June 2025
CIE has compiled the following list of books and articles to guide understanding of Israel’s political foundations and institutions.
Books
Arian, Alan. Politics in Israel: The Second Republic. Washington: CQ Press, 2005.
Arian, Alan, and Michal Shamir. The Elections in Israel, 1996. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Arian, Alan, and Michal Shamir. The Elections in Israel, 1999. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Arian, Alan, and Michal Shamir. The Elections in Israel, 2003. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005.
Bareli, Avi. Authority and Participation in a New Democracy: Political Struggles in Mapai, Israel’s Ruling Party, 1948-1953. Boston: Academic Studies, 2014.
Barnett, Michael N. Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.
Deshen, Shlomo A. Immigrant Voters in Israel: Parties and Congregations in a Local Election Campaign. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970.
Diskin, Abraham. Elections and Voters in Israel. New York: Praeger, 1991.
Dowty, Alan. Critical Issues in Israeli Society. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
Dowty, Alan. The Jewish State: A Century Later. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Dowty, Alan. Israel/Palestine. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
Elon, Amos. The Israelis: Founders and Sons. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
Elmaliach, Tal, and Haim Watzman. Hakibbutz Ha’Artzi, Mapam, and the Demise of the Israeli Labor Movement. Syracuse University Press, 2020.
Ezrahi, Yaron. Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Fine, Jonathan David. A State Is Born: The Establishment of the Israeli System of Government, 1947-1951. Tamar Liza Cohen (trans.), Fray Hochstein (ed.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018.
Garfinkle, Adam M. Politics and Society in Modern Israel: Myths and Realities. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997.
Gitelman, Zvi. Immigration and Identity: The Resettlement and Impact of Soviet Immigrants on Israeli Politics on Society. Los Angeles: Susan and David Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy Studies, 1995.
Goldberg, Giora. Ben-Gurion Against the Knesset. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Hazan, Reuven Y., and Lawrence D. Longley. The Uneasy Relationship Between Parliamentary Members and Leaders. London: Frank Cass, 1999.
Hazan, Reuven Y., and Moshe Maor (eds.). Parties, Elections, and Cleavages: Israel in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
Horowitz, Dan, and Moshe Lissak. Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine Under the Mandate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Horowitz, Dan, and Moshe Lissak. Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel.Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Isaac, Rael Jean. Party and Politics in Israel: Three Visions of a Jewish State. New York: Longman, 1981.
Karsh, Efraim. Israel: The First Hundred Years. London: Frank Cass, 2004.
Karsh, Efraim. From Rabin to Netanyahu: Israel’s Troubled Agenda. London: Frank Cass, 1997.
Kimmerling, Baruch. The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Kretzmer, David. The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories. State University of New York Press, 2002.
Kyle, Keith, and Joel Peters. Whither Israel? The Domestic Challenges. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, in association with I.B. Tauris, 1993.
Leslie, S. Clement. Rift in Israel. Routledge, 2016.
Lomsky-Feder, Edna, and Eyal Ben-Ari (eds.). The Military and Militarism in Israeli Society. State University of New York Press, 2012.
Mahler, Gregory S. Politics and Government in Israel: The Maturation of a Modern State. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011.
Mahler, Gregory S. Readings on the Israeli Political System: Structures and Processes. Washington: University Press of America, 1982.
Ma’or, Anat. Legislation and Politics: The Success of Private Legislation in Israel. Saarbrucken, Germany: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011.
Medding, Peter. The Founding of Israel Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Mendilow, Jonathan. Ideology, Party Change, and Electoral Campaigns in Israel: 1965-2001. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
Meydani, Assaf. The Israeli Supreme Court and the Human Rights Revolution: Courts as Agenda Setters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Nixon, David. Multiparty Probabilistic Voting: An Application to the Knesset. Washington University, School of Business and Center in Political Economy, 1995.
Orkibi, Eithan, and Manfred Gerstenfeld. Israel at the Polls 2013: Continuity and Change in Israeli Political Culture. Routledge, 2017.
Orkibi, Eithan, and Manfred Gerstenfeld. Israel at the Polls 2015: A Moment of Transformative Stability. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
Penniman, Howard Rae. Israel at the Polls: The Knesset Elections of 1977. Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1979.
Peretz, Don, and Gideon Doron. The Government and Politics of Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
Rabinovitch, Simon (ed.). Defining Israel: The Jewish State, Democracy, and the Law. Hebrew Union College Press, 2018.
Rosenthal, Maoz. Israel’s Governability Crisis: Quandaries, Unstructured Institutions, and Adaptation. Lanham: Lexington, 2016.
