POLITICAL CLEAVAGES

Political Cleavages

Political Cleavages

Introduction

The study will examine political cleavages in Western Europe in a comparative context. We will begin with a broad discussion of political parties. The difference in number, type, and ideology of political parties across different party systems has much to do with the political development of a polity. Though there may be similarities in the ideologies of political parties in different systems, the parties may behave differently because of the dynamics within their own systems. Political parties that would never work together in one system because of ideological differences may be coalition partners in another system. This may have to do with the electoral rules of a system and the prospects for formation of a coalition government, or it may have to do with attitudes toward the political system in general. We will see that ideological considerations often have less to do in explaining the behavior of a political party compared with the potential for policy outputs.

Discussion

Political parties and cleavages are of interest to the scholar of comparative politics because they are constantly in flux. A common understanding of the political party, according to Leon D. Epstein (1967), is of a group that seeks to elect governmental officeholders under a given label. Political cleavages are described by the number of parties within a given country during a given time, along with their “internal structures, their ideologies, their respective sizes, alliances, and types of opposition”. Party systems can have as few as one major political party, or may have many political parties. Elections are the venue in which competition for government office takes place. Elections bring changes in the policies advocated by parties, the seats held by political parties, and of course the composition of government. It is important to note that political parties do not make changes in a vacuum; change often comes in anticipation of, or in reaction to, changes that other political parties in the system make. This makes the party system a system of interaction between political parties and cleavages. (Allum, 1995)

Political Cleavages

Political cleavages as organizations that regular1y compete for public office in that they put forth candidates for election. The formation of political parties is generally associated with the extension of suffrage and the development of representative government. The political parties are endemic to modern and modernizing political systems, a political party will emerge once a political system reaches a certain degree ...