This text provides non-specialist academic and professional readers with an easily-accessible account of the nature of deeply divided societies and the patterns of politics and political issues that characterize them as such. Adrian Guelke and Beverley Milton-Edwards examine this complex and multi-faceted feature of politics in a number of ways, starting with historical overviews of a number of case studies and the examination of features that characterize certain societies as being deeply divided. The authors also include a selective study of various significant features of this particular polity.