Political Cleavages in the Basque Country: Meaning and Salience

The Basque party system has typically been described as organized along two cross-cutting cleavages: a nationalist struggle and a less salient class conflict. While there is consensus on the nature of the nationalist division, what remains of the historical class cleavage is unclear. Two competing hypotheses on the nature of the class cleavage are put forward: the class cleavage has ‘realigned’ along the new social classes of post-industrial society, and the class cleavage is best understood as a ‘frozen’ cleavage. It is shown that the freezing hypothesis best captures the nature of the class cleavage in the Basque Country today, and that once ‘left’ and ‘right’ are understood along these lines, the nationalist cleavage becomes more salient.