Cross-cutting cleavage explained

In social sciences, a cross-cutting cleavage exists when groups on one cleavage overlap among groups on another cleavage. "Cleavages" may include racial, political, and religious divisions in society. Formally, members of a group j on a given cleavage x belong to groups on a second cleavage y with members of other groups k, l, m, etc. from the first cleavage x. For example, if a society contained two ethnic groups that had equal proportions of rich and poor it would be cross-cutting. Robert A. Dahl built a theory of Pluralist democracy which is a direct descendant of Madison's cross-cutting cleavages.[1] Cross-cutting cleavages are contrasted with reinforcing cleavage (e.g. a situation where one ethnic group is all-rich and the other is all-poor). The term originates from Simmel (1908) in his work Soziologie.[2]

Definition

In social sciences, a cross-cutting cleavage exists when groups on one cleavage overlap among groups on another cleavage. "Cleavages" may include racial, political, religious divisions in society. Formally, members of a group j on a given cleavage x belong to groups on a second cleavage y with members of other groups k, l, m, etc. from the first cleavage x. For example, if a society contained two ethnic groups that had equal proportions of rich and poor it would be cross-cutting.

History

Political philosophy

Cross-cutting cleavages are perhaps most heavily referenced in political philosophy. James Madison's commentary on the concept in Federalist No. 10 contributed substantially to the development of the idea of cross-cutting cleavages.[3] [4] Madison argued the fractious nature of factions would be a mechanism for political stability and prevent a tyranny of the majority. Because no group can align all members along a single cleavage, they will instead be forced to build a broad base of support by seeking the approval of many different factions, preventing a simple "majority dictatorship" where one group making up a bare majority could (for example) expropriate all the property of another group.

An in-depth discussion of this process is given by Seymour Martin Lipset in his 1960 book Political Man.

Cross-cutting theory was applied to such topics as social order, political violence, voting behaviour, political organization and democratic stability, for example Truman's The Governmental Process, Dahl's A Preface to Democratic Theory, among others. Around the same time, several scholars (including Lipset himself) suggested ways to measure the concept, the best-known being Rae and Taylor's in their 1970 book The Analysis of Political Cleavages. Due to data limitations, these theories were generally left untested for a couple of decades.

Sociology

The term originates from Simmel (1908) in his work Soziologie.[5] Anthropologists used the term heavily in the first few decades of the 20th century, as they brought back descriptions of non-Western societies throughout Asia and Africa.[6] [7] [8] [9] Peter Blau's work further refined the idea.[10]

Stein Rokkan wrote a classic essay on cross-cutting cleavages in Norway.[11] [12]

Diana Mutz revived the concept in the early 2000s, looking at political participation and democratic theory using survey data in the US and other Western European democracies.[13] [14]

Several scholars have written on how cross-cutting cleavages relates to ethnic voting,[15] civil war,[16] and ethnic censuses.[17]

In 2011, Selway suggested a new measure relevant to economic growth for crosscutting cleavages and published a crossnational dataset on crosscutting cleavages among several dimensions (ethnicity, class, geography and religion).[18]

Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín and Wacziarg (2017), in the American Economic Review, derive and discuss several measures of cross-cuttingness and compute them using data on ethnic identity and cultural values.[19]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: The Federalist Papers - Democracy.
  2. Book: Simmel, Georg. Soziologie. 1908. Duncker & Humblot. Leipzig. Cleavage translates as "Spaltung" in German.
  3. Goodin, R. (1975). Cross-Cutting Cleavages and Social Conflict. British Journal of Political Science, 5(4), 516-519. doi:10.1017/S000712340000836X
  4. Gill, G. (2005). Paths to Democracy: Revolution and Totalitarianism. Perspectives on Politics, 3(3), 679-680. doi:10.1017/S1537592705800258
  5. Book: Simmel, Georg . Soziologie . Duncker & Humblot . 1908 . Leipzig . Cleavage translates as "Spaltung" in German.
  6. Beteille. A.. A Brief Note on the Role of Cross-Cutting Alliances in Segmentary Political Systems. Man. 1960. 60. 181–2. 10.2307/2797647. 2797647.
  7. Book: Evans-Pritchard, E.. M. Fortes . E. Evans-Pritchard . The Nuer of the Southern Sudan . African Political Systems . https://archive.org/stream/africanpolitical00fort#page/272/mode/2up . 1940 . London . Oxford University Press . 272–96.
  8. Book: Gluckman, Max. 'Political Institutions', in E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ed., The Institutions of Primitive Society. 1954. The Free Press. Glencoe, Ill.. 66–80.
  9. Book: Kroeber, A. L.. Zu˜ni Kin and Clan. 1917. The Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History. New York.
  10. Peter Michael Blau and Joseph E. Schwartz, Crosscutting Social Circles: Testing a Macrostructural Theory of Intergroup Relations (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984).
  11. Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments." In: Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, eds. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan. New York: The Free Presspp. 1–64.
  12. Stein Rokkan, "Geography, Religion and Social Class: Cross Cutting Cleavages in Norwegian Politics", in S. M. Lipset and S. Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York, 1967), 368-369
  13. Mutz . Diana C. . March 2002 . Cross-cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice . American Political Science Review . en . 96 . 1 . 111–126 . 10.1017/S0003055402004264 . 2531210 . 1537-5943.
  14. Mutz . Diana C. . 2002 . The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation . American Journal of Political Science . 46 . 4 . 838–855 . 10.2307/3088437. 3088437 . 12654372 .
  15. THAD DUNNING and LAUREN HARRISON Cross-cutting Cleavages and Ethnic Voting: An Experimental Study of Cousinage in Mali American Political Science Review, Vol. 104, No. 1, February 2010, doi:10.1017/S0003055409990311
  16. Joshua R. Gubler, Joel Sawat Selway. Horizontal Inequality, Crosscutting Cleavages, and Civil War. Journal of Conflict Resolution. Volume 56, issue 2, pages 206-232, April 29, 2012
  17. Lieberman . Evan S. . Singh . Prerna . 2012-09-01 . Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnic Politics: An Institutional Complement to Demographic, Behavioral, and Cognitive Approaches . Studies in Comparative International Development . en . 47 . 3 . 255–286 . 10.1007/s12116-012-9100-0 . 1936-6167.
  18. Selway . Joel Sawat . 2011 . The Measurement of Cross-cutting Cleavages and Other Multidimensional Cleavage Structures . Political Analysis . 19 . 1 . 48–65 . 1047-1987.
  19. Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín and Wacziarg. September 2017. Culture, Ethnicity and Diversity. American Economic Review. 107. 9. 2479–2513. 10.1257/aer.20150243. free. 10016/25258. free.