Conclusion: the Decline, Convergence and Transformation of Cleavage Politics

Abstract

The focus in the various chapters so far has been on the comparative impact of the various social cleavages over time. In this chapter the focus will change in two ways. First, the focus will change from analysing the impact of the various cleavages in a comparative setting to examining trends in the relative impact of various cleavages within the various countries over time. This analysis will continue the bivariate approach which we have used so far. Secondly, I will go on with multivariate analyses to analyse the impact of various cleavage types and the total impact of the social cleavages over time and in a comparative setting. My focus is on the impact of the religious and the class cleavages in a broad sense through an examination of the combined impact of religious denomination and church religiosity, and education and social class, respectively. The two first cleavages reflect the two faces of the overall religious cleavage as discussed in Chapter 2 and, although we emphasised that education — according to the new version of how this variable influences party choice — might reflect other aspects than social status, I consider it basically as a hierarchical variable in the same category as social class.