Israel Studies Forum

This book offers a theoretically-informed analysis of the way in which Israeli national identity has shaped Israel's foreign policy. By linking domestic identity politics to Israeli foreign policy, it reveals how a crisis of Israeli identity inflamed the debate in Israel over the Oslo peace process.

7. Jewish Ideological Killers: Religious Fundamentalism or Ethnic Marginality? -- 8. Israeli Fiction: National Identity and Private Lives -- 9. Israeli Hebrew: National Identity and Language -- 10. The Politics of Israel: Relations with the American Jewish Community -- Conclusion: Imagination and Reality in Scenarios of Israel's Future

Government and individual policymakers throughout the developed and developing world face the common problem of bringing expert knowledge to bear in government decision making. Policymakers need understandable, reliable, accessible, and useful information about the societies they govern. They also need to know how current policies are working, as well as possible alternatives and their likely costs and consequences. This expanding need has fostered the growth of independent public policy research organizations, commonly known as think tanks. Think Tanks and Civil Societies analyzes their growth, scope, and constraints, while providing institutional profiles of such organizations in every region of the world.Beginning with North America, contributors analyze think tank development past and future, consider their relationship to the general political culture, and provide detailed looks at such examples as the Heritage Foundation and the Institute for Research on Public Policy. A historical and subregional overview of think tanks throughout Europe notes the emphasis on European Union issues and points to a dramatic rise in the number and influence of free market institutes across the continent. Think tanks in Germany, Spain, and France are profiled with respect to national politics and cultures. Advanced industrial nations of northern Asia are compared and contrasted, revealing a greater need for independent policy voices. Moving to countries undergoing economic transition, contributors deal with challenges posed in Russia and the former Soviet bloc and their think tanks' search for influence, independence, and sustainability. Other chapters deal with the developing countries of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, finding that the number, quality, and independence of think tanks is largely determined by the degree of democracy in individual nations.

This book examines Israeli strategies of adapting to a crisis of governability brought on by institutional stagnation. The book uses a new theory emphasizing the role of policy entrepreneurs in political institutions, and ultimately offers a method of electoral reform to address systemic maladies in the Israeli political system.

This book presents a comprehensive historical account of sociology in Israel the first history of sociology in Israel, from its beginnings in late 19th-century to the early 21st-century. It locates the ruptures and reorientations of the sociological text within its shifting historical context. Israeli sociology is shown to have evolved in tandem with the development of the Israeli-Jewish nation in Palestine, and later of the state of Israel. Offering a critical overview of the origins and the development of the discipline, it argues that this can be divided into the following phases: Predecessors (1882-1948), Founders (1948-1977), Disciples (1967-1977), Critics and More Critics (1977-1987), Intermediators (1977-2018), Post-Modernists (1993-2018) and Post-Colonialists (1993-2018). This book contributes a fascinating national case study to the history of sociology and will appeal further to students and scholars of social theory and Israel Studies.

A narrative chronicle of Israeli democracy that defines historic phases and follows thematic challenges to democracy, including: competition between religion and the rule of law; the statist society and chaotic minoritocracy; modern illiberal populism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The comprehensive portrait exposes endemic flaws of democracy in Israel, but also shows that Israel has considerable capacity – and responsibility – to fulfill the promise of democracy.