Abraham Diskin

• Professor
• Hebrew University of Jerusalem

We consider a thought experiment in which voters could submit binary preferences regarding each of a pre-determined list of independent relevant issues, so that majorities could be tallied per issue. It might be thought that if such voting became technically feasible and widespread, parties and coalitions could be circumvented altogether and would...

This article falls into three main sections. The first outlines the basic features of the Israeli electoral system established in 1949, with minor amendments in the allocation formula (in 1973) and the electoral threshold (in 1992). The second covers unsuccessful proposals to reform Knesset elections in the periods 1949-77, 1977-90, and 1990 to dat...

In many ways, the 2015 parliamentary elections in Israel followed patterns that have been evident ever since the establishment of the state. The campaign positions of the parties, the politicians, and the voters related predominantly to defense and foreign affairs, and less to socio-economic policies. Religion-state issues in general, and the relat...

Many democratically elected representative governments around the world require the formation of a coalition to create a government that is expected to be durable and stable. Creating such a coalition is far from trivial. This research describes a computerized coalition formation decision support system that attempts to meet this challenging task a...

Felsenthal and Machover have made substantial contributions to the measurement of voting power. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that the notion of political power is actually a quite general one of which voting power is one instantiation. In this brief paper, we consider political power in the general sense and propose a definition. We will s...

We define a family of solutions for n-person bargaining problems which generalizes the discrete Raiffa solution and approaches the continuous Raiffa solution. Each member of this family is a stepwise solution, which is a pair of functions: a step-function that determines a new disagreement point for a given bargaining problem, and a solution functi...

Based on recent work that suggests that voters in proportional representation (PR) systems have incentives to cast strategic votes, the authors hypothesize that levels of strategic voting are similar in both first-past-the-post (FPTP) and PR systems. Comparing vote intentions in majoritarian elections in the United States, Mexico, Britain, and Isra...

The main aim of this paper is to study the power of legislators in the Lower House of the Czech Parliament in 1996–2004 with respect to power distribution and its uncertainty. A discrepancy between a-priori computed power indices and outcome of voting leads to necessity to reveal the possible source of uncertainty. This paper studies uncertainty in...

In 1957 Downs claimed that most voters tend to hold centrist views. Hence, political parties should adopt centrist stands in order to attract as many voters as possible. Another aspect of the ‘political centre’ derives from prominent theories on coalition formation: the political party that captures the ‘median’ position in the parliament enjoys a...

The measurement of disproportionality, volatility and malapportionment often employ similar indices. Yet the debate on the issue of adequate measurement has remained open. We offer a formal and rigorous list of properties that roughly subsume those of Taagepera and Grofman (Party Polit 9(6):659–677, 2003). One of these properties, Dalton’s principl...

En refusant d’entrer dans la coalition gouvernementale Tzipi Livni joue l’avenir politique de son parti et peut-être même le sien propre.

The purpose of the article is to examine the applicability of several well‐known theoretical concepts from the theory of coalition formation. The attempt to apply the term winning coalition to the system of inter‐Arab relations raises problems which derive from the fuzzy boundaries of the system, from the sovereign status of the states involved, an...

The authors reexamine the relationship between closeness and turnout by looking at aggregate-level variables and studying fifty-seven elections. They also attempt to estimate how much voter turnout is likely to change as a function of change in the closeness of elections. Specifically, they hypothesize that in first-past-the-post elections, turnout...

The general question addressed in this study is whether voting behaviour in referenda conducted in a pluralistic society tends to reflect more the heterogeneous or the homogeneous characteristics of this society. In order to answer this question we investigated, mainly by means of factor analysis, all 538 federal referenda conducted in Switzer...

During the 1990s the israeli political system faced a number of major upheavals on both the macro- and the micro-political levels. As a result many of its basic features changed considerably. Presently, it is more difficult to predict future political behaviour in Israel than ever before. One may point at the only successful no-confidence vote, whi...

We argue that Nash’s solution to the bargaining problem should be modified such that it will be based on a New Reference Point (NRP). Such a point is needed so that a player is not considered ‘individually rational’ if he accepts an agreement that provides him with a utility lower than the minimal utility he can derive from any Pareto optimal agre...

Most studies of democratic stability are based within either the socioeconomic or the politico-institutional tradition, but usually not on both. This article combines the two approaches. In all, 11 variables associated with democratic stability are divided into four groups (institutional, societal, mediating, and extraneous) and examined in 30 case...

The Israeli election for Prime Minister in 1999 featured five candidates. Three, including a major, centrally located candidate, Yitzhak Mordechai, withdrew from competition during the two days before the voting. Mordechai withdrew in large measure in reaction to the strategic decisions of voters, that is, some voters who favored him deserted his c...

During the 1990s many dramatic changes influenced the basic characteristics of the Israeli democracy. This volume examines the challenges and circumstances the country has faced and addresses both the public's and leadership's singular goal of "peace and security". The book also investigates the renewed constitutional framework which attempted to m...

We investigate strategic considerations in a contest using run-off rules and compare our results to elections using plurality rules and to those using proportional representation. We examine the unusual case of the Israeli Election of 1999, when two votes, one for a prime minister and one for a parliamentary party, were cast. Strategic consideratio...

This election note delineates the outcome of the 1999 elections in Israel, in which the Prime Minister was directly elected — for only the second time — concurrently with the parliamentary election. It then analyzes the election results produced by Israel's unique electoral system, and assesses their immediate ramifications.

This article falls into three main sections. The first outlines the basic features of the Israeli electoral system established in 1949, with minor amendments in the allocation formula (in 1973) and the electoral threshold (in 1992). The second covers unsuccessful proposals to reform Knesset elections in the periods 1949-77, 1977-90, and 1990 to dat...

This note reports the results of an attempt to detect a systematic pattern in the development of terrorist activity of the Palestine Liberation Organization during the period 1967-1978. Since its establishment in 1964 the PLO has seen the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as insoluble by political, as distinct from, military means. A quantitative analys...

On the basis of the results obtained by different experiments testing two-person bargaining situations, it is reasonable to assume that under certain circumstances bargainers are more likely to refer to a “minimum utility point” in forming their strategies, and hence reach different agreements than as hitherto suggested in the literature, e.g., the...

Attempts to ascertain respondents' attitudes and behavior in respect to sensitive subject matters through classical interviewing methods carry a significant risk of obtaining insincere responses. By employing three alternative types of interviewing methods, that is, regular interview, ballot-box, and the randomized response technique, one finds tha...

The model of “two‐dimensional mixed competitive situation” is suggested as a framework for the analysis of the Israeli‐Egyptian relations during the period 1956–1979. In mixed situations it can often happen that rivals having conflicting interests and no dominant course of action, will choose the same alternative if they employ the same decision cr...

The unfolding theory of decision making has extensively discussed competitive decision situations. However, one barely finds any discussion of mixed situations, i.e., situations in which both chance and a rival player are confronted simultaneously—especially when players are totally ignorant of the objective probabilities of the different natural s...

Abstract ,We re-examine the relationship between closeness and turnout by looking at aggregate-level variables and studying a large number of elections. We also attempt to estimate how muchvoter turnout is likely to change as a function of change in the

Abstract will be provided by author.