Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Application of Postmaterial Cleavages at the Subnational Level

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Social Sciences |
2016

Abstract

Not only economic development in recent years has fundamentally changed the issues the local governments have to deal with. It is at the municipal level, where more and more conflicts of the material and post-material values occur, which affect not only the local, but also the regional and national level of the political system.

It is thus evident that conflicts of post-material and material values still exist, but is the concept of postmaterial clevages still relevant as well? The paper first examines the curent debate on postmaterial clevages in general and postmaterial clevages at the local level. Although this is a traditional concept, it has been used almost exclusively at the national level.

Paper investigates whether the concept of postmaterial clevages is associated only with the national level and under what conditions it can be applied to local, eventually regional level. The paper works with well-known definition of cleavages by Bartolini and Mair and examinates what modifications of individual aspect (i.e. empirical, normative and organisational) has to be made in order to allow the definition to be used outside the state level.