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Political parties - Social cleavages shaping party systems and party 'families

5 important questions on Political parties - Social cleavages shaping party systems and party 'families

What did Lipset and Rokkan find when searching for the similarities, differences and sources of the three major European parties?

They found common division lines, or social cleavages that resulted in the emergence of specific ideological party families

What are social cleavages?

Lines of division within society that are actual primary identities that are felt and experienced by members of society, of which groups opposed by the cleavage are aware and prepared to act and that become politically relevant through the creation of formal organizations that represent and defend the interests of the group

What are the three junctures that shaped party systems?

1) The Reformation and 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended religious wars and consolidated the territorial sovereignty
2) The National Revolution that resulted in a cleavage between the secular state and church
3) The Industrial Revolution that created the rural-urban cleavage and the employers-workers cleavage

What is Lipset and Rokkan's freeze hypothesis?

Major cleavages will persist since the political parties originating from them remain dominant in European party systems

What are the four responses to the freeze hypothesis?

Zero-cleavage thesis = traditional cleavages has lost meaning; politics has become unstructured
Cleavage-stability thesis = party systems are stable and traditional parties still dominate; the freeze hypothesis still stands
Cleavage-replacement thesis = divides society between people with materialist values and post-materialist values and parties adapt to that
Cleavage-reboot thesis = cleavages still dominate, but have changed since 1960 into globalization and immigration

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Comparative European Politics Distinctive Democracies, Common Challenges | 9780198811404 | Rory Costello

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