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King Bibi: The Personification of Democratic Values in the 2019-2021 Election Cycle
Abstract
The 2019–2021 election cycle was focused on Netanyahu, the incumbent prime minister, for over a decade. Second on these elections’ agenda was the future of the Israeli democracy. Based on the literature of political personalization, this chapter examines whether and how Netanyahu has embodied attitudes toward democratic principles and values in this election cycle, calling this understudied manifestation of centralized personalization “personification.” The findings indeed indicate personification, beyond already-documented political and sociological sources of democratic support. Netanyahu personified authoritarian views as well as illiberal approaches. This chapter suggests that personification may be a mechanism of democratic erosion, thus joining the growing public and academic concerns about democratic backsliding in Israel and worldwide.
For more details on the book, see: https://www.routledge.com/The-Elections-in-Israel-20192021/Shamir-Rahat/p/book/9781032213392
Israel’s coalition effort (2023) to introduce a “(judicial) reform” was perceived by many Israelis as endangering Israel’s standing as a democratic state. The salience of silence as a theme and a form in the posters exhibited in the demonstrations supporting and opposing the coalition’s move triggered the examination of the semiotic roles played by silence in those posters and whether this use of silence differed by reform support/opposition. Two-hundred and twenty posters partaking in the demonstrations’ linguistic landscape were examined. Implementing an algorithm based on Ephratt’s (2022) model for identifying different types of silences revealed that fifty six of the posters alluded to one of the six categories of silence (stillness, symptomatic silences, silencing, pauses, the unsaid or verbal silence). These posters served as the data for a qualitative-thematic methodology, iteratively abstracting semiotic roles. Silences and silencing reoccurred as a theme concerning political discourse, particularly the matter of voice. The need for parsimonious use of crucial signantia on posters transformed into a semiotic strategy in which leaving out expected signantia served iconically to communicate absence, conatively activate the observers or express consent, metalinguistically convey the shortage of words, legally circumvent possible charges and create a hiatus that provides soothing qualities, enhancing in-group and out-group tolerance. The differing use of silence in the posters, depending on reform support/opposition, is explained in terms of horror vacui and motivation. Finally, the individual posters, as material texts, did not appear nor function in isolation: they took an active part in producing the demonstrations’ spatial semiotics.
Democracy is backsliding in Europe and around the world as citizens’ trust in elected representatives and institutions wanes. Representation theories and studies have mostly centred on the representatives, rather than the represented. But how do citizens perceive political representation? Are their perceptions of any consequence at all? In this paper, we set forth a framework of representation in the eyes of citizens, based on Pitkin’s classic concept of representation in conjunction with Weissberg’s distinction between dyadic and collective representations. We use Israel as a proof of concept for our theoretical framework, employing an original set of survey items . We find that, in keeping with Pitkin’s framework, citizens perceive representation as multidimensional and depreciate the descriptive and symbolic—the standing-for—dimensions. Furthermore, citizens’ democratic attitudes are shaped by collective representation by the parliament rather than by dyadic representation by an elected representative. We conclude with a call for a greater focus on representation from the citizens’ standpoint.
Using the 2023 controversy over Israel's judicial overhaul as a case, this article analyzes the broader, decades-long debate about the nature of the Israeli regime. It demonstrates how conflicting assumptions about democracy and the Israeli regime underpin different interpretations of the proposed judicial overhaul. The 2023 debate contraposed majoritarian and liberal orientations, echoing previous understandings of Israel as either a liberal democracy or a diminished type of democracy like ethnic democracy. Despite their differences, both positions in this debate regard Israel as a democracy equivalent to other liberal democracies in the West and neglect the question of the regime's borders and its implication for the regime's classification.
Does affective polarization spill over to affect perceptions of welfare deservingness, and how does it impact the deservingness heuristics that have been shown to play a meaningful role in shaping such preferences? We explore these questions in the context of the 2023 Israeli judicial crisis, a case in which political rivalry loomed large. We hypothesized that during the crisis, affective polarization could manifest as a willingness to deny welfare benefits to political opponents, thereby exacerbating socio-economic disparities. Using a pre-registered factorial survey experiment, and in line with our expectations, we find that individuals are much less supportive of providing welfare benefits to applicants from the opposing camp. We also find that the mere mentioning of political affiliation through participation in protests reduces the level of support for the welfare recipients, compared to the control group where no political activity was mentioned, even for welfare recipients from the same political camp as the respondent. Our study has several implications. Firstly, it broadens our understanding of the effects of affective polarization on issues beyond the political debate at hand, such as government assistance for welfare recipients. Secondly, the research provides preliminary findings on the effects of the political crisis in Israel on central social issues that seemed to be on the fringes of the dispute. In doing so, it sheds light on the depth of the divide and the issues policymakers will need to address after the crisis is resolved. Finally, the Israeli case is not unique, and therefore the findings are relevant to other countries experiencing similar political upheavals. Given that the levels of affective polarization in Israel are similar to those in other countries, and considering the growing global trend of political crises revolving around judicial reforms, it would be beneficial to examine the findings in other countries.
