pharma and semiconductor associations whose network-building roles have been structured differently through varied state policy regimes have displayed dissimilar abilities to reduce network failures and promote the innovation competences of their member firms between the two metropolises. The empirical findings of the article carry important implications for understanding the causes and consequences of varied associational roles in the process of technology development in China, other emerging markets, and beyond.