Introduction:

Social cleavage is concept used in voting analysis and explains how and why voters divide into
voting blocs. Social cleavage makes of voters advocates and adversaries on certain issues.

In order to explain social cleavage, it is important, firstly, to determine the concept of

preferences. Preferences represent “societal inputs into the political process”.1 So, the different
preferences of voters trigger creation of the different political parties which compete over the
voters divided by issues of religion, nationality, territory or other cleavages.

Preferences determine wether the religion is main cleavage or it is the nationality, ot something
else. If voters stay firmly on their preferences, without chances to change it, the social cleavage
deepens. In order to explain voters behavior and party system, first we have to deeply explain
social cleavages, how did they emerge, and what types of social cleavages exsist.

The leading names of social structural theories of voting have always tried to explain relation
between voting and social division. The first comparative analisys to provide a theory linking
electoral behavour and type of party system to social structure was Party System and Voter
Alignments. Cross-National Perspectives, Lipset and Rokhan’s framework. The analysis of this
two theorists is ” based on the premise that the party arrays and voting patterns that could be
identified in post-war Europe, could be found in the nation-state building and the
democratization process which placed different social groups in opposition to each other as a
developing centralized and secular state challenged exsisting territorial, cultural and economic
loyalities. Institutional structures, competing alliances and the resolution of conflicts were crucial
in deciding wich social divisions became relevant in the structuring of political competition of
of a nation.”2 Lipset and Rokhan, in their analysis, determine four historical cleavages:
territorial, i.e. center – periphery, and religious, i.e. Church - State which are said to derive from
juncture of National “Revolution”, and social cleveages derived from the critical juncture of
Industrial Revolution, agricultural – industrial and the class cleavage ( workers – employers).
The voters make decisions on the basis of this cleavages. And then, on the scene come political
parties. Social cleavages create the demand for political parties, and the role of elites and

1
Stoll, Heather M, Social Cleavages, Political Institutions and Party Systems: Putting Preferences Back Into the
Fundamental Equation of Politics, december 2004.
2
Evans, A.J, Jocelyn, Voters & Voting- an Introduction, SAGE Publications, London, 2004, pg. 48
political parties is crucial in activating social divisions as vote determinants. Party identification
is in many European states regarded as a unnecessary variable between social structure and vote,
but in Montenegro its an opposite case.

In this article, we would try to prove that in Montenegro, social cleavages affect voting for
specific party, and we would try to explain how social cleavages get refreshed with young
generations that determine whom to vote for on the basis of which political party promotes the
side of cleavage he is on.