Democracy, economic development, and party choice: Political cleavages in comparative perspective.

Abstract

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of political cleavages in established and new democracies in the 1990s. The research is based on survey data from 32 societies that are part of the 1990-1993 World Values Survey. The research utilizes statistical techniques, including factor analysis, linear regression, and discriminant analysis of party preferences. In the established democracies, democracy itself is taken for granted and party competition centers on dimensions of conflict that emphasize left-right materialist orientations and postmodern versus fundamentalist views about politics and society. In the new democracies, the democratization process has been polarized between pressures for democratic consolidation and efforts to return to the authoritarian order. This polarization is well relocated among mass publics and elections typically reflect the confrontation between the preference for and the resistance to democratic change. In many new democracies, the democratic-authoritarian cleavage shapes party competition more strongly than the conventional left-right divide on economic issues. This research also confirms that ideological orientations are the main source of cleavage in the more developed societies, while structural characteristics of society are the main sources of cleavage in less developed societies. The number of years a society has been democratic is an intervening variable in this relationship.