Social Cleavage and Party Choice

Carmen Nechita

The direct correlation between party choice and social position is

a well know and documented fact. Left parties are the choice of the
working class, while the middle class tends to vote with the right
oriented parties. Also religiosity plays an important role in the party
choice, countries with a high level of religious belief tending to be ruled
bu Christian Democratic or Conservative parties.
The structure of the party systems in the Western World can be
explained by The Social Cleavage Model, a theory that was introduced
by Seymor Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan in 1967. The model stands
as an analytic groundwork to deconstruct the voter alignment and to
understand the way the political parties are build.
The Social Cleavage Model more information
The Social Cleavage Model or the Lipset-Rokkan model, identifies
not only the social cleavages, but the moment they appeared and
emerged in the Western Europe.
It is shown that the most relevant social cleavages (in the
Western Europe) are results of clashes between the center and the
periphery, the state and the church (in the quest for secularization),
rural and urban, and capital and labor.
But this is only one dimension from the three that create this model.
The other two are focused on the the conditions for the development
of a stable system of cleavage and opposition in the national sphere.
The third dimension is about the individual behavior (the decision
to vote) within the political structure.
According to the Lipset and Rokkan analyze, even if a social
conflict does exist, the voters will not necessarily catalyze themselves
around it and will not identify with it. A bigger determinant for
mobilization around a specific party can be determined, though not
necessarily direct by the social cleavage, the strategies of the political
class proving to be a stronger source that leads to mobilization of the
masses. In this strategy, the conductors are usually cultural, social and
more important, economical. They can either support or inhibit the
mobilization efforts.
This model does not give a straightforward connection between
social cleavage and party formation for being causes in the

mobilization of the individuals to vote, but more about how the

behavior is influenced.
The model is constructed around the the social structure, the
interest to vote, the voter alignment and the party. This model is used
to empirical analyze the way the political systems are created and how
they evolve, influenced by social cleavages and/or the socio structural
condition.
In order for a party system to form around an already existing
cleavage, it is necessary for the political elite to assume the societal
conflicts and include them in their discourse. This leads to political
identities, alignments and affiliations within the individuals and
towards the party.
The goal of the model is not to identify the social cleavage, but
first to emphasize the historical extend and meanwhile, it shows how
treating these conflicts reflects on the political party systems.
Other approaches are used to analyze the voting behavior.
Campbel identified in 1960 the Party identification model and. After
that, Key in 1966 and Fiorina in 1981, emphasized the strength of the
rational choice model.
The party identification model
According to the advocates of the party identification model,
candidates, issues and the relationship between parties and the social
group, are the three components that influence the voting decision.
The party identification model is created as a result from family
interaction and the social group influence. Therefore this model states
that the individual, due to the factors that influence him, are
transforming not only the voting decision, but also the perception of
the candidates. When individuals identify themselves with certain
candidates or social problems, they also have convinced expectations
from the parties to solve the existing problems that they are
experiencing.
But some parties keep their supporters despite poor
performance, and this can not be explained through the rational choice
model. This is one of the critiques of the model, that the supporters
perceptions are influenced by attitudes like party identification, and it
doesn't take in the account how the decision and affiliation is created.
On the other side, the benefit of this model is that it can explain
the behavior for voters with no or weak party identification. This type
of voters is preponderant in East and South Europe, and due to this
model it can be explained how certain individuals vote despite their
party identification, how they choose the candidates and how they
choose the issues to be concerned about.

