Journal ArticleDOI
Political Cleavage: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis
TLDR
In this view, concepts are neither right nor wrong but are more or less useful; their utility is determined by the twin and mutually dependent requirements of empirical precision and theoretical importance as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
Abraham Kaplan in his ‘paradox of conceptualization’ draws attention to the fundamental problem of concept-formation: ‘The proper concepts are needed to formulate good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts’. On this view, concepts are neither right nor wrong but are more or less useful; their utility is determined by the twin and mutually dependent requirements of empirical precision and theoretical importance. ‘Empirical precision’ has to do with a concept's ability to ‘carve up’ the world of phenomena without unnecessary ambiguities; ‘theoretical importance’ has to do with the utility of a concept in the development of statements of wide explanatory and predictive power.read more
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Politics and Society Political Diversity and Uniformity in Households as a Theoretical Puzzle
TL;DR: In this article, the authors resolve a theoretical puzzle that characterizes the political preferences of members of social groups by demonstrating that political homogeneity is a variable to be explained, and that political preference is not a fixed variable.
Book
The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative and long-term in-depth analysis of the macro-historical process of the nationalization of politics is presented, using a large wealth of newly collected and unexplored data on single constituency in 17 West European countries, as well as their evolution since the mid-nineteenth century from highly territorialised politics of early competitive elections toward nationwide alignments.
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Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era
TL;DR: In the context of Latin American countries, this article found that strong labor movements and labor-backed parties were associated with superior economic performance during periods of economic adjustment, and that these nations typically experienced more severe economic crises during the transition from import-substitution industrialization to neoliberalism than nations that retained elitist party systems with "segmented, cross-class cleavage structures.
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The role of agency in cleavage formation
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of agency in cleavage formation is addressed, with a special emphasis on the mechanism through which political parties structure their environments, and it is shown that parties are potentially able to cross cleavage lines, re-structure relations within the party system and create new associations between party preferences, socio-structural categories and attitudes.
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Party systems and cleavage structures revisited : a sociological explanation of party system institutionalization in East Central Europe
TL;DR: Since Lipset and Rokkan (1967) published their seminal work on the importance of social cleavages for the freezing of party systems more than forty years ago, much has been written on the field of political analysis as mentioned in this paper.
References
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Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society
TL;DR: In this paper, the main questions which the present investigation is supposed to answer are: Do classes and class conflicts belong to that group of phenomena by which only the capitalist type of industrial society is characterized, or is their existence a consequence of industrial production itself, and are they therefore a lasting feature of industrial societies?
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Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society.
Renate Mayntz,Ralf Dahrendorf +1 more
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Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors elaborate the patron-client model of association, developed largely by anthropologists, and demonstrate its applicability to political action in Southeast Asia, and examine both the survival and transformations in patron-clients links and the impact of major social changes such as the growth of markets, the expanded role of the state, and the creation of local regimes.