Abstract

BARTOLINI, Stefano. A integração europeia provocará uma reestruturação dos sistemas de clivagens nacionais?. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas [online]. 2001, n.37, pp.91-114. ISSN 0873-6529.

This article deals with the interaction between conflicts, oppositions and issues generated by the process of European integration and Europe’s nationally-rooted representation systems. The main issue is the extent to which the development of European integration can have an impact on and/or interacts with historically established national alliances and on/with alignments among electoral organisations that are usually identified with the term ‘cleavage’, or rather, ‘cleavage system’. The article is organized into four main sections. The first summarises a number of lessons drawn from the historical process of cleavage structuring within the nation state. The second briefly recalls the background of electoral and political instability that makes the 1990s different from the previous decades. The third part discusses the nature and the content of the potential line of opposition and conflict involved in the process of integration and how this relates to established national political alignments. Finally, the paper concludes with a speculative discussion on a few scenarios concerning possible ways in which the national cleavage and party systems might be ‘Europeanised’.

Keywords : Cleavages; European integration; (de)alignment.

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