Public perceptions of crime seriousness in Israel:: native-born versus new immigrants

The broad consensus generally found with regard to public perceptions of crime seriousness has been shown to reflect “consistency” in relative rankings rather than “absolute agreement” in ratings among sample groups. The present study compared the crime seriousness perceptions of native-born Israelis with those of two groups of new immigrants (one from the former Soviet Union and the other from Ethiopia). Questionnaires including 30 different criminal offenses for evaluation were distributed by means of face-to-face interviews to a representative sample of the Israeli adult population. As expected, the three groups provided very similar rankings of offenses but much less absolute agreement (ratings). It is suggested that the significant gaps in the perceptions of the groups stem from “culture conflict” (Culture Conflict and Crime, Social Science Research Council, New York, 1938), that is, differences in the social and cultural norms of the immigrants’ countries of origin and those prevailing in the absorbing society.     

Regierungsbildung in Mehrebenensystemen: Zur Erklärung der Koalitionsbildung in den deutschen Bundesländern

The German federal governmental system is conceptualized as a full-fledged two-level system, in which the Länder governments participate in federal policy decisions via the second chamber Bundesrat and in which the stakes of state coalition building are high for the federal parties. Our research question is whether we can find systematic empirical evidence for an influence of federal on state parties to build state governments whose party composition is concordant with federal politics, containing either exclusively federal governmental or non-governmental parties. We answer this question by indirect evidence. We show that such concordant majority coalitions occur above average even if important coalition predictors are controlled as minimal winning coalitions or participation of dominant and/or central players. We predict the 182 actual Land governments which were formed in the period from 1949 to 2003 compared to the possible governments in each situation.     

Choice as Everyday Politics: Female Palestinian Citizens of Israel in Mixed Cities

The paper analyzes everyday life as an arena of politics and choice as a form of everyday power. The paper discusses the theoretical debate on choice and everyday life as depoliticization mechanisms and claims, as opposed to the prevailing theory, that choices made in everyday life form politics of small things. In the various choices that women make and the way they conduct their everyday lives, they offer an alternative sociopolitical order based on a conscious, intentional choice. The experience of Palestinian woman citizens of Israel living in cities of mixed Jewish and Palestinian populations serves as the field of study. I argue that the choice to live in a mixed city and everyday life in this city constitutes an alternative life space for Arab–Palestinian women that allows them to express their opposition to both their own society and the larger Jewish society and, at the same time, serves as a setting for social change. Arab–Palestinian women utilize the space of the mixed city to forge new ways for themselves and their families to structure gender relations, feminine identity, class identity, and Palestinian national identity in a largely ethnonational and gendered unequal society.