Ideology, Party Change, and Electoral Campaigns in Israel, 1965™2001

by Mendilow, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780791455876
• ISBN10: 0791455874
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

The tumultuous and rapid political change experienced by Israel since 1965 has been reflected in the history of its party system. In this book, Jonathan Mendilow examines the party and party system transformations through the lens of the electoral campaigns that defined and reflected them. He shows that the relative stability of the dominant party system bequeathed from the pre-independence era was shattered in the 1960s, and replaced by cluster parties that vied for power in the ideological center, only to decline and be replaced in turn in the 1980s and early 1990s by ideological party blocs locked in centrifugal competition. With the separate direct election of the prime minister since the mid-1990s, there has been yet a third profound realignment in party structures, ideologies, and modes of campaigning, according to Mendilow.

Author Biography

Jonathan Mendilow is Professor of Political Science at Rider University.

Table of Contents

Tables	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(26)
Four Variants of the Israeli Party System, 1965--2001	1	(6)
The Literature on Party System Change and the Case of Israel	7	(17)
Some Methodological Considerations	24	(3)
Part I. The Cluster Party System	27	(64)
The Formation of the Cluster Parties	28	(31)
Introduction: The First Israeli Party System	28	(8)
Party Clustering on the Right, 1955--1965	36	(14)
Party Clustering on the Left, 1959--1965	50	(9)
The Logic of the New Party System	59	(32)
Cluster Parties: Organizational and Ideological Dimensions	59	(7)
Ideological Depolarization	66	(5)
Structural Polarization	71	(3)
Changes in Party Competition, Membership, and Finance	74	(6)
The Yom Kippur War and its Effects	80	(7)
Summary and Conclusions	87	(4)
Part II. The Party-Bloc System	91	(66)
The Transition to the Party-Bloc System	92	(30)
Introduction: The Twilight of the Cluster Party System	92	(3)
Party Cluster Stability and the Elections of 1981	95	(14)
Campaign 1984: The Turning Point	109	(13)
The Campaigns of 1988 and 1992 and the Heyday of the Party-Bloc System	122	(35)
1988, 1992, and the New Rules of the Game	122	(4)
The Campaign of 1988 and Labor's Forced Conversion	126	(13)
1992---The Coercion of the Labor and Likud Campaigns	139	(15)
Summary and Conclusions	154	(3)
Part III. The Parlia-Presidential System	157	(93)
The Logic of the New System: Candidates in Search of Centers	158	(28)
Introduction: On Feeble Parties, Weak-Strong Prime Ministers, and Other Schemes of Mice and Men	158	(14)
From Oslo to the Opening of the 1996 Campaign: The Likud in Crisis	172	(7)
Campaign 1996 and the Strategy of Contrived Bipolarity	179	(7)
Straddling the Millennium	186	(45)
The Center That Could Not Hold	186	(6)
Barak, Mordechai, and Netanyahu: Alternative Routes to the Center	192	(22)
Again the Center Cannot Hold	214	(7)
Parlia-Presidentialism's Last Hurrah	221	(6)
Summary	227	(4)
Epilogue: A Comparative Perspective	231	(19)
The Cases of India and France	231	(11)
A Note on the Future of Change	242	(8)
Notes	250	(33)
Bibliography	283	(10)
Index	293