Cleavage (politics)

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Cleavage in political science is a concept used in voting analysis and is the division of voters into voting blocs. The preliminary assumption is that voters don’t come in predefined groups of pros and cons for or against a certain subject. Ballot analysis assumes that voters opt for a certain party, or decide for the solution or option that comes closest to their own position. Cleavage separates the voters into advocates and adversaries on a certain issue, or voting for a certain party. If you imagine parties on a horizontal line for a certain issue, cleavage is the vertical line that divides the parties into supporters and opponents of the issue. There are probably as many cleavages in society as diverse members, but Lipset and Rokkan (1967) defined four basic cleavages for western civilization after the Industrial Revolution.

Centre – Periphery - The division between elites in the urban areas, and those in more outlying areas. This usually expresses itself in terms of regional nationalism for example in Spain, where many regions have regionalist or separatist parties. This division is, according to Lipset and Rokkan, caused by the creation of modern nation-states, where some states were better than others at assimilating other cultures into the majority nation.
State – Church - A division between religious and secular voters for example in the Netherlands until the 1970s there were five major parties. The Catholic KVP, the Protestant ARP and CHU, the Social Democratic PvdA, and the liberal VVD, the last two being secular.
Owner – Worker - A class cleavage, between the rich and poor, causing the formation of parties of the left and parties of the right.
Urban – Rural - Primarily notable in Scandinavia. In Scandinavia when the nation-state was formed the people in the countryside were unusually educated and politically aware compared to other European countries, and formed agrarian parties. Today these still exist, often under the name Centre Party.

According to Lipset and Rokkan, these cleavages determined the emergence and the content of all European Parties.

Contemporary ballot analysis speaks of the emergence of new cleavages. The traditional opposition between Owner and Worker (Capital and Work) is being differentiated further among those who have work/ are employable and those who are not. Further, sex becomes another cleavage, especially in regard to getting and maintaining a paid labour position.