Political entrepreneurs and electoral capital: the case of the Israeli State Economy Arrangement Law

Meydani, Assaf

doi:10.1007/s10602-008-9040-x

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…This crisis was manifested by increasing cabinet instability, policy fragmentation (Nachmias andArbel-Ganz 2005, 2006), and bureaucratic agenda control (Meydani 2008;Rosenthal 2011), alongside a decreasing level of effective policy implementation (Rosenthal and Wolfson 2010). Furthermore, public trust in the way that the government functions is significantly lower than it is in most European democracies (Lewin-Epstein and Adler 2011).…”

Section: Israel: Politics and Ethnicity In National And Local Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inverted First- and Second-Order Elections: The Israeli Case

Nachmias¹,

Rosenthal²,

Zubida³

2012

Israel Studies Review

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While national government elections are perceived as firstorder institutions that result in relatively high turnout rates, local elections are viewed as second-order institutions and are usually characterized by low turnout rates. We claim that this behavior is conditioned by the stakes that voters associate with elections as well as the voters' relative position in the socio-ethnic stratification structure. In this article we show that such conditions may yield an inversion in voters' perspectives. In other words, voters who are alienated from national government institutions and who are effectively mobilized by leaders of their socio-ethnic groups, which have high stakes in second-order institutions, tend to invert their preference with regard to the significance of elections. In such instances, national elections become second-order elections, and local elections become first-order elections. We use ballot-box level data from two national and two local elections in Israel to test this theory.

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Section: Israel: Politics and Ethnicity In National And Local Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inverted First- and Second-Order Elections: The Israeli Case

Nachmias¹,

Rosenthal²,

Zubida³

2012

Israel Studies Review

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“…While these problems started in the 1970s with a growing tension between the government and society, they reached their peak at the beginning of the twenty-first century with increasing social and economic gaps among constituent groups in society. As a result, there has been a decline in the politicians’ power and their ability to overcome the various demands of self-serving interest groups [5]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the literature regards judicial review as a legitimate forum for resolving the competing interests of the Court and the Parliament [5, 17] with a negligible influence of the Court on politics and policy [18], aside from more general explanations concerning judicial restraint the analysis we provide reveals how the Supreme Court seeks to increase its institutional power at the expense of the Government in an era of non-governability. The result of these efforts may be the abdication of the Court’s responsibility to protect the right to healthcare services to the Ministry of Finance (rather than the Knesset).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A neo-institutional analysis of the hidden interaction between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Ministry of Finance: the right to healthcare services

Sperling

Cohen

2018

Isr J Health Policy Res

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BackgroundUnder structural conditions of non-governability, most players in the policy arena in Israel turn to two main channels that have proven effective in promoting the policies they seek: the submission of petitions to the High Court of Justice and making legislative amendments through the Economic Arrangements Law initiated by the Ministry of Finance. Nevertheless, an analysis of the principal trends emerging from the High Court of Justice rulings and legislative amendments through the Economic Arrangements Law indicates that these channels are open to influence, primarily by forces that are essentially neo-liberal. Little is known about the effects of these trends on the right to healthcare services, which in Israel has not been legislated as an independent constitutional law in Basic Laws.MethodsWe use four major legal cases decided by the Supreme Court of Israel in the past 10 years where the Court reviewed new legislative initiatives proposed by the Economic Arrangements Law in the area of healthcare. We utilize an institutional approach in our analysis.ResultsA neo-institutional analysis of the legal cases demonstrates that petitions against the Economic Arrangements Law in the area of healthcare services have been denied, even though the Court uses strong rhetoric against that law and the government more generally in addressing issues that concern access to healthcare services and reforms in the healthcare system. This move strengthens the trend toward a neo-liberal public policy and significantly weakens the legal protection of the right to healthcare services.ConclusionIn deciding petitions against the Economic Arrangements Law in the area of healthcare, the Supreme Court allows the Ministry of Finance to be a dominant player in the formation of public policy. In doing so, it may be promoting a goal of strengthening its position as a political institution that aspires to increase the public’s trust in the judiciary and especially in the Supreme Court itself, in addition to exercising judicial restraint and allowing more leeway to the executive and legislative branches more generally.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13584-018-0261-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…These interviews support the proposition that, due to cabinet instability, the key player in policy-making processes in the Israeli public sector is the top echelons of the bureaucracy. Moreover, as other accounts show (Meydani 2008(Meydani , 2009 if there is external control over the design phase, it comes from specific parts of the bureaucracy-parts which were delegated powers to regulate the policy process, mostly the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice. Following these outcomes, a statistical model is developed and applied to a non-probabilistic quota sample of about 190 middle and upper management in Israel's public sector.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, there has also been an increasing involvement of the judicial branch in the public administration, in a way that empowers and enforces the government's legal advisor to implement the Supreme Court's rulings on public policy responsiveness and accountability (Meydani 2009: 34-35). Moreover, the process of shaping and controlling the government's budget has been delegated to the department of budgets in the Ministry of Finance, a division which maximizes its agenda power and utilizes it so as to shape a budget that advances pro-market reforms while minimizing the involvement of the political branch in that process (Meydani 2008). Thus, not only that politicians do not forcefully rule the policy design phase of the policy process, it is ruled by specific parts of the bureaucracy that, due to a series of institutional and constitutional decisions have agenda setting and veto powers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Agenda control in an unstable multiparty parliamentary democracy: evidence from the Israeli public sector

Rosenthal

2011

Const Polit Econ

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As elected politicians' knowledge, information and expertise about the policy process decrease, so will their ability to control it and to independently shape its agenda. When elected politicians spend less time in their positions due to cabinet instability, they will have less knowledge about policy issues in comparison to career bureaucrats. Multiparty parliamentary systems are characterized by cabinet instability, hence increasing the likelihood of this phenomenon. Indeed it has been shown that in these systems the bureaucracy is the main player in the policy process. This paper illustrates this phenomenon in the Israeli context, a clear example of a multiparty democracy with an unstable cabinet and a dominant bureaucracy.

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Political entrepreneurs and electoral capital: the case of the Israeli State Economy Arrangement Law

Abstract: Institutional political economy, Law and politics, Public policy, Israel, Political culture,

Cited by 12 publications

References 20 publications

Inverted First- and Second-Order Elections: The Israeli Case

Inverted First- and Second-Order Elections: The Israeli Case

A neo-institutional analysis of the hidden interaction between the Israeli Supreme Court and the Ministry of Finance: the right to healthcare services

Agenda control in an unstable multiparty parliamentary democracy: evidence from the Israeli public sector

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