Sachar, Howard Morley. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time. New York: Knopf, 2007.
Salpeter, Eliahu, and Yuval Elizur. Who Rules Israel? New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Sandler, Shmuel, Manfred Gerstenfeld, and Jonathan Rynhold. Israel at the Polls 2006. London: Routledge, 2008.
Shamir, Michal, and Asher Arian. The Elections in Israel, 2006. London: Routledge, 2008.
Shamir, Michal, and Asher Arian. The Elections in Israel, 2009. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2011.
Shamir, Michal. The Elections in Israel, 2013. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2015.
Shamir, Michal, and Gideon Rahat. The Elections in Israel, 2015. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2017.
Yiftachel, Oren. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Yishai, Yael. Land of Paradoxes: Interest Politics in Israel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Articles
Abramovich, Amnon, “Almost 40 Years of Likud Rule: What Else Has to Happen?” Ynet News, May 15, 2017.
Abramson, Paul R., “Generational Replacement, Ethnic Change, and Partisan Support in Israel,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 51, No. 3 (1989): 545.
Aharoni, Y., “The Changing Political Economy of Israel,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 555, 1 (1998): 127-146.
Akirav, Osnat, Gary W. Cox, and Mathew D. McCubbins, “Agenda Control in the Israeli Knesset During Ariel Sharon’s Second Government,” The Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2(2010): 251-267.
Akirav, Osnat, “Candidate Selection and a Crowded Parliament: The Israeli Knesset, 1988-2006,” The Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2010): 96-120.
Akirav, Osnat, “The Use of Parliamentary Questions in the Israeli Parliament, 1992-96,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2011): 259-277.
Akzin, Benjamin, “The Role of Parties in Israeli Democracy,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1955): 507-545.
Al-Haj, Majid, “The Status of Palestinians in Israel: A Double Periphery in an Ethno-National State,” in Critical Issues in Israeli Society, Alan Dowty (ed.). Westport, CT, Praeger (2004): 109-126.
Alon, Gal, “Policy Analysis in Israel’s Central Government: Latest Developments and Challenges Ahead,” Policy Analysis in Israel, Gila Menahem and Amos Zehavi (eds.), Bristol, Bristol University Press (2016): 55-70.
Arian, Asher, “Elections 1981: Competitiveness and Polarization,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, 21(1981): 3-27.
Arian, Asher, and Michal Shamir, “Two Reversals in Israeli Politics: Why 1992 Was Not 1997,” Electoral Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1993): 315-341.
Avruch, Kevin, “Gush Emunim: The ‘Iceberg Model’ of Extremism Reconsidered,” Middle East Review, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1988): 27-33.
Barak, Aharon, “The Role of the Supreme Court in a Democracy,” Israel Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1998): 6-29.
Barnett, Michael, “The Politics of Uniqueness: The Status of the Israeli Case,” in Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, Michael Barnett (ed.), Albany, State University of New York Press (1996): 3-28.
Barzilai, Gad, “Courts as Hegemonic Institutions: The Israeli Supreme Court in a Comparative Perspective,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 5, Nos. 2-3 (1998): 15-33.
Berrebi, Claude, and Esteban F. Klor, “Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence From the Israeli Electorate,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (2008): 279-301.
Bick, Etta, “A Clash of Authority: Lay Leaders and Rabbis in the National Religious Party,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 401-417.
Bick, Etta, “Lip-Service to Service: The Knesset Debates Over Civic National Service in Israel, 1977-2007,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2016): 126-149.
Bick, Etta, “The Shas Phenomenon and Religious Parties in the 1999 Elections,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 7, Nos. 2-3 (2000): 55-100.
Chazan, Naomi, “The Knesset,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2005): 392-416.
Chetrit, Sami Shalom, “Mizrahi Politics in Israel: Between Integration and Alternative,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2000): 51-65.
Cohen, Asher, “The Religious Parties in the 2006 Election,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 325-345.
Dayanim, Behnam, “Israeli Supreme Court and the Deportations of Palestinians: The Interaction of Law and Legitimacy,” Stanford Journal of International Law, 30 (1994): 115.
Diskin, Abraham, “The New Political System of Israel,” Government and Opposition, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1999): 498-515.
Don-Yehiya, Eliezer, “Conflict Management of Religious Issues: The Israeli Case in a Comparative Perspective,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1999) 85-108.
Doron, G., and M. Maor, “Barriers to Entry Into a Political System: A Theoretical Framework and Empirical Application From the Israeli Experience,” Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1991): 175-188.
