POLITICAL CONFLICTS UNDER THE CULTURAL PRESSURE (new social cleavages and universalist projects)

Abstract

The paper focused on the political conflicts genesis in the situation of the new type of mobilization using cultural division ideas. Cultural claims, primarily the desire to underline the identity determine both the political action of large social groups and economic motivation. The author uses the K. Marks framework about the dominant separation for the current situation in European societies facing various challenges caused by globalization. The basic conflict line is the confrontation between fundamentalism/nationalism and cosmopolitan tolerance, the contours of which were marked by outstanding intellectuals (R. Darendorff, E. Giddens, S. Huntington) already at the end of the XX century. Today, European scientists investigated the issue of this cleavage as the contradiction between “cosmopolitans” and “communitarians”. There are several points of demarcation: the attitude to borders, international structures, free trade rules, human rights, and climate change. The political confrontation based on these divisions (i.e., the politicization of the issue of identity) is used by populist parties in their struggle for power and threatens to split modern democratic societies. The author notes that there is also an acute conflict between the population and cosmopolitan elites, the basis of which is not only economic (losers/winners from globalization), but also cultural and moral, which gives the conflict confrontation a special intensity. To reduce it the new inclusive identity policy of democratic forces is needed.