For as long as people have been working to bring peace to areas suffering long-standing, violent conflict, there have also been those working to spoil this peace. These spoilers work to disrupt the peace process, and often this disruption takes the form of violence on a catastrophic level. Galia Golan and Gilead Sher offer a broader perspective. They examine this phenomenon by analyzing groups who have spoiled or attempted to spoil peace efforts by political or other nonviolent means. By focusing in particular on the Israeli-Arab conflict, this collection of essays considers the impact of a democratic society operating within a broader context of violence. Contributors bring to light the surprising efforts of negotiators, members of the media, political leaders, and even the courts to disrupt the peace process, and they offer coping strategies for addressing this kind of disruption. Taking into account the multitude of factors that can lead to the breakdown of negotiations, Spoiling a

This publication offers the most wide-ranging examination to date of an intriguing country, one that is often misunderstood. It serves as a comprehensive reference for the growing field of Israel studies and is also a significant resource for students and scholars of comparative politics, recognizing that in many ways Israel is not unique but rather a test case of democracy in deeply divided societies and states engaged in intense conflict. The Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society considers the role of external hostilities, but this is not taken as the main determinant of Israel's internal politics. Rather, the Handbook presents an overview of the historical development of Israeli democracy through chapters examining the country's history, contemporary society, political institutions, international relations, and most pressing political issues. This comprehensive volume offers contributions by internationally recognized authorities on their subjects, outlining the most rele

Policy overreaction is a policy that imposes objective and/or perceived social costs without producing offsetting objective and/or perceived benefits. It is therefore an objective fact and, at the same time, a matter of interpretation. Policy scholars tend to view this duality as a problematic ontological issue and to categorize such policies as errors of commission or omission. This article builds on (i)the aforementioned duality and (ii)a recent conceptual turn whereby this concept is re-entering the policy lexicon as a type of deliberate policy choice. This may be motivated by, among other factors, political executives’ desire to pander to public opinion, appear informed to voters, and signal extremity. The article assigns specific policy overreaction responses to two dimensions: the scale of policy in terms of objective costs and benefits, and public perceptions of policy. The derived policy taxonomy highlights four distinct empirical categories, which are elaborated and exemplifi

Byline: Noam Gidron, Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel; email: noam.gidron@mail.huji.ac.il; Daniel Ziblatt, Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; email: dziblatt@fas.harvard.edu Keywords: parties, party systems, center-right, radical right, conservatism Abstract This review proposes a comparative research agenda on center-right parties in advanced democracies, bringing together research in American and comparative politics. Political scientists have recently closely examined the decline of the center-left and the rise of the radical right but have paid less attention to the weakening of center-right parties. Yet cohesive center-right parties have facilitated political stability and compromises, while their disintegration has empowered radical challengers. After presenting an overview of right-wing politics in Western democracies and weighing different definitions of the electoral right, we di

Political developments since the 2008 financial crisis have sparked renewed interest in the electoral implications of economic downturns. Research describes a correlation between adverse economic conditions and support for radical parties campaigning on the populist promise to retake the country from a corrupt elite. But does the success of radical parties following economic crises rely on people who are directly affected? To answer this question, we examine whether individual-level changes in economic circumstances drive support for radical parties across the ideological divide. Analyzing eight waves of panel data collected in The Netherlands, before, during, and after the Great Recession (2007–2015), we demonstrate that people who experienced an income loss became more supportive of the radical left but not of the radical right. Looking at these parties’ core concerns, we find that income loss increased support for income redistribution championed by the radical left, but less so fo

Democracies are in crisis. Can republican theory contribute to reforming our political norms and institutions? The'neo-republican turn'has seen scholars using the classical republican tradition in reconstructing and developing a vision of public life as an alternative to liberalism. This volume offers new perspectives from leading scholars on how republicanism can help transform democratic theory and respond to some of its most pressing challenges. Drawing on this recent revival of republican political thought, its chapters reflect on such issues as the republican definition of freedom as nondomination and its relation to democracy and populism, the ideal of the common good, domination in the workplace and in the family, republicanism in a globalized world, and radical republican politics. It will appeal to researchers and students in political theory, political philosophy and the history of ideas, and anyone interested in gaining greater insight into the prospects and challenges of r

An appealing concept developed by economists in contemporary happiness studies is that of procedural utility: people’s tendency to value the processes that lead to outcomes in addition to the outcomes themselves. This paper identifies David Hume as an early forerunner of a very similar idea. Moreover, it demonstrates just how Hume used this idea to justify the very idea of commerce. The significance of this is twofold: demonstrating just how Hume is a forerunner of the later concept on the individual level (micro-level), but also pointing to a different approach to the concept of utility on the social level.

