Cleavage lines in global politics
Left and right, East and West, earth and heaven
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6293249 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roberto Farneti (0000-0002-6511-8144, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 127-145 |
| Publication date | 2012-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Political Ideologies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1356-9317 • E-ISSN: 1469-9613 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13569317.2012.676850 |
| OpenAlex | W1968788575 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 3 |
This article revisits the ‘heuristic value of the left–right dichotomy’ for understanding global politics. For a little less than two centuries, the main left–right cleavage centred on class issues. Class remained the spur of political mobilization until the late 1970s, when a mechanism of polarization focused more on identity issues emerged. In international politics, talk of identity becomes especially heated in the discourse that opposes East to West. A number of international issues in which the East–West divide has become a reference and a blueprint (e.g. the Israeli–Palestinian conflict) are able to mobilize opinions along the left–right continuum. This paper contends that a third cleavage—between earth and heaven—is also playing a role in mobilizing opinions along the left–right spectrum. As left and right ‘reach out’ from local to global politics and become tied up with questions of identity, some international issues appear to act as catalysts to ideological polarization, especially when the language used to address them pivots on the East–West axis. The risk lies in the formation of a ‘cumulative cleavage’, a compound of the three cleavage lines detailed in this paper
Cleavage (geology · Heaven · Ideology · Left and right · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · European Union Policy and Governance · Gender Studies · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,55 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2025 (11) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |