Cross-cutting cleavage

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In social sciences, a cross-cutting cleavage exists when groups on one cleavage overlap among groups on another cleavage. "Cleavages" may include racial, political, and religious divisions in society. Formally, members of a group j on a given cleavage x belong to groups on a second cleavage y with members of other groups k, l, m, etc. from the first cleavage x. For example, if a society contained two ethnic groups that had equal proportions of rich and poor it would be cross-cutting. Robert A. Dahl built a theory of Pluralist democracy which is a direct descendant of Madison's cross-cutting cleavages.^[1] Cross-cutting cleavages are contrasted with reinforcing cleavage (e.g. a situation where one ethnic group is all-rich and the other is all-poor). The term originates from Simmel (1908) in his work Soziologie.^[2]