New Book: Sasley and Waller, Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society

Sasley, Brent E., and Harold M. Waller. Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

 

 

This is the first textbook on Israel to utilize a historical-sociological approach, telling the story of Israeli politics rather than simply presenting a series of dry facts and figures. The book emphasizes six specific dimensions of the conduct of Israeli politics: the weight of historical processes, the struggle between different groups over how to define the country’s identity, changing understandings of Zionism, a changing political culture, the influence of the external threat environment, and the inclusive nature of the democratic process. These themes offer students a framework to use for understanding contemporary political events within the country. Politics in Israel also includes several chapters on topics not previously addressed in competing texts, including historical conditions that led to the emergence of Zionism in Israel, the politics of the Arab minority, and interest groups and political protest.

 

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: Israel in Historical and Comparative Perspective
Studying Israel
Israel in a Comparative Framework
Major Themes of the Book
A Note on Terminology
 
PART I: HISTORICAL PROCESSES
Chronology of Key Events
Chapter 2: Zionism and the Origins of Israel
Jewish History before Zionism
The Jewish Predicament in the 19th Century
The Founding of the Zionist Movement
Implications of Zionism
Herzl’s Path to Zionism
Organizing the Zionist Movement
Zionist Ideologies
The Palestine Mandate
Summary
 
Chapter 3: Yishuv Politics during the Mandate Period
Constructing a Jewish Society
Development of a Party System
Conflict between Arabs and Jews in Mandatory Palestine
Deteriorating Zionist-British Relations
The End of the Mandate
The Mandate Period in Perspective
Summary
 
Chapter 4: State Building After 1948
Mamlachtiut
The Political Arena
Defense
Education
Economy
Personal Status Issues
Other State-Building Efforts
Summary
 
PART II: ISRAELI SOCIETY
Chapter 5: Political Culture and Demography
The Pre-State Period
Foundational Values of the State
Changes since 1967
From Collectivism to Individualism
Political Culture in the Arab Community
Demography
Summary
 
Chapter 6: Religion and Politics
Religion and the Idea of a Jewish State
Setting the Parameters of the Religion-State Relationship
Growing Involvement in Politics
Issues in Religion-State Relations after 2000
Religious Parties and Coalition Politics
Summary
 
Chapter 7: The Politics of the Arab Minority
What’s in a Name?
Changing Politics of the Community
Jewish Attitudes toward the Arab Minority
Arab Leaders and the Arab Public
Voter turnout
Sayed Kashua as Barometer?
Summary
 
PART III: THE POLITICAL PROCESS
Chapter 8: The Electoral System
The Development of an Electoral System
Election Laws
Parties and Lists
Electoral Reforms
Summary
 
Chapter 9: Political Parties and the Party System
Party Clusters
Leftist Parties
Rightist Parties
Religious Parties
Arab Parties
Center or “Third” Parties
Ethnic or Special Issues Parties
Party Organization
Summary
 
Chapter 10: Voting Patterns
Four Main Issues
Demographic Factors
Voter Turnout
Electoral Trends
Summary
 
Chapter 11: Interest Groups and Political Protest
Changing Access in the Israeli Political System
Interest Groups
Political Protest
Summary
 
PART IV: INSTITUTIONS
Chapter 12: The Knesset
Structure of the Knesset
Legal Aspects
Knesset Members
Functions and Powers of the Knesset
Relationship to the Government
Summary
 
Chapter 13: The Government
The Government at the Center of the System
Powers of the Government
Forming a Government
Maintaining and Running a Government
Relations with the Knesset
The President of the State
Summary
 
Chapter 14: The Judiciary and the Development of Constitutional Law
The Judicial System
Structure of the Court System
The Religious Court System
The Attorney General
Basic Laws: A Constitution in the Making?
Interpreting the Constitution
Summary
 

PART V: POLITICS AND POLICYMAKING
Chapter 15: Political Economy
Ideas about Economic Development in the Yishuv
A State(ist) Economy
Likud and the Free Market
Structural Weaknesses
Summary
 
Chapter 16: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Three Levels of Threat Perception
Israel’s Threat Environment
Hawks and Doves in the Political System
The Defense Establishment
Public Opinion
Summary
 
