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Cleavage Structure, Interest Groups, and Interest Intermediation

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Cleavage Structure, Interest Groups, and Interest Intermediation

striving to maintain local

powers & privileges (periphery)

b. The struggle can end in:

(1) secession (Ireland from UK),

(2) absorption of periphery & its gradual fading as distinct

(Bretton or Occitan in France),

(3) local autonomy (some Spanish & Italian regions),

(4) or retention of diffuse, persistent tension (e.g., Germany,

except Bavaria which is more 3)

c. Only last two likely to result in this cleavage being reflected

in party system

2. Nation-Building II: Church v. State

a. Conflict b/w (Catholic) Church's claim of rights &

privileges, esp. its supremacy in certain moral areas, vs.

state consolidators; central issue often education

b. Resolution depends centrally on nation's history & role in

Protestant Ref. & later secularist movements:

(1) Where Protestant movements allied with state & won, party

system does not usually reflect Church-State cleavage (e.g.,

UK, Scandinavia)

(2) Where Catholicism continued to dominate, Church-State

cleavage tended to persist (e.g., Latin Europe)

(3) Where secularists most momentum (e.g., France), party

system often evolved anti-clerical elements

3. Industrial Revolution I: Urban v. Rural

a. Conflict b/w traditionally dominant rural interests & new

commercial & industrial classes

b. These have almost universally faded (basically because

urban interests won), but...

(1) ...in some places agrarian parties emerged, & these often

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persisted if leading strategists allowed party flexibility from

its early aims & purposes, (e.g., Sweden, Finland)

(2) ...split has seen rebirth in reverse as urban decline began,

(e.g., US, UK)

(3) ...some rebirth also in conflicts over agricultural

protectionism (e.g., esp. Europe & Japan)

4. Industrial Revolution II: Labor v. Employers

a. Increased concentration of production, & the accompanying

increased organization of labor & employers as a group, led

to almost-inherently-organized conflict

b. Resolution occurred by two patterns:

(1) Where workers rose & the bourgeoisie adopted an

accommodative strategy, Socialist parties arose as the

representatives of labor (e.g., UK, Sweden)

(2) Where workers rose & the bourgeoisie adopted a stonewalling

and/or repressive strategy, Communist parties arose as the

representatives of labor (e.g., France, Italy, Germany, Spain)

B. Argument: The pattern of how these conflicts arose in

each country & how they had been or were being resolved

at time mass democracy arrived was frozen. I.e., cleavage

structure is frozen in party system by mid-20th Century

because:

1. Underlying conflicts persist & groups involved have

developed collective identities

2. Major new political entities typically can arise only w/

large increases in suffrage & universal suffrage was mostly

completed by then.

3.

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