The rational choice model

The rational choice theory is used in different spheres in
sociology, to explain behavior. The main concept is that individuals,
before taking an action, they calculate the possible outcome, and act
in order to get the result with the higher utility. Their main purpose is
to always have highly valued outcomes. Actions are actually
mechanism to obtain specific results.
According to the rational choice model in analyzing voting
behavior, individuals make decisions concerning party identification
resorting to rational calculation, not considering any effective
connections. The voters analyzes the past, taking into consideration
the history of the governments performance. The rational choice model
implies that the identification of the voter to a certain party is
determined through rational calculation of the costs and benefits of the
decision, not like the party identification model, where the decision is
made through an effective process.
Still, the Lipset Rokkan model is considered to be the core of
other model, making it the best tool used for analyzing the voter
behavior in Europe, eve if the electorate manifest an increased
dealignment.
Where the rational choice model explains the reason some
citizens change their voting behavior, the party identification is
analyzing why some citizens do not change their behavior despite poor
results of the party in charge. On the other hand, the social cleavage
model explains how parts of society identifies itself with one party or
another, over the period of election, most of the time, not taking into
the account the governmentss performance.
How social position does influence the Party choice?
The starting point is constructed around the hypothesis that
accordinngly to the changes in the last decades the structure of the
peoples voting behavior is less influenced by social cleavages and
social structures. One of the examples is the division between social
classes and religious group, which lost its strenght due to
modernization, tradition loosing its influence on the voting behavior. As
a consequence, it is expected an increase in the number of political
independents, and short term factors having a bigger influence on the
voters. (Lachat)
The social cleavage functions as an organism that is most likely
to be influenced by structural dealigment and behavioral dealingment.
The strength of it is influenced by two distinct movements. One of
them is when opposed social groups across an assumed cleavage,

changes its voting decision, the other is when the size of these groups
suffers massive changes. These proesses can either weaken, or
strengthen the significance of a cleavage.
The classic cleavage, the class cleavage is when the working
class clashes with the middle class. The opposition leads to a decrease
in the homogeneity in the electoral choices, and that weakness the
voting process. Flanagan calls this a social realignment.
The second process that affects the social cleavage happens
when the groups of voters increase or decrease their size, and it called
structural dealignment (Lachat). For example, if we found a decrease
of workers in the electorate, the opposition between the working and
the midlle class, loses some of its importance, proportionate with the
changes occurred in the numbers of the class representatives.
The structural dealingment and the behavior dealingment may
either increase or decrease the power of the traditional cleavage, and
this is the basic of the dealignment hypothesis (Lachat).
Measuring the cleavage strength
The most used measure for the relationship between social
position and party choice, is the Alford index. This index takes the
proportion the working class that votes for the left parties and
subtracts the proportion of the middle class that is voting for left.
(Oskarson).
Though not so used anymore, the Alford index still is a measure
in longitudinal analyses of the dealignment hypothesis (Dalton)
The Alford index was first created to measure the strength f the
class cleavage, but it can be used for many more types of cleavages.
For example, in the religious voting, Alford index can be used
measuring the support for religious parties among people with a high
rate of church attendance on one side, and non-believer voters on the
other.
The main critique of the Alford index is that in can only be used
when we have a dichotomous opposition of social classes and political
parties, that reflect the classic interpretation of cleavages.
Evans (2000) talks about another minus of this index in his The
end of class politics? Class voting in comparative contexts
article, showing that this index is affected by structural and behavioral
dealignment (decrease or the increase in the relation between class
and the voting behavior and decrease or increase in the number of the
social classes representatives).
The Alford index is a absolute measure. Its focus is the
divergence in the voting pattern of different social groups. A relative
measure is proposed by Evans, and the procedure implies to divide the
odds that working class supports a socialist party by the comparable

odds of the middle class. The relative measures, such as this, are
constructed on the odd ratios of voting probabilities.
The strong point of the relative measures over the Alford index is
that when the level of a support for a specific party is changed, but the
share of the vote also changes in the same amount, we find no
changes with the Alford index. Using a relative measure, we will find
differences. In the same way, we can have an absolute difference in
the share for the specific party between two social groups that vary,
but the relative difference between them suffers no changes.
Another used index for measuring the strength of cleavages is
the kappa index. It was first present in 1999 by Hout, Manza and
Brooks. First created to analyze the class cleavages, it has been used
successfully afterwords to analyze other cleavages as well, and it is
appreciated for its flexibility because it can be used with numbers of
parties and social groups, and also it is easy to compare them among
elections and party systems. (Lachan).
Hout, Manza and Brooks define the index as the standard
deviation of class differences in vote choice in a given election.
This index helps to calculate the strength of a cleavage and also
the effects of them.
Lachan proposed a new index for measuring the evolution of the
strength of a cleavage when is affected by behavioral changes or
structural changes. The lambda index is more flexible than the
kappa index and it can be used on absolute differences between
social groups, as well as on the relative differences.
The Lamda index make it possible for the analysts to calculate
the impact of the behavioral dealingment, net of structural changes
different. The size of the social group can be kept as constant over
time to the effects of the behavioral component of the dealignment
process (Lachan)
What we have to keep in mind is that all of the methods used for
measuring the strength of a cleave are simple estimates, and their
exact values it can not be calculated without error.

