This article illustrates how the social cleavage characteristics of political parties influence welfare state reforms.Quantitative analyses have shown that political parties with urban and secular characteristics emphasize political-economic issues and clearly disclose their policy orientation on the issues to their voters.However,this tendency weakens if political parties possess religious or rural characteristics.Therefore,urban-secular parties can play a principal role in the political competition over economic policy preferences.In the Netherlands,political parties of this inclination have implemented welfare state reform.They prevented the intervention by particular groups in the political process and reinforced policy-based politics.This case study highlights the anti-clientelism aspect in the process of welfare state reform.The findings of this case study imply that parties attitudes to the anti-clientelism vary along religious-secular and rural-urban cleavages.