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THE CLEAVAGE CONCEPT
The notion of cleavage is manifold. We are talking here exclusively about societal cleavages that form party systems. The concept was developed, as is well known, by Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan in the 1960s (republished 1990) in their 'Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments' (and anyone who has read Rokkan's publications on historical sociology will realize that the alphabet was cruel to him because he should have been the first author). It was immediately acknowledged by the scientific community as a most fertile theory to explain the historical development of most western and some central European party systems. The Lipset-Rokkan cleavage concept deals in the words of its authors with societal 'conflicts and their translation into party systems' (Lipset and Rokkan, 1990: 93).
But what are cleavages? Paraphrasing Almond and Powell (1978) we can define political cleavages as national, ethnic, linguistic, economical and religious divisions in a society that affect political allegiances and policies. These cleavages, according to Arthur Stinchcombe (1975: 574), can best be described as lines of tension separating the different coalitions between party elites in specific social groups. Lipset and Rokkan suggest that historically most West-European parties can trace their roots to four primary societal or historical cleavages (Table 1 (See PDF) ).
These are as follows:
Centre versus Periphery (dominant culture - subject culture)
Church versus State (power struggle over role of church)
Primary economy versus Secondary economy (agricultural-industrial cleavage)
Employers versus Workers (class cleavage)
In this lecture I will trace the electoral success of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (NSDAP) during the last years of the Weimar Republic in terms of the Lipset-Rokkan concept of cleavages. My main question is whether the surge of the NSDAP mainly took place within the boundaries of the given cleavage structure or if the NSDAP was primarily a cleavage-overarching movement. I will start with a brief look at the party system of the Hohenzollern Empire and its transition to the early Weimar Republic. Then I will look at the stability of cleavage-based voter coalitions before and after 1924. Following this I will analyse the voter movements within and between cleavage-defined political camps. And finally I will ask if the NSDAP was indeed a cleavage-transcending party in looking at...