Doron, Gideon, “Right as Opposed to Wrong as Opposed to Left: The Spatial Location of ‘Right Parties’ on the Israeli Political Map,” Israel Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2005): 29-53.
Dowty, Alan, “Is Israel Democratic? Substance and Semantics in the ‘Ethnic Democracy Debate,’” Israel Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1999): 1-15.
The Economist Intelligence Unit, “The Dynamics of Democracy in the Middle East,” The Economist Special Report (2005): 20-22.
Frisch, Hillel, “Stability Amidst Flux: The Arab Parties Come of Age in the 2006 General Elections,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 368-383.
Gavison, Ruth, “Jewish and Democratic? A Rejoinder to the ‘Ethnic Democracy’ Debate,” Israel Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1999): 44-72.
Gorney, Uriel, “American Precedent in the Supreme Court of Israel,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 68, No. 7 (1955): 1194-1210.
Gutmann, Emmanuel, “Israel: Democracy Without a Constitution,” in Constitutions in Democratic Politics, Vernon Bogdanor (ed.), Aldershot, Hants, Gower (1988): 290-308.
Halbertal, Moshe, “Israel’s Supreme Court and the Transformation of Israeli Society,” International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2013): 1111-1113.
Halpern, Ben, “To Revamp a Party System,” Jerusalem Quarterly (1978): 127-144.
Hazan, Reuven Y., “Executive-Legislative Relations in an Era of Accelerated Reform: Reshaping Government in Israel,” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 22 (1997): 329-350.
Hazan, Reuven, “Kadima and the Centre: Convergence in the Israeli Party System,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 266-288.
Hazan, Reuven Y., “Party System Change in Israel, 1948-1998: A Conceptual and Theoretical Border-Stretching of Europe?” in Comparing Party System Change, Paul Pennings and Jan-Erik Lane (eds.), London, Routledge (1998): 151-166.
Hazan, Reuven Y., and Gideon Rahat, “Representation, Electoral Reform, and Democracy: Theoretical and Empirical Lessons From the 1996 Elections in Israel,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 33, No. 10 (2000): 1310-1336.
Hazan, Reuven Y., “Political Reform and the Committee System in Israel: Structural and Functional Adaptation,” The Journal of Legislative Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1998): 163-187.
Hazan, Reuven Y., “Presidential-Parliamentarism: Direct Popular Election of the Prime Minister, Israel’s New Electoral and Political System,” Electoral Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1996): 21-37.
Hermann, Tamar, “Do They Have a Chance? Protest and Political Structure of Opportunities in Israel,” Israel Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1996): 144-170.
Hofnung, Menachem, “Israeli Constitutional Politics: The Fragility of Impartiality,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 5, Nos. 2-3 (1998): 34-54.
Hofnung, Menachem, “The Unintended Consequences of Unplanned Constitutional Reform: Constitutional Politics in Israel,” American Journal of Comparative Law, 44 (1996): 585-604.
Horowitz, Dan, and Moshe Lissak, “Israel as a Multi-Cleavage Society,” in Trouble in Utopia: The Overburdened Polity of Israel, Albany, State University of New York Press (1989): 32-97.
Howson, Luke, “Lessons From Shas About Israel,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 69, No. 3 (2015): 397-412.
Imseis, Ardi, “Moderate Torture on Trial: Critical Reflections on the Israeli Supreme Court Judgement Concerning the Legality of General Security Service Interrogation Methods,” Berkeley, CA: Journal of International Law, Vol. 19, No. 328 (2001).
Inbar, Efraim, and Giora Goldberg, “Is Israel’s Political Elite Becoming More Hawkish?” International Journal, Vol. 45, No. 3 (1990): 631-660.
Kark, Ruth, and Joseph B. Glass, “The Jews in Eretz‐Israel/Palestine: From Traditional Peripherality to Modern Centrality,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1999): 73-107.
Krebs, Shiri, “Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Judicial Review of Administrative Detentions in the Israeli Supreme Court,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2012): 639-703.
Lim, Kevin, “Neither Left nor Right but Backwards: The Failure of Centrist Parties in Israel and Their Relationship to the Multiparty System,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2009): 28-51.
Lochery, Neill, “No Longer Dominant, Playing for Second: The Israel Labour Party in the 2006 Election,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 305-324.
Mahler, Gregory, and Richard Trilling, “Coalition Behavior and Cabinet Formation: The Case of Israel,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1975): 200-233.
