Israel’s Democracy and Comparative Politics

This paper indicates how fruitful the integration of Israeli politics into comparative politics may be both for the study of Israeli politics and for theory-building in comparative politics. Special characteristics of the Israeli polity? constitutional government without a constitution, the religion-state relationship, the control system of the Arab minority, the political role of the "non-political" army, the consociationalism between Orthodox and secular elites, and the impact of the occupied territories on Israel's democracy? can be better understood in comparative perspective. In the same way comparative political studies in areas such as the rise and fall of dominant parties, the mode of operation of grand coalitions, the role of the military-industrial complex in a liberal democracy, the problem of "new" minorities, the influence of diasporas, and the constitutional dilemmas involved in constitutional engineering in deeply divided societies could very well benefit from a closer study of the Israeli polity.