During the second decade of the twenty-first century, Israel’s Religious Zionist camp has undergone a process of accelerated Dealignment of its partisan system, resulting in the transformation of the political parties comprising it into a Dealigned Partisan Subsystem. An example of this process can be found in the transformations that took place in the ‘Jewish Home’ Religious-Zionist political party led by Naftali Bennett. Within 9 years and seven election campaigns, the party succeeded in trying out the Open Camp Party model, experiencing a division led by Bennett himself, and finally reaching the verge of disappearing and once again initiating renewed revival attempts. The Dealignment of partisan systems includes a high level of voters’ mobility; a decline in the support of existing mainstream parties; a decline in voting rates; and a decline in the strength of partisan identification, while voting patterns become more personal. The partisan system itself changes during this stage, with old parties disappearing and others rising in their place, often only to disappear from the political map as quickly as they appeared. This article illustrates the extent to which the Religious-Zionist partisan subsystem in Israeli politics during the second decade of the twenty-first century until the 2022 elections campaign corresponds with most characteristics of a Dealigned system.
Among Israel’s Jewish society, which constitutes about 85% of the county’s voter base (about 15% are Arab voters), voters’ level of religiousness is considered, in relevant fields of research, the strongest predictor of voting behavior as well as of a wide range of political attitudes. Most prominent is the very high correlation found between a high level of religiousness and hawkish right-wing political positions, and vice versa: a secular self-definition is a very good predictor of dovish left-wing approaches. A vast majority of voters defining themselves as religious support the Likud and right-wing parties belonging to the Likud’s bloc. Conversely, a large (if not decisive) majority of voters defining themselves as secular vote for central and left-wing parties. In the 21st Knesset elections that took place in April 2019 it became clear that the bloc consisting of the Likud, further right-wing parties, and religious parties, have a significant structural advantage over the central-leftist bloc. The rightist bloc won 65 mandates compared with 55 for the center-left bloc (the Knesset—the Israeli parliament, has 120 seats), despite the fact that the rightist bloc lost at least five potential seats due to religious voters who supported extreme rightist parties that failed to pass the electoral threshold.
Until recently, many political scientists had believed that the stability of democracy is assured once certain threshold conditions – prosperity, democratic legitimacy, the development of a robust civil society – were attained. Democracy would then be consolidated, and remain stable. In this article we show that levels of support for
democratic governance are not stable over time, even among high-income democracies, and have declined in recent years. In contrast to theories of democratic consolidation, we suggest that just as democracy can come to be “the only game in town” through processes of democratic deepening and the broad-based acceptance of democratic institutions, so too a process of democratic deconsolidation can take place as citizens sour on democratic institutions, become more open to authoritarian alternatives, and vote for anti-system parties. Public opinion measures of democratic deconsolidation are strongly associated
with subsequent declines in the actual extent of democratic governance and predict not only recent democratic backsliding in transitional democracies, such as Venezuela or Russia, but also anticipated the downgrades in Freedom House scores occurring across a range of western democracies since 2016.
This article compares the dynamics of polarization in the eleven case studies analyzed in this special issue to draw conclusions about antecedents of severe political and societal polarization, the characteristics and mechanisms of such polarization, and consequences of severe polarization for democracy. We find that the emergence of pernicious polarization (when a society is split into mutually distrustful “Us vs. Them” camps) is not attributable to any specific underlying social or political cleavage nor any particular institutional make-up. Instead, pernicious polarization arises when political entrepreneurs pursue their political objectives by using polarizing strategies, such as mobilizing voters with divisive, demonizing discourse and exploiting existing grievances, and opposing political elites then reciprocate with similarly polarizing tactics or fail to develop effective nonpolarizing responses. We explain how the political construction of polarization around “formative rifts” (social or political rifts that arise during the fundamental formation/reformation of a nation-state), the relative capacity of opposing political blocs to mobilize voters versus relying on mechanisms such as courts or the military to constrain the executive, and the strategic and ideological aims of the polarizing actors contribute to the emergence of its pernicious form. We analyze the consequences for democracy and conclude with reflections on how to combat pernicious polarization. © 2019 by The American Academy of Political and Social Science.
