"Cleavages" And Studies On Stability Of West-European Party Systems

Europe is a continent with a long history. Long time's traditions influence European's life more or less.The same situations happen in political field. To a large extent, traditions affect Europeans party identification. It also reminds people's awareness of responsibility they should take.In 1967, Lipset·S·M and Stein·Rokkan proposed the concept of "Cleavage" in their essay "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments:An Introduction". As a concept in election analysis, it can be used to study on the voter alignments. Cleavage offers a new perspective of studies on election, party and party systems. The rise and fall of political parties and the stability or change of party systems is complex phenomenon. If we only research on the party programme, the election strategy or the candidates, we can not find the truth. But cleavage structures can explain it well.Looking at the history of political parties in Western Europe, we find that the party systems have shown a tendency of stabilization after a long period of turbulence. New parties can not shake the basis of freezing party systems. The cleavage structure is a very important reason for this phenomenon. The freezing of voter's behaviors, system's inertia are affected by cleavage structure deeply. So, studies on cleave is worthwhile. Thought studying, we can know the core of Western European countries' party systems better, and we can also benefit from their experience.