ABSTRACT

Party systems are built around the conflicts, or cleavages, that divide parties from each other. Political leaders and party organizers highlight values and divisions of opinion in order to define their following. In other words political entrepreneurs help define the profound disagreements, or cleavages in political opinion, which become the object of competition between political parties. Social divisions provide raw material that political entrepreneurs use to construct narratives of political conflict that work to their advantage. One way of organizing competition is for a political party to seek support from a well defined social group. The group might be defined by a shared cultural characteristic, such as religion or language, or a social marker like class. A political divide corresponding to a social divide is described by Allardt and Pesonen as a structural cleavage in contrast to non-structural cleavages built on differences in political opinion (1967: 326). Structural cleavages do not automatically shape a party system. Political entrepreneurs have to make a social divide politically relevant. Otherwise a social division may remain latent, felt, but not expressed politically. Political entrepreneurs have to persuade followers that a social or cultural distinction is of primary importance. A cleavage needs to be an organized expression of difference (Bartolini and Mair 1990: 216). This chapter shows the multiple ways in which political conflict has been expressed in the Tamil speaking areas of modern south India. Various political entrepreneurs have sought to define political conflict in their own terms. In many cases the potential for division has been realized with some impact briefly being felt on the party system. However, only in a very few cases have cleavages endured over a significant period of time. Those related to the centre-periphery divide have been most robust in the Tamil speaking areas of south India. Some cleavages, notably those relating to caste, went into decline after their initial emergence only to be revived later. Overall I argue that political entrepreneurs shape party systems by defining the terms of political conflict and forming cleavages that divide parties and voters.