Report: Mapping ownership in Israeli media

http://www.the7eye.org.il/50534

The Israeli Media Ownership Map is an ongoing project of “The Seventh Eye,” intended to present, interpret, and track the identity of media moguls and business groups who control the media and its organizations in Israel. The chart allows not only to locate the identity of individuals and groups who control the media companies, but also to view their holdings in other areas, and thus obtain a certain idea of the web of interests in which they and their subordinates must act, including the level of centralization in the Israeli market and the cross ownership within it.

Click here for a PDF of the map.

מפת הבעלויות בתקשורת הישראלית היא פרויקט מתמשך של “העין השביעית” שמטרתו להציג, לבאר ולעקוב אחר זהותם של בעלי ההון והקבוצות העסקיות השולטות בגופי ואמצעי תקשורת בישראל. התרשים מאפשר למעיינים בו לא רק לאתר את זהותם של האישים והגופים השולטים בחברות המדיה, אלא גם להציג את אחזקותיהם מחוץ לתחום התקשורת – ובכך לקבל גם מושג כלשהו על רשת האינטרסים שמכורחה פועלים הם והכפופים להם, על רמת הריכוזיות במשק הישראלי ועל הבעלויות הצולבות בו.

New Article: Razin, District Plans in Israel: Post-Mortem?

Razin, Eran. “District Plans in Israel: Post-Mortem?” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy (early view; online first).

 

URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263774X15610060

 

Abstract

In this paper, I qualitatively examine the rise and possible fall of statutory district plans as a major tool of regional planning in Israel. Rigid statutory regional plans are a top-down means, and the Israeli case demonstrates that their days are not necessarily over in an era of ‘soft spaces’ and complex governance networks. The swing of the pendulum in attitudes toward these plans is not associated with centralization–decentralization trends. Rather, it reflects power relations between two centralized coalitions of stakeholders. The one led by elected politicians favors proactive-developmental goals, aiming at state-led open-ended or non-statutory planning. The other coalition, led by central state bureaucrats, favors strict regulation. NGOs, assumed to form the core of soft horizontal governance networks, paradoxically support top-down ‘hard’ modes of regional planning, in the name of environmental sustainability that is not necessarily best served by bottom-up soft approaches.

 

 

New Article: Kan and Kislev, Corporatization and Price Setting in the Urban Water Sector under Statewide Central Administration

Kan, Iddo, and Yoav Kislev. “Corporatization and Price Setting in the Urban Water Sector under Statewide Central Administration: The Israeli Experience.” In Use of Economic Instruments in Water Policy: Insights from International Experience (ed. Manuel Lago et al.; Cham: Springer, 2015): 135-46.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18287-2_10

 

Abstract

As in many European countries, all water sources in Israel are public property, and are centrally managed by the government. This is to facilitate correction of market failures associated with externalities, natural monopolies and equity considerations. The economic policy instrument (EPI) considered here comprises two aspects of the centralized approach: (1) an institutional reform: local services that were formerly provided by municipal water departments became the responsibility of corporations; (2) a price-scheme reform: urban water prices are set by the regulator subject to the constraint of overall cost-recovery at the national and municipal levels, combined with an egalitarian policy; the latter is realized in identical municipal end-users tariffs. We evaluate the environmental, economic and institutional aspects of these reforms, and point out two main conclusions. First, with respect to EPI implementation from the regulator perspective, the lesson learned can be summarized by the phrase “grasp all, lose all.” EPI reformation, in this case the establishment of regional corporations, should take account of unattainable objectives: “sanitizing” the political factors from involvement. The second lesson is associated with the challenge of designing a pricing mechanism that simultaneously achieves several potentially contradicting targets: costs recovery, creation of incentives for efficiency, and equality. Also here the mechanism was distorted by political pressures. According to the social norms as they are reflected by the resultant policy, equality overwhelms efficiency.