Challenges to Authority that are Significant, But Fall Short of Being Federal or Constitutional

Dan Elazar was overly generous with respect to claims of constitutionalism,republicanism, and federalism in the Hebrew Bible, and too freewith the term "federalism" for post-biblical Jewish polities.Yet numerous politically relevant episodes in the Bible indicatethat the regimes of ancient Israel were something other thanpurely authoritarian, and modem Israel, though highly centralizedin its formal arrangements, tolerates substantial give and takein the operations of national and local authorities.