When the ethnic cleavage overshadows the class cleavage in a post-communist country and why we should care?

ABSTRACT

There is a theoretical assumption that post-communist cofmanifesuntries would follow the Lipset and Rokkan’s seminal model regarding electoral cleavages and thus class cleavage would become dominant in those countries as in the West. In this respect the post-communist Estonia is considered an interesting case. On the one hand, there are many enabling preconditions which should promote the class cleavage (e.g. the level of socio-economic development, high social inequality). But on the other hand, a large Russian-speaking minority resides in the country. Nevertheless, the article poses a hypothesis that class cleavage has become more pronounced during the recent decade. The current analysis applies quantitative research methodology while using the data from the Estonian National Election Studies. The results of the analysis show that the ethnic cleavage persistently overshadows the class cleavage and the trend has become even more accentuated during the recent decade. The authors briefly consider alternative explanations for the dominance of ethnic cleavage. They claim that Estonia could be regarded as a critical case because if the class cleavage is not about to rise in one of the most advanced democracies in CEE, it allows the raising of broader questions about the future of class politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Estonia
• social cleavages
• social class
• ethnicity
• electoral behaviour

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for anonymous reviewers, Margit Tavits, Martin Mölder, and Piret Ehin for reading and commenting on the first drafts of the paper. Their useful comments enabled us to improve the quality of the paper to a great extent. We are also thankful to Elena Vassilieva who’s preliminary research on the subject inspired us to write this article.

Notes

1 The Russian-speaking minority is more numerous in Latvia and Estonia (34 per cent and 29 per cent of the population, correspondingly), than in Lithuania (7 per cent of the population) (Auers, 2015).

2 We decided to use binary logistic regression models instead of multinomial regression model because the former relies on the assumption of independence of irrelevant alternatives. This assumption states that the odds of preferring one party over another do not depend on the presence or absence of other ‘irrelevant’ alternatives. We think that it is not the case for party choices. This point is especially important to take into account if the analysis aims to predict how choices would change if one alternative was to disappear.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Estonian Research Council project ‘Cumulative processes in the interplay of educational path and work career: explaining inequalities in the context of neoliberalization’ (grant number IUT31- 10).