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This article analyzes the dynamics of the 2015 Israeli elections by examining the movement of votes within ideological blocs and the manifestation of multiple identities in the electoral campaigns. The premature collapse of Netanyahu’s government led Israel to general elections only two years and two months after the previous elections. The elections were portrayed as a horse race between the Likud and the Zionist Union. Indeed, both parties gained some support in comparison to the previous elections, yet almost all of their electoral gains were from parties in their own bloc. The politics of multiple identities steered these two parties to appeal to voters within their blocs, and also clearly defined the borders of these blocs. An exception was the new centrist Kulanu, which succeeded in capturing the strategic pivotal position. Likud’s clear-cut “victory” over the Zionist Union led Kulanu to join the Likud’s right-wing religious coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes two opposing types of political personalization: centralizing and decentralizing personalization. The first implies the centralization of political power in the hands of a few leaders, while the latter indicates a diffusion of group power among its components: individual politicians. We start by proposing definitions of the types and subtypes of centralized and decentralized personalization and review the literature in search of evidence of their occurrence. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed typology by examining personalization trends in various aspects of Israeli politics and conclude with a discussion of the challenges that personalization set for liberal democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More than one third of the Israeli voters changed their vote from the 2009 elections to the 2013 elections, yet most stayed within ‘their’ camp (either the right-religious or the centre-left). But it was the few who changed their vote that made the difference. Likud kept its control of the pivotal position and leads the new government, but an unprecedented alliance between the centrist-secular Yesh Atid and the right-religious Jewish Home—based on socio-economic issues, not the predominant security factor in Israeli politics, and personal relations between the party leaders—forced Likud to establish a coalition that excluded the ultra-religious parties it had sat in government with since the 2009 elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party membership is in decline in Israel. This article analyzes the main characteristics of party members in three of the largest parties in Israel: Kadima, Likud, and Labor. Party members in Israel share similar features with party members in other countries: they are older, economically better off than the average voter, they are more highly educated than an average voter, and they are more likely to be male than female. This comparison between the members population and the voters population also demonstrates that Arabs are over-represented in Kadima and Labor while religious people are over-represented in Kadima and especially Likud. Most party members claim that ideological motivations led them to join a particular party, yet they suspect that the other members are motivated by more instrumental reasons. They expect the party to act cohesively but at the same time clearly support deeper intraparty democratization. They are also rather passive, hardly engaging in party activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Knesset (the Israeli legislature) has become more representative of Israeli society over the years. This article examines developments in the representation of significant groups in Israeli society—Arabs, religious (orthodox) Jews, and Mizrachim (Jews of Oriental, usually Asian or North African, descent)—and of women through Israel's history, from the elections to the first Knesset (1949) to the last elections (2009). It also analyses how increased representation of some groups (the religious orthodox Jews, Arabs) or a change in the pattern of their representation (Mizrachim) may affect and impair the representation of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing interest in the relation between language and politics brings new assumptions and theoretical frameworks to the study of politics. This study presents a simple empirical test of a major assumption of the critical discourse analysis school: that power is a major factor in political discourse. It examines whether the discourse of Israeli members of parliament (Knesset) represents a view of the world through the prism of power or whether parliament members refer to the experience of similar democracies. We demonstrate that power is a strong and significant factor in Israeli legislative discourse through time and across issues while relevance plays no role. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘What constitutes a new political party?’ The answer to this question is central to the analysis of stability, continuity and change of party organizations, inter-party politics (party systems) and the political system as a whole. Yet, political science literature does not offer a standard answer to this question. The use of different conceptualizations limits the ability of political scientists to communicate with each other, and a lack of awareness of the variations in the conceptualization and operationalization of new parties may lead to errors in the interpretation of data. This study proposes two tools by which to analyse a party’s ‘newness’. The first involves a multidimensional framework that enables the relative ‘newness’ of a party to be reckoned; the second is a definition that proposes a threshold to determine (dichotomously) whether a party should be considered as new or not. We use the borderline case of the Israeli party Kadima to demonstrate the usefulness of these tools at the level of the party and its significance at the party system level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the February 2009 elections, the Israeli voter apparently swung to the right. Electoral change can be summed up as a net shift of 15 seats out of 120 towards the right-religious bloc. While Kadima won the most seats as an individual party, when counted together with the five other left-of-centre parties, the left had only 55 seats in total. Likud on the other hand came in a close second in terms of seats won as an individual party, but counted together with the five religious and right-wing parties they controlled a majority bloc of 65 seats. To this we must add the shift of control of the pivotal position to the right, from Kadima to Likud. These are the reasons why Netanyahu and his Likud party—who won one seat less than Kadima—formed the new coalition government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the quality of democracy incorporates values beyond simple majority choice, then is intra-party democracy likely to further or to impede the advancement of these other values? We address the relationship between internal party democracy, as indicated by the inclusiveness of parties' selectorates, and the realization of two associated democratic values -- the extent of both competition in the nomination process and representation among the lists of candidates that emerge. Although we analyse these relationships within party, our interest in them is primarily for their system level impact. We find that the three democratic values of inclusive participation, competition and representativeness are unlikely to be simultaneously maximized. Rather, the relationships among these values may be non-linear, or even negative. In particular, the parties that are most internally democratic produce lists of candidates that are least representative and experience only medium levels of competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the repeal of party primaries and the abolition of direct elections for the prime minister in Israel. The author says although it is argued that these reforms shared a systemic logic, a separate discussion of their repeal is justified because these were considered intra-partisan and inter-partisan. He adds that while the same actors largely played in both games of the politics of reform, they did not seem to recognize the linkage between the two. The author concludes with an integral institutional outlook at both phenomena, arguing that while the 1990s reforms failed, the problems that they tried to address remain and need to be solved directly through electoral reform.

This article examines the process that led to the repeal of Israeli electoral reform (1992–2001) and compares it with that of reform adoption (1987–92). The most significant difference between the two processes is in the kinds of information that were available in them. In the politics of reform adoption, information was susceptible to manipulation and its supply was a crucial part of the struggle itself. In the politics of reform abolition, the real consequences of reform were constantly unfolding. This substantial difference resulted in other differences – not in type but in extent. First, while both were ongoing processes in which coalitions of supporters and opponents had to be built and then rebuilt several times, the cohesion of the camps throughout the struggle for reform abolition was higher than in the struggle for reform adoption. Second, while office-seeking successfully served as a basis for understanding the behavior of most parliamentary actors, the actual perceptions of its exact contextual meaning was dependent upon different available information. The two processes also had two common characteristics: power was diffused in both arenas of the politics of reform and in both instances the selection of the right timing proved to be necessary for successfully promoting the initiatives against veto players who were interested in preserving the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]