Abstract
The thesis presents an extension of the Lipset - Rokkan model of cleavage-based party politics. It employs concepts of civilisational analysis, particularly the concept of multiple modernities as devised by Shmuel Eisenstadt, to describe the emergence of anti-Western fundamental movements in Russia and Egypt at the start of the 20th century.
The introductory chapter discusses the existing literature and recent trends in mainstream studies of party politics, noting particularly the divergence between research into Western and non-Western political parties. The second chapter focuses on the Rokkanian branch of party studies and the use of the cleavage concept outside the political region of Western Europe.
In the third chapter, the concept of 'modernity cleavage' is presented, based on theoretical assumptions common both to the Rokkanian agenda and to civilisational analysis. The fourth and fifthchapters deal with the empirical analysis of two cases, the Russian Communists and Egyptian Muslim Brothers, respectively, with the goal to extract findings from presented historical data through a basic-level comparative and ground-theoretical approach.
In the final chapter, the thesis is concluded with a theoretical discussion about the common features of 'modernity parties' and about the thesis's general research contribution.