Case study: Canada and Great Britain, a comparison approach

for social cleavages in voting patterns
The case presented below is has been documented by Robert
Andersen and Anthony Heath and published in September 2000. The
premise for the study is that voters are rational actors and then is uses

the sociological approach in order to prove that the peoples attitudes

are influenced by the social groups they belong to.
The premise that was tested in a comparison research, was that
it is expected for voters to reflect the groups opinion in the matter of
voting behavior. For example, when individuals belong to groups that
are highly represented in the political system, they will be inclined to
vote for the referred to party. But if there are not parties that represent
the individuals group, he then has to find a party that represents at
least one of their identities that are reflected in the group he belongs
to. But this will not represent a completely satisfying choice for the
individual.
For these cases, one approach of analyses is the party
identification model. Choosing a party, even if not for all the good
reasons, can lead in time to identification with that party, and even
more, this identification can be transmitted to the next generation.
One of the proposed examples is the conflict between religious
identity and the social class identity. Based on a hypothesis that there
is a political party that serves the interests of the working class, and in
the same time it has a secular approach, and in the same time it is the
only party that represents the working class, and the only one that is
secular. Chances are that highly religious working people will not vote
with the defined party, and in the same time, middle and upper class
representative with no religious beliefs might vote left, respectively
with this party.
The idea is that it is expected a voting behavior deviation when
the group is represented by a party that also represents an opposed
identity.
The hypotheses of the study
The Andersen and Heath study is centered around the influence
of age, race, religiosity and social class. Its core is based on four
empirically proved assumption:
1.
The cohort with an age over 65 years old, is more likely to vote
for the right wing parties.
2.
The racial minorities are more likely to vote with the left wing
parties.
3.
The individuals with a high rate of church attendance is more
likely to vote with the right wing parties.
4.
Working class is more inclined to vote with the left wing parties.
Data used for the study
The study presented here was collected from the Canadian
Election Study 1997 (CES), the American Election Study 1996 (ANES),

the British Election Study (BES) 1997 and the Welsh Assembly Election
Study 1999 (WAES).
The data from the Canadian Election Study contains almost 4000
respondents, over 18 years old. The respondents were interviews
during the 36 days election campaigns and, re-interviews after the
election.
For the British Election Study, 3600 people were interviewed in
their home, and the same interview was conducted for a sample size of
686 of the Welsh Assembly Election Study.
The American Election Study consists of 1714 respondents
interviewed before the Presidential election. Out of them, 1534
respondets were interviews the second time, after the election.
Results
The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis, and that being
the old cohort (over 65) being more inclined to vote with the right wing
than the people from the age cohort below 30 years old. These results
were confirmed in all regions.
The other tested hypothesis was about how race influences the
voting behavior. In the US the race was described as white, blacks and
Hispanics, while in the other regions the race was divided in white and
nonwhite. The study showed a strong relationship between race and
the voting behavior. In the USA, it was proved that black people show a
greater support to the democratic party, this also having to do with the
fact that the left party are more concerned with the black people
issues, than do the republicans.
The study also showed that religiosity is correlated directly with
the authoritarian attitudes, but not always influencing the voting
decision, overall. But, it does indeed influence the voting behavior in
the US. The reasons the authors found for this is that the Republican
party is more connected to the religion that the right oriented parties
in Britain or Canada.
The study also analyzed the relationship between social class
and party orientation. The assumption that unskilled workers are more
left oriented was tested and proved to be right in Britain, but in Canada
and USA the social class had a lower influence on the voting behavior.
Conclusion
I have chosen this study about the voting patterns because it
does not treat attitudes as a predictor of vote, but constructs
separately modes the attitudes and the voting behavior. Most of the
studies are dont analyze the attitudes as voting predictors, but
consider only one social group, without analyzing the effects of the
others.

According to the results, the study shows that countries should

be treated as heterogeneous areas, because differences do exist even
in what can be considered similar regions.
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