Download VI. Cross-Cutting v. Coinciding Cleavages

Societal Cleavages
 I. Socioeconomic Status (SES)
 II. Region
 III. Ethnicity
 IV. Religion
 V. Ideology
 VI. Cross-Cutting v. Coinciding Cleavages
 VII. Gender
NOTE: In exploring societal cleavages here, we are looking for politically relevant distinctions
& experiences associated with different interests, values, &/or policy concerns
I. Socioeconomic Status (SES)
 SES can unite some & divide others
 economic resources influence individual political wants (and one’s ability to pursue
them)
 economic class can provide a dividing line regarding thoughts about use of public
authority in labor v. management disputes (and public policy more generally)
 shared social position can motivate people to organize politically to retain (or to
attack) any associated privileges
II. Region
 A common subnational region can unite residents to mobilize
 to protect regional traditions
 to extract additional financial resources from the national government
 to gain greater political autonomy from the central government
 EXAMPLES?
III. Ethnicity
 A. Members of ethnic groups can develop a shared identity based on:
 common (presumed) racial ancestry
 common place of residence
 common language
 common customs & practices
 B. As we will discuss shortly, ethnicity becomes more powerful when members of
certain ethnic groups are additionally united by a common position on other
cleavages:
 socioeconomic status, region, religion, ideology, etc.
IV. Religion
 A. Religion as a potentially all-encompassing belief system
 divine authority superior to all others in all realms
 by extension, deviation from those norms is heretical:
 should not be tolerated  violates moral code
 cannot be tolerated  toleration implies heresy


B. Religious Political Parties & Movements
 Religiously-inspired (inclusive):
 no firm mission to convert
 [e.g. Christian Democrats in Germany & Italy]
 Religiously-inspired (intrusive):
 attempts to gain political power to rewrite some/many laws around religious
tenets
 [e.g. the Bharatiya Janata Party in India]
 Religious separatist/autonomist (exclusive):

purify by gaining a sovereign realm
 [e.g. the Islamic Republican Movement in Iran]
 Religious revolutionary (exclusive):
 purify by expanding scope of authority to convert others
 [e.g. the Taliban’s jihad within Afghanistan]
C. Models of Church-State Relations
 Separation of Church & State
 formal policies that aim at no entrenchment of religion
 e.g. U.S. (amid underlying Judeo-Christian tradition)
 Mixed Signals model
 freedom of religion combined with some/many policies that entrench &/or favor
particular religions
 most countries in the world fit this profile
 Theocracy
 leaders of organized religion have an institutionalized (& crucial) role in
government
 e.g. the Islamic Republic of Iran established in 1979
V. Ideology
 A. Classical Liberalism
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
 people are rational & have free will
 people are naturally self-interest
 BASIC TENETS
 political freedom  expansion of political participation
 economic freedom  expansion of market’s role
 emphasis on equality of opportunity rather than of outcomes
 B. Classical Marxism


PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
 people are rational
 people’s self-interest is situational:
 class relations define people’s true interests
BASIC TENETS
 political & economic equality are the source of true freedom
 emphasis on equality of outcome as basis of equality of opportunity
Gender
 Did you notice that gender was not in Wilson’s list of societal cleavages w/
particular relevance for politics?
 Why do you think it was omitted?
 In what situations can or should gender be a politically relevant force?
VI. Cross-Cutting v. Coinciding Cleavages
 cross-cutting cleavages
 cleavages often do not travel together
 coinciding (reinforcing) cleavages
 several/many cleavages travel together:
 people from a certain region or ethnic group share similar SES, language,
religion, and/or ideology
 When several cleavages coincide, sociopolitical tension and conflict tend to be greater
than when cleavages tend to be cross-cutting…
hypothetical examples of cleavage patterns
Largely cross-cutting
NORTH
south
URBAN
rural
PROTESTANT
Catholic
AFFLUENT
poor
Ethnic A
30%
70%
75%
25%
40%
60%
60%
40%
Ethnic B
70%
30%
65%
35%
50%
50%
45%
55%
Fully coinciding
Ethnic A
100%
0%
100%
0%
100%
0%
100%
0%
Ethnic B
0%
100%
0%
100%
0%
100%
0%
100%