In recent years, parties and candidates challenging key democratic norms have won unprecedented popular support in liberal democracies across the globe. Drawing on public opinion data from the World Values Survey and various national polls, we show that the success of anti-establishment parties and candidates is not a temporal or geographic aberration, but rather a reflection of growing popular disaffection with liberal-democratic norms and institutions, and of increasing support for authoritarian interpretations of democracy. The record number of anti-system politicians in office raises uncertainty about the strength of supposedly “consolidated” liberal democracies and highlights the need for further analysis of the signs of democratic deconsolidation.
Abstract
The citizens of wealthy, established democracies are less satisfied with their governments than they have been at any time since opinion polling began. Most scholars have interpreted this as a sign of dissatisfaction with particular governments rather than with the political system as a whole. Drawing on recent public opinion data, we suggest that this optimistic interpretation is no longer plausible. Across a wide sample of countries in North America and Western Europe, citizens of mature democracies have become markedly less satisfied with their form of government and surprisingly open to nondemocratic alternatives. A serious democratic disconnect has emerged. If it widens even further, it may begin to challenge the stability of seemingly consolidated democracies.
This article discusses the empirical evidence of four of the more controversial pillars of the democratic elitism thesis that has been defined by early studies. The review in this article further supports the survey studies that compare the elite and mass opinions in cross-national contexts. An assessment of the elitists' claims is conducted; the empirical evidence from three bodies of research is carefully evaluated.
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.
“In God We Trust: Everyone Else Pays Cash.” America's political leaders should not pretend to godliness; no one will be fooled. According to prestigious biennial national surveys, the government's credit rating has steadily declined as a result of a disastrous foreign investment and growing consumer resistance to its “line” of products. Neither the country's present management nor its most prominent rivals inspire public confidence. How, then, can the political system rebuild its depleted reserves of political trust, the basis of future growth and stability? Will “one good season,” better advertising, new blood in the boardroom or product innovation be sufficient? Or is a drastic restructuring of the regime's organization and operating procedures the only alternative to liquidation?
Arthur Miller's article, “Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964–70” makes an important contribution to our understanding of the sharp increase in political cynicism among the American public. Miller evokes the language of the corporation balance-sheet and the imagery of Executive Suite by suggesting that the cumulative outcome of exchanges between political authorities on the one hand and citizens on the other determines the level of public trust in government. Political elites “produce” policies; in exchange, they receive trust from citizens satisfied with these policies and cynicism from those who are disappointed. Since Miller defines both policy satisfaction and political trust in attitudinal terms, the exchange transactions he records are purely psychological in nature. Operationally, dissatisfied respondents are those whose own policy preferences are discrepant with their perceptions of the positions advocated by the party controlling the presidency.
Personalization has become a central concept in discussions on how political news, and election coverage in particular, has changed over time. The general belief is that the focus of news coverage has shifted from parties and organizations to candidates and leaders. However, the evidence is far from conclusive. This is due in no small part to a lack of conceptual clarity and an absence of common operationalizations which are a major cause of the unclear or conflicting conclusions about the personalization of political news. This article seeks to remedy this shortcoming. It presents a model for comprehending the personalization of political news based on a review of relevant studies. The article makes a series of recommendations for how the concept might be operationalized for an analysis of media content in order to enable cross-nationally comparative research.
In the literature on European integration, politicization as concept is often attributed major importance. This article shows how the literature variously discusses the politicization of European Union (EU) institutions, the politicization of EU decision‐making processes or the politicization of EU issues. Similarly, the literature attributes three different functions to politicization: it functions to crystallize opposing advocacy coalitions, to raise the question of legitimacy and to alter the course of European integration. Despite this diversity, this article argues we are in fact dealing with an encompassing process. To further our understanding of politicization of European integration, politicization as process is defined as an increase in polarization of opinions, interests or values and the extent to which they are publicly advanced towards policy formulation within the EU. Furthermore, attention is directed to practices of representative claims‐making in the public sphere through which relationships of delegation and accountability can be altered in discourse.
