Display:block not showing anchor link as a block in IE9

Question

The display:block CSS code is making the anchor link inside a div, i.e.
<div><a>some text</a></div>
behave as a block in a site viewed in Chrome etc.
However, it is not behaving like a block in IE9. Instead of the whole width of div which should behave like a block and be clickable, only the actual text of anchor link <a> is clickable.
Please advise on how to ensure the whole div behaves like a block in IE9 also.

Answer 1

I checked and found that the probable problem is as described below.
I have indicated the style for a.link and a.visited in the starting of the css file as
a:link { color:#009900; text-decoration: underline;}    
a:visited { color: #4E5869; text-decoration: underline;}    
Later in the css file, I have defined styles for cbt, cbt a, cbt a:link and cbt a:visited separately. the styles for cbt etc is as below:
cbt { display:block;  float:none; 
position: relative; 
margin:5px 2px; 
padding-left:1px;
padding-right:1px;
padding-top:5px; 
padding-bottom:5px;
z-index:4;
clear:both; } 
cbt a, cbt a:link {  font-size: 1em;
text-decoration:none;  text-align:justify;
text-justify:inter-word; 
font-weight:normal; 
word-wrap:break-word; 
color:#00C;  display:block; }  
cbt a:visited { color:#CC0033; }
The anchor link a is nested inside cbt tag in the html file as
<cbt><a href="abc.com">some text</a></cbt>
Inspite of the above codes, the anchor link a inside cbt tag is not taking the styles defined with cbt a, cbt a:link, but is instead taking styles defined in a:link initially.
Hence they are behaving as inline elements in IE9 when hosted on remote server by taking the initial style defined.
However,when the same page are viewed on localhost in IE9, the links behave as block elements (taking the later defined styles). The links also behave as block elements inside Chrome browser when viewed on localhost as well as on remote server. In this situation the links are taking the styles defined later in the css file.
Please advise on why the css behaviour is so erratic.