Diversifying the subject of cleavage theory: from the institutionalization of party systems to rivalry within the framework of the current agenda

This article traces the evolution of cleavage theory over the past decades. It is noted that its original, institutional version was closely linked to the hypothesis of the “freezing” of party systems as a result of the influence of social conflicts of past eras on the balance of political forces. As the “freezing” thesis has increasingly come under criticism from proponents of the dealignement and realignement concepts since the 1990s, the attention of researchers has gradually shifted from the social basis of cleavages to their political content. Within the framework of the new approach, it was no longer a question of sociological cleavages proponed by Lipset and Rokkan, but of divisions, divides, dimensions, etc. The need to highlight them was due to the awareness that social and political confrontations lie in different planes and even different time layers: the former occur relatively slowly and are mainly cumulative in nature, while the latter are less stable and are easily subject to external influences. It is noted that the growing interest in the political side of cleavages has given rise to increasing attention to the formation of the agenda as a space for the existence of political divides, within which the latter encounter conflicts of social interests. It is suggested that in the current agenda, it is more promising to study not what unites the participants in the political struggle, but what divides them, polarizing the political space. This approach aims to identify in the latter the maximum number of confrontations that, based on the results of a factor analysis of territorial differences in party voting, can be correlated with indicators of social differentiation.

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