המטרה: לבחון את הקשר בין הדתיות ובין העמדות כלפי החלוקה מחדש של משאבים. הנבדקים: תושבות ותושבי 49 מדינות דמוקרטיות. שיטת מחקר: מחקר כמותני במסגרתו ממצאי הגל החמישי של סקר הערכים הבין-לאומי WVS עברו ניתוחים משניים. מן הממצאים לרמת הדתיות נמצאו השפעות מורכבות על התמיכה בערך החלוקה מחדש השוויונית יותר של משאבים. ערכים פרו-חברתיים והזדהות שמרנית, המהווים משתנים מתחרים ושני ממדים שונים במבנה הדתיות, נמצאו כגורמים המתווכים בין האמונה הדתית ובין התמיכה בחלוקה שוויונית מחדש של משאבים. לממד הפרו-חברתי של הדתיות נמצאה השפעה חיובית חלשה יותר על התמיכה בחלוקה של משאבים לעומת הממד השמרני של הדתיות, שלו נמצאה השפעה שלילית חזקה יותר על תמיכה זו. רמות האושר החלישו את הקשר בין הממד החברתי-דתי בדתיות ובין הנטייה לתמוך בחלוקה שוויונית מחדש של המשאבים. בנוסף, רמות נמוכות יותר של נדיבות בתחום הרווחה הגבירו את ההשפעות החיוביות של הנטיות הפרו-חברתיות והחלישו את ההשפעות השליליות של ההזדהות הדתית-שמרנית על הקשר שבין הדתיות ובין התמיכה בחלוקה מחדש. הממצאים מצביעים על החשיבות שבשקלו

המטרה: לבחון ולהשוות בחתך בין-לאומי את הקשר בין הדת והנטייה להפגין במחאות פוליטיות. הנבדקים: מדגם תושבות ותושבים ממדינות שונות בעולם. שיטת מחקר: נערך מחקר כמותני, במסגרתו נותחו ממצאי הגל החמישי והשישי של מחקר הערכים הבין-לאומי WVS מהשנים 2010-2014. מן הממצאים הנטייה הנמוכה ביותר של התושבים להשתתף בהפגנות ומחאות פוליטיות נמצאה באזרבייג'אן ובמלזיה. הנטייה החזקה ביותר נמצאה בניו-זילנד ובשוודיה. התנהגות חברתית-דתית נמצאה בקשר עם נטייה חזקה יותר להשתתף בהפגנות ובמחאות פוליטיות. עם זאת, רמת האדיקות הדתית נמצאה בקשר שלילי עם הנטייה להשתתף בהפגנות ובמחאות פוליטיות. ברמת המדינה, נמצא כי רגולציה – אסדרה מדינתית של הממשלה בתחום הדת הפחיתה את הנטיות של התושבים להשתתף בהפגנות ובמחאות פוליטיות. רגולציה זו השפיעה באופן ייחודי ועוצמתי בעיקר על הסיכוי של מיעוטים דתיים להשתתף בהפגנות למען שלום. הממצאים נדונים לאורן של תיאוריות של הזדמנויות מבניות המדגישות את חשיבות פתיחותה של המערכת השלטונית לאימוצה של מחאה פוליטית בשטח ריבונות.

People who are more religious tend to experience more positive affect and higher levels of life satisfaction. Current explanations for this relation include social support, meaning in life, and more positive emotional experiences. Adding cognitive reappraisal as a new mechanism, we propose that religion consistently trains people to reappraise emotional events, making the devout more effective in applying this emotion regulation practice, which cultivates more positive affect and greater life satisfaction. In two studies, involving Israeli Jewish (N = 288) and American Christian (N = 277) participants, we found that more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal mediated the relationship between religiosity and affective experiences, which in turn, were associated with greater life satisfaction. Religiosity was associated with more frequent cognitive reappraisal (in both samples) and less frequent expressive suppression (in the Christian sample). Cognitive reappraisal mediated the link be

This article illuminates the construction of the concepts 'democracy' and 'republic' in the Arabic-speaking regions of the eastern and southern Mediterranean between 1798 and 1878. Examining these ideas through conceptual analysis on two levels, language construction and political discourse, the article reveals the layers these concepts acquired and their reception in the context of state reforms in the Ottoman Empire. While both 'democracy' and 'republic' evolved in Arabic after the French Revolution and acquired their modern morphological forms and content primarily between the 1820s and 1876, 'republic' came into use and was perceived as relevant to local circumstances earlier than 'democracy.'

Repression of, or restrictions on, human rights organizations has been documented in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes. Drawing on interviews with fifteen representatives of human rights organizations in the State of Israel, this article discerns the distinctive way in which democratic justifications are being used to delegitimize human rights advocacy in a liberal democracy. We document the forms of pressure organizations are facing, analyze the different ways in which human rights advocates are negotiating the shifting context, and suggest a framework for recapturing legitimacy in democratic contexts. Our analysis points to the need of HROs to devote increased attention to democratic mobilization. I assume your research, your report will be public and I think our "enemies"—I do not think they are really our enemies but they are acting as if they are our enemies—will be reading it. And I think that you and Dan have to be very conscious in what you write and first of all [e