Two of a kind? Voting motivations for populist radical right and religious fundamentalist parties

Over the last two decades a number of theoretical perspectives have emphasized the growing phenomenon of extremist political challenges. These challenges come from two main sources: largely secular radical right-wing populism and religious fundamentalism. Yet the relationship between the two is still theoretically and empirically limited. Researchers have usually limited their discussion to only one of the phenomena, ignoring the fact that despite the basic distinction between the two (i.e., secular versus religious orientation), the literature points to many commonalities. This article takes up the challenge by analyzing the predictive power of socioeconomic, ideological, and security threat factors on voting behavior for populist radical right (PRR) parties and for religious fundamentalist (RF) parties. Data collected following the Israeli parliamentary election of 2003 (N = 808) offer a challenge to the conventional, secular wisdom of right-wing extremism. The radical right party family is multifaceted with at least two flanks – a hawkish nationalist flank on the one hand, and a ‘faith-based’ radical flank on the other. Implications of these distinctions for voting behavior scholars and radical right-wing scholars are discussed.     

Defense System in Israel: The State Comptroller's Perspective

The compliance of audited bodies to the recommendations published by the State Comptroller is very important while evaluating the effectiveness of the state audit process. To measure the effectiveness of the State Comptroller's audit the rate of deficiencies' rectification has been taken into account. Audit frequency is defined as the number of audits in audited bodies in a given period. The effectiveness of the State Comptroller's audit carried out in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) characterized by a rigid hierarchy was compared with that of the State Comptroller's audit carried out in the Ministry of Defense (MOD) characterized by a less rigid hierarchy.