ABSTRACT
In the classical nation-state, conflicts between social groups were obvious, but they were apportioned political voice and mitigated within the domestic institutional order. The conflicting interests of different economic, ethnic, and religious groups were contained and the possible consequences of social cleavage were limited: what Ferrera (2003) calls “bounded cleavage.” The state’s oversight of market exposure and collective financial risk, of organized labor and collective bargaining, and its social security systems, were all crucial to that containment. Nation-states constructed buffers against the volatility of the world market and insured that the society at large benefited from increased wealth and well-being, transforming class conflict into class compromise (Kaelble 2004).
