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52 cLEAvAcE srRucruREs, pARTy sysrEMs, AND vorER ALIGNMENTS great deal of leeway for "post-democratic" party formations on the Protestant right. konically, it was the defeat of the National Socialist regime and the loss of the Protestad East which opened up an opportunity for some stabilization of thc German party system. With the establishment of the regionally divided CDU/CSU the Germans were for the first time able to approximate a broad conservative party of the British type. It was not able to establish as solid a membersbip organization but proved, at least until the debacle of 1966, nmadngly effective in aggregating interests across a wide range of strata and sectors of tbc federal commuuity. Two otber countries of the West have experienced spectacular changes in their party systems since the introduction of universal suffrage and deserve sone conment in this context-Italy and Spain. The Italian case comes close to the German: both weut through a peinfg[ process of belated unification; bottr were deeply divided within their privileged strata between "nationbuilders" (Prussians, Piedmontese) and Catholics; both had been slow to recognize the rights of the working-class organizations. The essential difference lay in the timing of the party developments. In the Reich a difterentiated party sEucture had been allowed to develop during the initial mobilization phase and had been given another fifteen years of functioning during the Weimar Republic. In Italy, by contrast, the State-Church split was so profound that a structurally responsive party system did not see the light before 1919-three years before the March on Rome. There had simply been no time for the "freezing" of any party system before the post-democratic revolutiou, and there was very little in the way of a traditional party system to fall back on after the defeat of the Fascist regime in 1944. True, the Socialists and the Popolari had had their brief spell of experience of electoral mobilization, and this certainly counted when the PCI and the DC established themselves in the wake of the war. But the other political forces had never been organized for concerted electoral politics and left a great deal of leeway for irregularities in the mobilization market. The Spanish case has a great deal iu common with ttre French: early unification but deep resentments against . central power in some of the provinces and early universalization of the suf- , frage but weak and divided party organizations. The Spanish system of sham parliamentarianism and caciquismo had not produced electoral mass parties of any importance by the time the double threat of secessionist mobilization and working-class militancy triggered off nationalist counterrevolutions, fust under Primo de Rivera in 1923, then with the Civil War in 1936. Ths entire history of Spanish electoral mass politics is contained in the five years of the Republic from 1931 to 1936; this is not much to go on and it is significant that a lucid and realistic analyst like Juan Linz does not base his projections about the possible structuring of a future Spanish party system on the experiences of those five years but on a projection from Italian voting alignments.o2 These four spectacular cases of disruptions in the development of national party systems do not in themselves invalidate our initial formulation. The most important of the party alternatives got set for each natioual citizenry Cleavage Structures, Party Systems' and Yoter Alignments threecasesof France,Germanv'TqJip^9:::::l:::TT"3"*".1tJ:3lt[? H':,":rffi',TJ?i!'oY-ifr il":i"",'i"t'ttrffi$::gfi:tr*3lj_q ;il-;; F e"nch case is ii manY waYs the ""i"0 "t internatty generated- disruption o f-ouJ pUut" wouldclearly not have occurrec 1940), but there rr*."ilJ"i"u r"*u"r "t nior"ot oscillations between plebis' citarian -d ,"pr"r""tuiiiJ'"t"J"rt of a"to"i""v and marked organizational frasmentation both ",.th; i"u"r or interest aiiicuiation and at ihe ievel of pur-ti"r. In spite of th;;]';;i;Pt;l* "o *urv't of French politics is 'i";;;h;dq"'*:*"";1,H.;I'"1*'i1*",X;;il:li'$::liil1i*'*::; H"-XXffi #tl"ll",h;;i;;d"*uuti,""ffi il,ui'-.ui"o'ica'vgiven lXiitJi;ril""iar"*'"pil"* for the system as a whole' This "histori"ity" oi;fi;*i;;;1"J;; crucial rpPort'ance not only in the study of dift"':;:'"" ";;"il;ltt6t oi'ou nations brit also within ",ations. The p^rty at"'"o"iiutt't;"O;;!8"" utta dominance not onlv from one overall sYstem to another but ft".T;; .e{ually. j;clf,t-io *ottt"i within the same poiity. to g"io JJuiftô o'f trt'" proc113;ôf mobiliza- "nl "oa"rttuoJi"8 tion and alignment #titt- *Il"tn-"^lu:t w! clearly'need information not iust about turnout ;; tl'" 'aiui'i'oo of uft"t-Uut a6out the timing of the iormation ol local ;;;'y";;;;;;;t"': This process of local entrenchment tan be pinpointed io'oiu"'ui ways: through Jte""i""tional records' through membership r"gist"'i, i"tot;utio'iabout ^t[ittt"'ga the lists oresented at local electionr. n"p#"ii.:,i""it%.Ai,ir.