Political cleavages and the party system in Quebec in the twenty-first century
Recently, there has been a significant shift in the nature of political debate in Quebec. By drawing on cleavage theory, this article begins with the premise that the number of political parties represented in Quebec’s National Assembly is a reflection of the number of ideological cleavages that divide not only the electorate but also the party system that seeks to politicize that cleavage. An anlysis of data from three electoral surveys (2012-2018) explores this issue further and reveals the influence of three political cleavages — the constitutional question, state interventionism and diversity management — in the current configuration of the Quebec party system. Building on that analysis, this study posits that the only cleavage that has had an influence on the preference ordering of partisan coalitions is diversity management, and attributes this to the pervading inability of all parties to fundamentally transform the opposition between sovereigntists on the left and federalists on the right. With the help of social identity and group threat theories, we discuss why this new cleavage has become so quickly politicized in Quebec.