This study addresses the as yet unaddressed question of the nature of the effects of religiosity and authoritarianism upon endorsement of abstract democratic values. Findings obtained through the analyses of structural equations show that, despite the unsettled political and security atmosphere, Israelis believe in democratic values to a considerable extent. Furthermore, findings do not fully support the theoretical expectation that religiosity is likely to decrease support for democratic values; namely, in and of itself, religiosity has a negligible impact on endorsement of democratic values. Yet again, analyses lend credence to theory on authoritarianism—the negative effect of religiosity on endorsement of democratic values results from the mediation of authoritarianism. These findings are understood and discussed with regard to theoretical implications. The major conclusion, then, in contrast to existing assumptions regarding religiosity and negation of democracy linkage, is that religiosity cannot be considered the sole direct root cause of negation of democracy.
Israel attracts enormous attention among scholars, journalists, politicians, and the general public. Some regard the country as an apartheid regime that can only be challenged through boycotts and sanctions. Others believe it is a stable liberal democracy, created under extreme conditions. This book seeks to unravel these conflicting interpretations by focusing on three questions: How can the Israeli regime be classified? What are the borders of the Israeli regime? And what are the key factors that shape the regime and support its relative stability? Gal Ariely calls for an approach which disaggregates democracy into specific dimensions, examining the diverse aspects of the Israeli regime to determine the level of 'democraticness' exhibited rather than classifying the regime as a whole. In doing so he provides a comprehensive account of the Israeli regime, untangling conflicting interpretations and illustrates the advantages of using this approach for analysing disputed regimes more widely.
American political observers express increasing concern about affective polarization, i.e., partisans' resentment toward political opponents. We advance debates about America's partisan divisions by comparing affective polarization in the US over the past 25 years with affective polarization in 19 other western publics. We conclude that American affective polarization is not extreme in comparative perspective, although Americans' dislike of partisan opponents has increased more rapidly since the mid-1990s than in most other Western publics. We then show that affective polarization is more intense when unemployment and inequality are high; when political elites clash over cultural issues such as immigration and national identity; and in countries with majoritarian electoral institutions. Our findings situate American partisan resentment and hostility in comparative perspective, and illuminate correlates of affective polarization that are difficult to detect when examining the American case in isolation.
It is widely believed that democracy requires public support to survive. The empirical evidence for this hypothesis is weak, however, with existing tests resting on small cross‐sectional samples and producing contradictory results. The underlying problem is that survey measures of support for democracy are fragmented across time, space, and different survey questions. In response, this article uses a Bayesian latent variable model to estimate a smooth country‐year panel of democratic support for 135 countries and up to 29 years. The article then demonstrates a positive effect of support on subsequent democratic change, while adjusting for the possible confounding effects of prior levels of democracy and unobservable time‐invariant factors. Support is, moreover, more robustly linked with the endurance of democracy than its emergence in the first place. As Lipset (1959) and Easton (1965) hypothesized over 50 years ago, public support does indeed help democracy survive.
Democracy in the United States and Europe is said to be at the crossroads. I review five recent books that seek to diagnose and cure this ‘crisis’. Explanations range from institutional dysfunction and elite maleficence to technological change and rising economic inequality. Remedies include everything from institutional engineering to moral persuasion. Collectively, the books raise two important questions: is this really a crisis and if it is, can democratisation theory, the branch of political science dedicated to explaining why regimes rise and fall, tell us why? I conclude that if we are to explain the deconsolidation of well-established democracies in which all of the usual pre-conditions had been met, then we must first question the linear narrative about democracy being a naturally legitimate form of regime.
Our aim is to propose guidelines for the analysis of political personalization and personalized politics in general and for behavioural personalization in particular. The first guideline is based on our understanding that personalization comes at the cost of party politics. It suggests that in order to classify politics as more or less personalized, we must compare it to an alternative party-oriented politics. Based on a synthesis of existing theoretical work, the second guideline suggests three analytical dimensions to clarify the multidimensional concept of personalization: arena, level and character. Arena refers to where personalization takes place; level refers to whose power or independence is changing; and character refers to how personalization is manifested. Furthermore, we present the contributions of this special issue and explain how they follow the two guidelines and advance our understanding and knowledge of behavioural political personalization.