^*iilî.i*oti countriesôf the West oDeo up much more direct access to powei resoulces than repres'ntation at tfie national r"*r. irrii""Jon""toti"r* lna io tot", the bickbone of the '#ffi',ffi [:f T1ffff'};j:,eyff:f;"*l'T"3"ffi :Sg*:t'+Tlf,t [r;'Jt'T;*t**r"wi""ru"'*";:T:"H[T[ffi ;'i:fffi l: of their organizatioi'i;#;tk..-tit;t may have iurvived on their trade union strength, uoiffi aaaitionat ,_"rori.J" Jotentials inherent in local offrces have meant much more them trr*rc-tfi"-p"t i"t deriving their essential -to strenqth from the networks of economic po*Lt'-ttota"rs or froim the organizationsif *'itt"-t*ay the Church' sntrenchment is still in its inlancy in of these Processes tl t:^"^1.: mostcountri"s,andsiriouscomparativestudieshavesofarneverbeenattemDted.eE rnis is'iiJ;;;-t5;t t."oo* lo empirical sociology' _political Theie is an unfortunate asymrietry in our knowled'ge and olr efforts at sys- tematization: *" i;;; ;;il'il# o{ m-e ;;;;;d through which poliricar alternatives ,,, "'Lll i#J'"ffi; #"t1;;;lut a gr6at deal -*tityt of information about the circumst*""t i" *tti"f, bne alternative or the other in the access to data' It is gets chosen.Thtt:"tlil;ily'-fir*".qii;t"n""t a time-consur"-g'#'ilrii",ing 1oU to assemule data locality by locality on ,#î;,;ti;;,d";;P;;'uia'0""'l:t;'u'"5;i'li:"?'.*":t"i'frffi ,f: ilil4;;i,"tions' ri is vastlY. easier. arternativesonce!i;;:;9;iih:f::lFff :?*::":l'"1"t"*5':X[i*:"i during the phases of mobilization just before or just after the final extension of the suffrage and have remained roughly the same decades of sub- *f H*?i *ri itit: li;ti""; x**?:X#J',nH;T#:' # a',( in the structrual
jlsli,{aE1 ; q+ 'ri':4' j;T / I 'rii: AND VOTER ALIGNMENTS surveyo$. What is needed now are systematic efiorts to bring together information about the timing of local party entrenchments to pin down their consequences for voter alignments.o4 With the development of ecological data archiveseo in historical depth such analyses are bound to multiply. What is needed now is an international effort to maximize the coordination of such efforts. With the development of such archives the time dimension is bound to gain prominence in the comparative study of mass politics. The early school of French electoral geographers were deeply conscious of the importance of local entrenchments and their perpetuation through time. Statistical ecologists such as Tingsten were less concerned with diachronic stability than with rates of change, particularly through the mobiliZation of the latest entrants into the national electorates, the workers and the women. The introduction of the sample survey as a technique of data gathering and analysis shortened the time perspective and brought about a concentration on synchronic variations; the panel technique focused attention on short-term fluctuations, and even the questions about past voting and family political traditions did not help to make surveys an adequate tool of developmental research. The last few years have seen an important reversal in this trend. There is not only a marked increase in scholarly interest in historical time series data for elections and other mass dataeo but also a greater concentration of work on organizational developments and the freezing of political alternatives. These are essential prerequisites for the growth of a truly comparative sociology of Western mass politics. To understand the current alignments of voters in our difterent countries it is not enough to analyze the contemporary issues and the contemporary sociocultural structure; it is even more important to go back to the initial formation of party alternatives and to analyze the interaction between the historically established foci of identification and the subsequent changes in the structural conditions of choice. This joining of diachronic and synchronic analysis strategies is of particular importance for an understanding of the mass politics of the organizationally saturated "high mass consumption" societies of the sixties. Decades of structural change and economic growth have made the old, established alternatives increasingly irrelevant, but the high level of organizational mobilization