Abstract
In their seminal article on the development of the party cleavages in western democracies, Lipset and Rokkan (1967a) were impressively detailed about the development of the religious cleavage. The religious cleavage was first shaped by the Protestant Reformation, which created divisions between Catholics and Protestants. These divisions had political consequences because the control of the nation-building process often became intermixed with the religious cleavage. Protestants frequently found themselves allied with nationalist forces in the struggle for national autonomy. In Anglican England and the Calvinist Netherlands, the Protestant church supported national independence and became a central element of the emerging national political identity. In other nations, religious conflicts also ran deep, but these differences side-tracked the nation-building process (Dalton 1990: 66; Martin 1993: 100–8).
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© 2004 Oddbjørn Knutsen
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Knutsen, O. (2004). Religious Denomination. In: Social Structure and Party Choice in Western Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503649_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503649_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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