The book examines two of the most prominent developments in contemporary democratic politics, party change and political personalization, and the relationship between them. It presents a broad-brush, cross-national comparison of these phenomena that covers around fifty years in twenty-six countries through the use of more than twenty indicators. It demonstrates that, behind a general trend of decline of political parties, there is much variance among countries. In some, party decline is moderate or even small, which may point to adaptation to the changing environments these parties operate in. In others, parties sharply decline. Most cases fall between these two poles. A clear general trend of personalization in politics is identified, but there are large differences among countries in its magnitude and manifestations. Surprisingly, the online world seems to supply parties with an opportunity to revive. When parties decline, personalization increases. Yet these are far from being perfect zero-sum relationships, which leaves room for the possibility that other political actors may step in when parties decline and that, in some cases, personalization may not hurt parties; it may even strengthen them. Personalization is a big challenge to parties. But parties were, are, and will remain a solution to the problem of collective action, of channeling personal energies to the benefit of the group. Thus they can cope with personalization and even use it to their advantage.
National survey data demonstrate that support of the federal government decreased substantially between 1964 and 1970. Policy preference, a lack of perceived difference between the parties, and policy dissatisfaction were hypothesized as correlates of trust and alternative explanations of this decrease. Analysis revealed that the increased distrust in government, or cynicism, was associated with reactions to the issues of racial integration and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. A curvilinear relationship was found between policy preference on these and other contemporary social issues and political cynicism. The minority favoring centrist policies was more likely to trust the government than the large proportion who preferred noncentrist policy alternatives. This complex relationship between trust and policy preference is explained by dissatisfaction with the policies of both political parties. The dissatisfied noncentrists formed highly polarized and distinct types: “cynics of the left,” who preferred policies providing social change, and “cynics of the right,” who favored policies of social control.
This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was published by Harvard University Press in 1997; this second volume analyses a series of interrelated questions. The first two are diagnostic: how far are there legitimate grounds for concern about public support for democracy worldwide; and are trends towards growing cynicism found in the US evident in many established and newer democracies? The second concern is analytical: what are the main political, economic, and cultural factors driving the dynamics of support for democratic government? The final questions are prescriptive: what are the consequences of this analysis and what are the implications for strengthening democratic governance? The book brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who develop a global analysis of these issues by looking at trends in established and newer democracies towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapters draw upon the third wave (1995–1997) World Values Survey as well as using an extensive range of comparative empirical evidence.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, the book concludes that accounts of a democratic ‘crisis’ are greatly exaggerated. By the mid‐1990s most citizens worldwide shared widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democratic government, although at the same time there remains a marked gap between evaluations of the ideal and the practice of democracy. The publics in many newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America have proved deeply critical of the performance of their governing regimes, and during the 1980s many established democracies saw a decline in public confidence in the core institutions of representative democracy, including parliaments, the legal system, and political parties. The book considers the causes and consequences of the development of critical citizens in three main parts: cross‐national trends in confidence in governance; testing theories with case studies; and explanations of trends.
Journal of Democracy 11.2 (2000) 5-25
A quarter-century ago, Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki argued that the nations of Europe, North America, and Japan confronted a "crisis of democracy." Their starting point was a vision, widespread during the 1960s and 1970s, of "a bleak future for democratic government," an image of "the disintegration of civil order, the breakdown of social discipline, the debility of leaders, and the alienation of citizens."
The central thesis of the subtle, nuanced, and wide-ranging analysis by Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki (hereafter CH&W) was that the Trilateral democracies were becoming overloaded by increasingly insistent demands from an ever-expanding array of participants, raising fundamental issues of governability. Within that common framework, the three authors offered somewhat distinct diagnoses of the problems facing their respective regions. In Europe, Crozier emphasized the upwelling of social mobilization, the collapse of traditional institutions and values, the resulting loss of social control, and governments' limited room for maneuver. Huntington asserted that America was swamped by a "democratic surge" that had produced political polarization, demands for more equality and participation, and less effective political parties and government. His provocative therapy was to "restore the balance" between democracy and governability. By contrast, Watanuki argued that Japan did not (yet?) face problems of "excessive" democracy, thanks in part to rapid economic growth and in part to its larger reservoir of traditional values. Whatever the regional and national nuances, however, the authors sketched a grim outlook for democracy in the Trilateral countries: delegitimated leadership, expanded demands, overloaded government, political competition that was both intensified and fragmented, and public pressures leading to nationalistic parochialism.
In historical perspective, the sense of crisis that permeated The Crisis of Democracy may have reflected the confluence of two factors: first, the surge of radical political activism that swept the advanced industrial democracies in the 1960s, which began with the civil rights and antiwar movements in United States and was then echoed in the events of May 1968 in France, Italy's "Hot Autumn" later that year, and student upheavals in Japan; and second, the economic upheavals triggered by the oil crisis of 1973-74 that were to result in more than a decade of higher inflation, slower growth, and, in many countries, worsening unemployment. The Trilateral governments were thus trapped between rising demands from citizens and declining resources to meet those demands. Moreover, the legitimacy of governments was suspect in the eyes of a generation whose motto was: "Question Authority." CH&W warned that these ominous developments posed a threat to democracy itself.