of most sectors of the community has left very little leeway for a decisive breakthrough of new party alternatives. It is not an accident that situations of this type generate a great deal of frustration, alienation, and protestation within the organizationally least committed sections of the community, the young and, quite particularlj, lhe students. The "revolt of the young" has found many varieties of expression in the sixties: new types.of criminality and new styles of living but also new types of politics. The rejection of the old alternatives, of the politics of party representation, has perhaps found its most spectacular expression in the civil rights struggle and the student protest movement in the United States,e? but the disaffection of the young from the established parties, particularly the parties in power, is a widespread phenomenon even in Europe. The widespread disagreements with the national powersthat'bg oyer foreign and military policy constitute only one among several sdursdi ol sueh disillusionment; the distance between levels of aspiration and levels of achievement in the welfare state has clearly also been of importance. Clealage Structures, Party Systems' and Voler Alignntents rhe probability that. such resenlm::t:l*I- ::,1*:l$t?,,,T?;:T:3::r:J:X1 :#"H',""T;{ "iffI";;;^;rili.. i' o-n th: whole low, but the processes of G old ones wilr clearrv be affccted' ffiil##^;d^;;;;"'i;,il;ilil Much, of course, a.f"nJ. on local concentrations and the height of the thresholds ot ,"p."r"dil;;. i"'A; low-threshold Scandinavian system the wavesofdisaffectionhavealready.disruptedtheequilibriumoftheoldparties: there have been itpotlutt *itint"' movements'on the Socialist Left' and thesehavesapped,o*"ôfthestiategicstrengthoftheoldSocialDemocratic parties. This happen"J nttt it Def,mark: ?he split-up of the Communist iartv led to the devfi;;i ; a remarkably vigdrous^national-Titoist party PolJt"?"iril L"d-"fi;;sh; ;b;;l ;'i'"'."1or..' for the social Democrats, most spectacularly in the- autumn of 1966' Much the same sort of de- ;;fi;'h1, ,"t".^t'r;; Nor*"y since 1961. A splinter movement within the gou"*rog f;;; Futty *af"nlv broke througfi and gained two seats in 1961; for trt"lt'iiim" slnce the dar Labor wasblought into a mi- ;;tifi;r1i;;.-rhi;ffiil;;s;lil.s of a series of crises. By 1e6s the Left splinter had grown to o p.r."nl of tfre votes cast and the Labor Party was ;ifi,^";;t po*.r."i"i"niiesurts for-.sweden show similar developments there; the cp has ,*i;h;i; u-inution"l" line close to the Danish model and has gained ground. . / There is a crucral consideration in any comparative analysis of such ( changes in puiti"* h"J" b""nin Power' which ones have Par.tl -been in opposruon, "l""dj'Wltiih ;i';h" fiiti"r'*uny oUt"*"tt feaied the clevelopment of Deimanent malonry parties. It was argued that thc P:Ii:t-,I" government fiJ.iilil"-udu""i"gi. aud could -mobilize so many strategtc resources on their side that the -opposition might i"ti p"*.tiess foi;ver *di"' It is -be heartening to ,r. n#fiil;kiy thd. observers had to c\ang3 their minds' In the sixties tne mounin!-:;i"Joiuiiont oJ riling expectationi" cJearly tend to place governi"g p*il;?t disadvaitage: they have to take the re- "i.irityi"g iponsibility to, pr"Ji"u*ents-thdy Jan no.long;t t:1T:lijhey be'rme the tirgets of continuoui^.ri"r", a"ilands, grievaices, criticisms,- and no longer "t command ttre resources needed to meet iirem. The troubles of the governing Labor partie, in S"uJinuuia ana in Great Britain can be understood only in this lieh(. The welfare state, the spread of the "car and TV" culture' the lla.iillJfi&.ipi;'il-'-"1-ir'"* devJlopments have placed the soverning authorities undei incrlasing strains r"a vLry ainncult for.ihe old work- "i^d"lf t$.?,:;igiTf *{'""J*,**"tm"liff '"::'f#i.#1xF!}ii:+'i: Labor rulers i" d;P",;t"t n"uuy. to h"uu" reached the end of their era' Thev met the demands for an extension of the welfart-::1:lith innovative Jfii'tffi;c; *," J"""lop*ent of the supplementary pensions scheme after 1956, but tt"y ootft.t for#er. Their ieCent troubles center on "onfi'o#iiu" the "queuing society"'-,queues in front of the vocational schools and the universities, queues f& idusing, gue]res- for health services. swedish workers #i;+#ik*l'J";:;':."'*l'1"iil?i;lSiW-H#$f{;'41 ,,'see ottters g", uloit-î"*tio", bet6r housine' bettor services than they di" .,r, ;;d",il;iE""r"p rie;, of t.ujtt"tion and a[Enation' It is signi0cant thni i:1 all the tt ree scaniiiu"irn .oootries the social DemgFradc losses have beon
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