National Cleavage Structures

In this chapter we will analyze the way that traditional political cleavage structures facilitate or constrain the action space of new social movements. As already suggested in the Introduction, the new social movements tend to articulate a political conflict that is based on a new cultural and social cleavage in society. Not only in this case, but quite generally, political conflicts are ultimately rooted in structural and cultural cleavages. In other words, they have their origin in broad societal transformations that oppose social groups for structural and cultural reasons. However, “structure” and “culture” do not impinge directly on politics. Social and cultural dividing lines—societal cleavages—only result in political cleavages if they are politicized. As Bartolini and Mair (1990: 216) observe, political cleavages cannot be reduced simply to the outgrowths of social stratification; rather, social distinctions become political cleavages when they are organized as such. ¹ If the social-structural basis of a political conflict emerges from social change, the conflict itself results from the coupling of these processes of social change with those of democratization, politicization, and mobilization. Thus, Bartolini and Mair continue, it is only through the historical processes of mobilization, politicization, and democratization that any specific political cleavage acquires its distinctive normative profile and organizational network (ibid.: 217). In short, political cleavages develop initially on the basis of a social stratification that sets the structural conditions for group identity, and only later do they become fully political, particularly with the development of mass democracies. Or, in other words, social change determines structural and cultural potentials for political mobilization that remain latent as long as they are not politicized. In order for such potentials to become politicized, they have to develop, on the one hand, a collective identity, a sense of solidarity, and political consciousness, ² and, on the other hand, an organizational infrastructure (Kriesi 1985: 30ff.; Klandermans 1988). The organizational infrastructure includes not only formal organizations, but also informal personal networks that allow for the micromobilization processes to take place that have been found to be so important in the mobilization for collective action.