A quarter-century is an opportune interval after which to revisit the issue of the performance of our democratic institutions. The intervening years have witnessed many important developments in our domestic societies, economies, and polities, as well as in the international setting.
Most dramatic of all, of course, was the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. If it did not signal the end of history, the removal of the communist threat surely did mark the end of a historical epoch. It transformed the fundamental underpinnings of security alliances and eliminated the principal philosophical and geopolitical challenge to liberal democracy and the market economy. In some of the Trilateral countries it also coincided with, and to some extent triggered, an intellectual and ideological revolution. In each country it transformed domestic political calculations and alignments in ways that are still being played out.
Economically, the decades that followed the appearance of the CH&W volume were distinctly less happy than those that preceded it. The oil shocks of 1973-74 and 1979-80 drew the curtain on that fortunate early-postwar combination of high growth, low inflation, and low unemployment. Although economists differ on the origins of the pervasive slowdown, virtually all econometric analyses confirm the view of the man and woman in the street: Western economies took a turn for the worse around 1973-74, and recovery was a slow and uncertain process. The immediate inflationary effects of the oil crises were overcome by means of stringent monetary policies, but the economic malaise continued. In...
Most democratic citizens today are distrustful of politicians, political parties, and political institutions. Where once democracies expected an allegiant public, citizens now question the very pillars of representative democracy. This book documents the erosion of political support in virtually all advanced industrial democracies. Assembling a large array of cross-national public opinion data, this book traces the current challenges to democracy primary to changing citizen values and rising expectations. These dissatisfied democrats are concentrated among the young, the better educated, and the politically sophisticated. At the same time, the evidence debunks claims that such trends are a function of scandals, poor performance, and other government failures. Changing public opinion is born from the successful social modernization of these nations. A creedal passion for democracy is sweeping across the Western democracies, and people now expect more of their governments. This book concludes by examining the consequences of these changing images of government. The book finds that these expectations are making governing more difficult, but also fuelling demands for political reform. The choices that democracies may in response to these challenges lead to a further expansion of the democratic process and a new relationship between citizens and their government.
In recent years, there has been an increase in interest in the personalization of politics. Unfortunately, the findings of studies carried out in different countries have led to inconsistent conclusions. This article argues that one of the reasons for this inconsistency is the lack of uniform conceptualization and operational definitions. The authors contend that it is helpful to make a distinction between institutional, media, and behavioral types of political personalization, and they provide specific measures of all three types. These clear distinctions should bring us closer to answering two questions: First, has there been a rise in the different types of political personalization? Second, what is the relationship between these various types of political personalization? This study shows, through a historical comparative analysis of the Israeli case (1949-2003), that political personalization can be better understood by employing Wolfsfeld's politics-media-politics (PMP) model: Institutional personalization leads to personalization in the media, which in turn leads to personalization in the behavior of politicians.
Why Just-Not-Bibi After All
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Clear and Immediate Danger: It Is Time to Limit the Term of Office of the Prime Minister of Israel
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Handbook of Israel: Major Debates
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Bending the Rules: Kahol Lavan Also Leads Moves that Crumble Democracy
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Personalization of Campaigning
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The Triumph of Polarization
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A Re-Assessment of the Concept of Political Support
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Support for Democracy
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The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies
- Thomas Poguntke
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Presidentialization, Personalization and Populism: The Hollowing Out of Party Government
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Political Efficacy in Israel: Comparative and Historical Perspectives
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Perspectives. M.A. Thesis, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.
Taken Captive by the Collective Identity Cleavage: Left and Right in the 2015 Elections
- Michal Shamir
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by the Collective Identity Cleavage: Left and Right in the 2015 Elections." In The
Elections in Israel 2015, edited by Michal Shamir and Gideon Rahat, 139-164. New
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The Political Context of Tolerance: A Cross-National Perspective from Israel and the United States
- Michal Shamir
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Just Not Just-Not-Bibi
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Myth and Reality of the Legitimacy Crisis: Explaining Trends and Cross-National Differences in Established Democracies
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- Thomassen
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Myth and Reality of the Legitimacy Crisis: Explaining Trends and Cross-National
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