Electoral change in 2025 has been remarkable in the #Netherlands, thanks to the collapse of NSC and large vote shifts among established parties. The election is the third most-volatile in country's history and among the top-15 in post-1945 Western Europe (the 10th for RegV) according to my data.

We stick to a classic definition:
A cleavage must meet 3 criteria:
1️. Socio-structural
2️. Normative (Shared group identity)
3️. Organisational (Having political representation)
No cherry-picking. We assess all conflicts using the same standards. 🔍

🧵 Posting also here our new article out in JEPP (Open Acess)!
With Mirko Crulli, we explore the structure of political cleavages in Western Europe — bringing Rokkan’s classic theory into the 21st century.
🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Here are the main takeaways 👇

We show that left parties have historically reduced most forms of #inequality but their equalizing effect has decreased over time and has become not significant since the 1980s.

The big picture: the old labels (unipolar, bipolar, multipolar) capture only fleeting snapshots. In many countries, instability itself has become the rule. In those contexts, classifications are useless for long-term accounts.

Results indicate that many systems have become ‘non-systems,’ with fluctuating and unstable party poles.

We define party systems based on the number and composition of relevant political poles (governing alternatives) and, through a long-term analysis of Western Europe (20 countries since 1945), assess their degree of systemness.

We also identify previously overlooked factors:
📚 Education
🤝 Civil society strength
📊 Electoral system disproportionality
🧩 Party system fragmentation
These shape the contexts in which cleavages consolidate — or fail to.

Some Hps are confirmed, others not.
✅ Cultural segmentation explains centre-periphery structuring ✅ Catholicism shapes religious cleavage ✅ Urbanisation matters for the rural one
But Some classic assumptions don’t hold❌ Farm size isn’t a key predictor of rural cleavage structuring

Our key findings challenge the conventional wisdom.
The “freezing” of cleavages between the 1920s and 1960s?
🧊 Not quite.
Only the centre-periphery cleavage shows stability — and at very low levels.
The others show ups and downs. Class cleavage becomes more and more structured over time.

We conceptualize cleavage electoral structuring as a dynamic process with three possible stages:
❌ Absent
🔄 Unstructured
✅ Structured
Structuring = strong & stable electoral support for cleavage bloc parties.

Our article revisits one of the most influential political science theories: Lipset & Rokkan’s model of social cleavages and their famous “freezing hypothesis”.
We move beyond anecdotal claims and test their assumptions using quantitative data.