Maor, Anat, “The Dramatic Growth of Private Legislation in Israel 1992-2003,” Israel Study Forum, 23 (2008): 84-103.
Maoz, Zeev, and Anat Shayer, “The Cognitive Structure of Peace and War Argumentation: Israeli Prime Ministers Versus the Knesset,” Political Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 4 (1987): 575-604.
Meydani, Assaf, “Judicial Behavior: A Socio-Cultural Strategic Approach — Conceptual Framework and Analysis of Case Studies in Israel,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2008): 704-723.
Meydani, A., and S. Mizrahi, “The Relationship Between the Supreme Court and Parliament in Light of the Theory of Moves: The Case of Israel,” Rationality and Society, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2010): 55-82.
Meydani, Assaf, “The Supreme Court as a Political Entrepreneur: The Case of Israel,” Israel Studies Review, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2012): 65-85.
Nachmias, David, “Coalition Politics in Israel,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1974): 316-333.
Nachmias, David, and Itai Sened, “Governance and Public Policy,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2001): 3-20.
Nachmias, David, and Ori Arbel-Ganz, “The Crisis of Governance: Government Instability and the Civil Service,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2005): 281-302.
Naor, Arye, “Hawks’ Beaks, Doves’ Feathers: Likud Prime Ministers Between Ideology and Reality,” Israel Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2005): 154-191.
Peretz, Don, and Gideon Doron, “Sectarian Politics and the Peace Process: The 1999 Israeli Elections,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2000): 259-273.
Peretz, Don, and Sammy Smooha, “Israel’s 11th Knesset Election,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 39, No. 1 (1985): 86-103.
Peretz, Don, and Sammy Smooha, “Israel’s Tenth Knesset Elections: Ethnic Upsurgence and Decline of Ideology,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4 (1981): 506-526.
Powell, Benjamin, J.R. Clar, and Alex Nowrasteh, “Does Mass Immigration Destroy Institutions? 1990s Israel as a Natural Experiment,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 141 (2017): 83-95.
Rahat, Gideon, and Tamir Sheafer, “The Personalization(s) of Politics: Israel, 1949-2003,” Political Communication, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2007): 65-80.
Rahat, Gideon, and Reuven Y. Hazan, “Israel: The Politics of an Extreme Electoral System,” in The Politics of Electoral Systems, Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press (2005): 333-351.
Rahat, Gideon, “The Politics of Reform in Israel: How the Israeli Mixed System Came to Be,” in Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? Matthew Soberg Shugart and Martin P. Wattenberg (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press (2001): 123-151.
Rahat, Gideon, and Reuven Hazan, “Representation, Electoral Reform and Democracy: Theoretical and Empirical Lessons From the 1996 Elections in Israel,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 33, No. 10 (2000).
Rapoport, Amnon, and Esther Golan, “Assessment of Political Power in the Israeli Knesset,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 79, No. 3 (1985): 673-692.
Rekhess, Elie, “The Arab Nationalist Challenge to the Israeli Communist Party (1970-1985),” Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1989): 337-350.
Rosenthal, Maoz, “Agenda Control by Committee Chairs in Fragmented Multi-Party Parliaments: A Knesset Case Study,” Israel Studies Review, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2018): 61-80.
Rubinstein, Aryeh, “Religious-Party Politics in Israel,” Midstream (1976): 27-41.
Rudnitzky, Arik, “Back to the Knesset? Israeli Arab Vote in the Knesset Elections,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 22, Nos. 3-4 (2016): 683-696.
Sachs, Natan B., “Israeli Elections: Labor’s Challenge,” Brookings Institution, January 16, 2015.
Sales, Ben, “After Rabin, Why Israel’s Labor Party Never Recovered,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 27, 2015.
Sandler, Shmuel, and Hillel Frisch, “The 2009 Knesset Elections: A Foreign Affairs Perspective,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2010): 1-13.
Shamir, Michal, and Asher Arian, “Collective Identity and Electoral Competition in Israel,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 2 (1999): 265-277.
Shapira, Assaf, “The Yisrael Beiteinu-Likud Split: Background and Consequences,” Israel Democracy Institute, July 13, 2017.
Spyer, Jonathan, “Downfall of a Dominant Party: The Likud and the 2006 Election,” Israel Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 289-304.
Weinblum, Sharon, “Religion in the Israeli Parliament: A Typology,” Religion, State & Society, Vol. 42, Nos. 2-3 (2014): 283-298.
Yuval-Davis, Nira, “Front and Rear: The Sexual Division of Labor in the Israeli Army,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1985): 649-675.
