Policy Analysis In Israel

Israel is considered a developed country yet both security issues and its frequently changing demographic makeup set Israel apart and imply that Israeli policy analysts must operate in a unique environment and grapple with exceptional challenges. This volume, part of the successful International Library of Policy Analysis series, brings together for the first time a comprehensive study of policy analysis in Israel. Following an introductory chapter that discusses the paradoxical history of policy analysis in Israel by Yehezkel Dror, leading figures from both the Israeli public and academic spheres discuss different aspects of policy analysis in Israel. While Israeli policy analysis is in some respects unique, Israel also represents a broad category of states that could be considered as policy analysis late developers. Hence, while Israeli policy analysis is fascinating in and of itself, its study also holds important lessons for other countries.

A scathing and brilliant revisionist history, Defending the Holy Land is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy, from the inception of the State of Israel to the present. Book jacket.

This volume, part of the 'International Library of Policy Analysis' series, brings together for the first time leading figures from both the Israeli public and academic spheres to provide a comprehensive study of policy analysis in Israel.

The resurgence of political economy as an important topic reflects the deep interpenetration of politics and economics. There are few economic issues of consequence that are not shaped by government decisions, and there are few governments whose agendas are not dominated by economic issues. No country reflects the interpenetration of politics and economics as much as Israel.In this analysis, Ira Sharkansky examines the extensive involvement of the Israeli government in the country's economy, reflected in governmental expenditures that exceed the gross national product, intimate links between governmental activity and Israeli's standard of living, high inflation and other economic problems, and policymaking behaviors that include entrepreneurialism and indirection. He explores the strategic points of Israel's political economy, pursuing a qualitative analysis of Israeli problems and strategies for dealing with them. Those interested in policy analysis, political economy, comparative politics, comparative public administration, and Israeli politics will find this book invaluable.Contents: The Political Economy of Israel; What is the Israeli State? How Large is the Government Budget?; Israel's Standard of Living; Israeli Municipalities: Local Initiative amidst Central Controls; Who Gets What amidst High Inflation? Winners and Losers in the Israeli Budget 1978-1984; Conundrums of Israel's Political Economy: Problems without Solutions; Public Sector Entrepreneurialism; Policymaking by Indirection; Perspective on Israel's Political Economy.

Now in paperback, this detailed examination of Israeli foreign policy towards the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) - between the 1967 war and the 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip - focuses on the impact of the process of globalization on the Israeli state's politics, economy, society, and culture. In order to determine how interfacing developed between foreign policy and globalization, a theoretical framework is presented that brings together two established approaches that hitherto have been advanced in parallel: Foreign Policy Analysis and Globalization Theory. Causal relationships underpinning Israeli foreign policy - involving government, the state, the economy, social stratification, and the media - are linked to globalization by specific example. Conventional accounts of this relationship strip military and political factors of any significance, in terms of the conceptualization of globalization and its causes, in favor of spatio-temporal and economic dimensions. The state is viewed as being compelled to transform in response to the pressures of globalization. But in the case of Israel, the state acted proactively by using foreign policy towards the PLO as a key site of action to capture the opportunities and cope with the challenges presented by globalization. This study shows that the increasing impact of military and political globalization during the Cold War on the Arab-Israeli conflict resulted in Israeli foreign policy towards the PLO becoming entwined from the early 1970s.

The Israel lobby is a loose coalition of right-wing individuals and organisations that actively works to shape U.S. foreign policy. Here, the authors claim that there is something deeply worrying about the Israel lobby's influence on U.S. foreign policy.

An examination of the current Israeli government, covering public policies such as health, housing and transport. The volume covers the institutional as well as the political and the bureaucratic framework within which public policies have been made and implemented.

Defending the Holy Land is the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy, from the inception of the State of Israel to the present. Author Zeev Maoz's unique double perspective, as both an expert on the Israeli security establishment and esteemed scholar of Mideast politics, enables him to describe in harrowing detail the tragic recklessness and self-made traps that pervade the history of Israeli security operations and foreign policy. Most of the wars in which Israel was involved, Maoz shows, were entirely avoidable, the result of deliberate Israeli aggression, flawed decision-making, and misguided conflict management strategies. None, with the possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence, were what Israelis call "wars of necessity." They were all wars of choice-or, worse, folly. Demonstrating that Israel's national security policy rested on the shaky pairing of a trigger-happy approach to the use of force with a hesitant and reactive peace diplomacy, Defending the Holy Land recounts in minute-by-minute detail how the ascendancy of Israel's security establishment over its foreign policy apparatus led to unnecessary wars and missed opportunites for peace. A scathing and brilliant revisionist history, Defending the Holy Land calls for sweeping reform of Israel's foreign policy and national security establishments. This book will fundamentally transform the way readers think about Israel's troubled history. Zeev Maoz is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is the former head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy and of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, as well as the former academic director of the M.A. Program at the Israeli Defense Forces' National Defense College. Cover photograph: Israel, Jerusalem, Western Wall and The Dome of The Rock. Courtesy of Corbis.