In this paper, we develop a framework for studying the role of group identities in contemporary cleavage formation. Identities, we suggest, hold the key to a central conundrum of current political sociology: the fact that today’s electoral realignments appear to be rooted in the social structure of post-industrial societies, while the decline of mass organizations has dissolved traditional links between politics and social structure. Bringing cleavage theory into dialog with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, we theorize how group identities may play an important role in stabilizing a new universalism-particularism cleavage emerging in Western Europe today. We identify two key processes of cleavage identity formation: bottom-up processes of “social closure” and top-down “classification struggles” waged by political entrepreneurs. For both processes, we review empirical findings and formulate an agenda for further research.

Little controversy remains about the profound shifts in the demographic landscape of the United States since the mid-1960s. Far more controversial is whether this transformation will bring about a new politics of race. This paper argues that a key to settling this debate is a clearer specification of the “identity-to-politics” link: the nexus between a population defined by shared racial and ethnic labels and a collective group politics based on those definitions. The paper articulates some potential pitfalls in how this nexus is commonly specified in empirical research and proposes an approach that distinguishes five key processes that are typically lumped together in linking shared demographic categories to common political destinies: definition, identification, consciousness, venue selection, and choice. The paper describes an example of this approach (the case of ethnoracial classification and the empirical measurement of race) and concludes by discussing its potential utility and limitations.