PART VI: THE TRANSFORMATiON OF ISRAELI POLITICS
Chapter 17: The Changing Political Arena
A More Complex Society
An Economic Transformation
Transformation of the Security Situation
The Israeli-Palestinian Relationship
Dampening of Ideology
Political Culture and the Party System
The Passing of a Heroic Generation
A More Consequential Arab Sector
The Transformation of the Judiciary
Change versus Continuity
 
Chapter 18: Confronting the Meaning of a Jewish State
The Political Question: What is Jewish and Democratic?
The Social Question: Who Belongs?
The Academic Question: Whose Historiography?
Conclusion
 
Appendices
Glossary
Bibliography

 

BRENT E. SASLEY is Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Texas at Arlington.
HAROLD M. WALLER is Professor of Political Science at McGill University.

New Article: Solomon, From the Barrier to Refugee Law

Solomon, Solon. “From the Barrier to Refugee Law: National Security’s Transformation from a Balancing Right to a Background Element in the Realms of Israeli Constitutionalism.” International Journal of Human Rights 19.4 (2015): 447-64.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2015.1027063

 

Abstract

Mapping cardinal cases of the Israeli Supreme Court, the article will demonstrate how, in the Israeli constitutional experience, the concept of national security came to be transformed from a balancing right to a background element. Along these lines, the article will argue that while Israeli constitutionalism indeed awarded national security parameters a decisive role in the realms of the human rights balance judicial discourse, it equally embarked on a procedure of delineating the existence of national security as an autonomous consideration, in cases where national security exigencies ceased to be obvious in the Israeli reality. Compelling the examination of a national security debate under the human rights lens, the Israeli Supreme Court aligned its jurisprudence with that of other supreme courts as well as with the international thematic constitutionalism model, aspiring to interpret the different fields of laws and various provisions under the concept of the right to dignity.

 
 
 
 

New Book: Navot, The Constitution of Israel: A Contextual Analysis

Navot, Suzie. The Constitution of Israel: A Contextual Analysis. Oxford: Hart, 2014.

 

 

This book presents the main features of the Israeli constitutional system and a topical discussion of Israel’s basic laws. It focuses on constitutional history and the peculiar decision to frame a constitution ‘by stages’. Following its British heritage and the lack of a formal constitution, Israel’s democracy grew for more than four decades on the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Introducing a constitutional model and the concept of judicial review of laws, the ‘constitutional revolution’ of the 1990s started a new era in Israel’s constitutional history. The book’s main themes include: constitutional principles; the legislature and the electoral system; the executive; the protection of fundamental rights and the crucial role of the Supreme Court in Israel’s constitutional discourse. It further presents Israel’s unique aspects as a Jewish and democratic state, and its ongoing search for the right balance between human rights and national security. Finally, the book offers a critical discussion of the development of Israel’s constitution and local projects aimed at enacting a single and comprehensive text.

Click here for a full Table of Contents (PDF).

New Book: Meydani, The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel

Meydani, Assaf. The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel. Constitutional Rhetoric and State Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

 

 

Why is there such a large gap between the declarations that countries make about human rights and their imperfect implementation of them? Why do states that have enacted laws and signed treaties about human rights choose to not enforce these laws in daily life? Why have activists failed to achieve the goals of ensuring human rights domestically and internationally? This book examines the issue of human rights in the Israeli domestic arena by analyzing the politics and strategies of defending human rights. To do so, it integrates the tools of social choice theory with a unique institutionalist perspective that looks at both formal and informal, and local and international factors. The book offers an analysis explaining the processes through which Israel is struggling to promote human rights within a specific institutional environment, thus determining the future of Israeli democracy and its attitude toward human rights.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Institutional theory and social choice studies: understanding the anatomy of human rights
3. Human rights between constitutional rhetoric and state practice
4. Structural and cultural variables favoring a short-term orientation
5. The right to be free from the threat of torture in light of structural and cultural complexity
6. The right to equality: gender segregation on ultra-orthodox buses following the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling on the ‘segregation lines’ in 2011
7. The right to enjoy a decent lifestyle: the case of the Laron law – national insurance law (amendment no. 109, 2008) encouraging the disabled to work
8. The human rights commission in Israel that never was
9. Property rights – the issue of designing policy about the separation fence – the High Court of Justice case: Beit Sureiq Village v. the State of Israel, 2004
10. The right to human dignity and liberty: the organ transplant law, 5768 (2008)
11. Policy evaluation: analyzing the reality for human rights.

URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/human-rights/anatomy-human-rights-israel-constitutional-rhetoric-and-state-practice

 

 

Cite: Kedar, Ben-Gurion’s Opposition to a Written Constitution

Kedar, Nir. “Ben-Gurion’s Opposition to a Written Constitution.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 12.1 (2013): 1-16.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725886.2012.757471

 

Abstract

The foundation of Israel gave new significance to the heated dispute over modern Jewish identity. Accordingly, the Israeli constitutional debate, waged during the first two years of independence, threatened to become a focus of that cultural discussion. The article discusses David Ben-Gurion’s fear that the ideological and cultural argument regarding the content of the constitution would turn into a futile cultural polemic that would divert Israeli society from the realization of Zionism. The first part of the article describes the struggle to enact a constitution in Israel, and reviews Ben-Gurion’s efforts to thwart this move. The second part demonstrates that his aversion to debate was not merely a manifestation of impatience but a sincere expression of his civic ideas. The third part analyses in detail his concern for the realization of Zionism and for the processes of society and state building as a central reason for his opposition to the constitution. The fourth and concluding part highlights Ben-Gurion’s opposition to turning the Israeli constitutional dispute into a vehicle for ideological and cultural arguments about the nature and character of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

Reviews: Mautner, Law and the Culture of Israel

Menachem Mautner, Law and the Culture of Israel. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

 

 

 

Reviews

Hofri-Winogradow, Adam. “Review.” Edinburgh Law Review 16 (2012): 125-126.

Lecture: Gavison, Constitution-Making in an Ethnic Nation State

“Constitution-Making in an Ethnic Nation State: The Case of Israel”

A talk by Professor Ruth Gavison

Tuesday, April 13

1:00pm-2:00pm

Stanford Law School, Room 190

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Professor Ruth Gavison has been a pioneer and a trailblazer in the field of human rights and Zionist values in Israel for over three decades. Haim H. Cohn Professor of Human Rights in the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University, Professor Gavison specializes in Philosophy of Law and Human Rights, was a senior advisor to the Knesset Constitution Committee, and served on the Winograd Panel to investigate the second Lebanon War. A founding member and past chairperson and president of the Israel Civil Rights Association, recipient of the E.m.e.t Prize in Law, co-author of the Gavison-Medan religious-secular covenant, Professor Gavison has gone on to found  Metzilah – a Center for Zionist, Jewish, Liberal and Humanist Thought. Professor Gavison was nominated for a position on Israel’s Supreme Court in 2005. She is one of the most prominent voices in Israel about issues of human rights, ethnic conflict, protection of minorities, religion and politics, and Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State.

http://www.law.stanford.edu/calendar/details/4121/Ruth%20Gavison%20-%20“Constitution-Making%20in%20an%20Ethnic%20Nation%20State:%20The%20Case%20of%20Israel”%20-%20Room%20190./

Cite: Radzyner, A Constitution for Israel

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Radzyner, Amihai. "A Constitution for Israel: The Design of the Leo Kohn Proposal, 1948." Israel Studies 15,1 (2010): 1-24.

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Abstract

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 declared that the states which will be established in the Land of Israel should accept a constitution. Dr. Leo Kohn was chosen to write the constitution proposal for the Jewish State. The article describes his constitutional project, which was carried out in three stages between the end of 1947 and October 1948. It identifies the sources of his influence in his proposals, names the figures that assisted in writing the proposals, and tries to understand the reasons for the changes made in the three versions of his proposal. It considers the claim that essential changes were due to the fundamental debate concerning the nature of the constitution of the Jewish State: Should it be similar to the constitutions of modern democratic states, or should it express the Jewish tradition and protect the special Jewish character of the state?

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URL: http://inscribe.iupress.org/doi/abs/10.2979/ISR.2010.15.1.1

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Keywords: Israel: Law, Constitution, Democracy, Jewish Identity, Israel: Religion, Religious-Secular Divide, Zionism: State establishment, עמיחי רדזינר