Cross-Cutting Cleavages, Agreement and Compromise: An Assessment of Three Leading Hypotheses Against Scottish and Northern Irish Survey Responses

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Abstract
Contrasting hypotheses have linked acceptance of policy-compromise in democracies to cross-cutting opinion cleavages, on the one hand, and particular patterns of opinion-agreement amongst population and activists on the other. A formulation by R. A. Dahl can be extended so as to accomodate both the cross-cutting and consensus positions. Measures of fragmentation, intensity-distance and cross-cutting, developed by Rae and Taylor, are well suited to test predictions derived from the three main statements. They are applied to survey-responses collected in Glasgow and Belfast, cities whose socio-economic similarities make possible a reasonably controlled investigation of conditions associated with compromise in Glasgow and overt violence in Belfast. Resulting analysis reveals a surprising similarity in levels of agreement and cross-cutting in both cities.

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