Social Cleavages: Key to Understanding Middle Eastern Politics Today

There exists a cultural model in the western media as a positive agent for opinionated socialization. Currently, Middle Eastern politics is facing an increasing range of news sources that are holding back the function of the media. This reserving of roles is one of the leading factors that contribute to growing socio-cultural cleavages. Instead of unifying the Middle Eastern countries, the unstable social cleavages cause clashes between fundamentalists and worldly members of similar religious groups. Nevertheless, the same social cleavages are significant because they assist in the exploration of the media and other publicity aspects of politics.

Gaps in social living in the Middle East involve the worldly and spiritual media in specific states. The potentially troublesome effects of the media include the implications of other countries in the Middle East, distinguished by religious versus secular tensions.

Another significance of social cleavages in accepting Middle Eastern politics is realizing the patterns of cleavage politics, together with the controlling of basic cleavages on voting liberties.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified writer

Proficient in: Free Essays

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Legislative and presidential ballot voting seasons can be compared by use of social and political cleavages. This way, the role of personal history and belief can be determined. Such affiliations are dependent on social cleavages to a certain extent in the lead of incentives offered beneath diverse electoral systems. For instance, in Israel, the vote in every parliamentary and presidential election is recoded into a constant scale based on the social classes of the political parties. The international teams of collaborators have categorized the political parties' families based on grounds such as communism, physical environment, social democratic state, liberalism, Christian democratic system and nationalist or spiritual viewpoints.

These grounds offer the international community a considerate perspective concerning their political system and tradition.

Social cleavages also provide a distinction and variation between European and Muslim Mediterranean. The formation of the European Union played a significance role in incorporating the European South into the north. This integration interfered with the territorial outlines of several Middle Eastern states. There is no establishment of a deep and fundamental cultural cleavage in the political difference between European and Arab states, but the multi-ethnic history of the Middle East is not supposed to be confused with internationally homogenized trading communities and mass sightseeing. There are frontiers between the civic, private and uncertain atmosphere of innocent attempts to reverse the conception of a public sphere to Middle Eastern contexts and forms of resistance.

Are Ethnic cleavages and conflicts intensifying or declining in the Middle East?

Apart from Iraq's attacks on Kuwait, all global armed clashes beginning from 1988 have been concerning internal class problems. Ethnic clashes have certainly claimed more than 16 million lives, and occasionally more than people who passed away from inter-state conflicts. Ethnic disagreements in the Middle East serve to strengthen in-group distinctiveness through stress on shared ties that unite group members to each other by stressing the variations that differentiate the group as one and its individual associates from other groups and affiliates. Ethnic cleavages are sharpened as a result of such recognitions and strategies grounded on these identifications, and guide towards greater ethnic pressure. Such increases in recollections contribute to each cultural conflict within the Middle East.

Another indicator that ethnic cleavages and conflicts are building up in the Middle East is carrying forward of ethnic differences amongst social groups. Ethnic variations are drawn from Biblical eras, Christian movements and the era following the Second World War. Re-living such events causes violent protests and conflicts in several states in the Middle East. While Middle Eastern countries are trying to identify their political stands and heritage, the most troublesome sociopolitical cleavages take place. The identification procedure of a country might strike enriching, figurative and existential ideas of personal and collective personalities. Distinct from other cleavages, ethnic identity and the clashes it creates are essentially less open to compromise than the ones surrounding material issues. Such a situation opens up to compromise from current trends in the Middle Eastern political, social and economic statuses of countries with cleavage differences.

Beginning from the late 1700's, competitive western powers have rushed for a client sponsorship of diverse ethnic groups that resided in provinces in the collapsing Ottoman Empire. This colonization clash has served as a pretext of likely inheritance of such territories on the final decline of the Ottoman Empire. Ethnic clashes in the region have grown since then, spreading to the neighboring Arab colonies and Middle Eastern communities. A similar trend is currently occurring in the Middle East. The uneven nature of ethnic groups in the Middle East causes conflicts that are more astounding when compared to inter-state clashes. Worldwide socio-cultural demographics define the social cleavages and conflicts in the Middle East with reference to neighboring or coexisting groups or communities. As long as countries in the Middle East will co-exist or thrive next to communities or countries with ethnic differences, there will mount conflicts attempting to solve or identify each other's positions in the region.