Unnatural partners: coalescence in Israeli local government

ABSTRACT

A prominent finding in coalition formation literature is that the underlying political rationale at the subnational level largely follows that of the one revealed by the classic literature on national coalitions. The Israeli political system is extremely centralized, with a local government that is highly dependent on its national counterpart. One could expect such a setting to result in local party behaviour that closely resembles the national one. However, as we show, this is far from being the case. We analyze 34 municipal coalitions in the 17 largest Israeli cities. After establishing that Israeli municipal politics fly in the face of classical coalition formation theories, we turn to explain this discrepancy with a qualitative analysis of interviews with 5 formatuers and 8 councillors. We conclude that mayors face low costs of adding surplus coalition partners, while standing to gain from wider legitimacy, weaker opposition, and constrained future competition. At the same time, municipal lists have strong resource- and policy-related incentives to join the coalition while compromise is met with low political costs. The result is an overwhelming predominance of oversized coalitions and partnerships which would be highly improbable at the national arena.     

Reputations and deterrence: A theoretical and empirical assessment

This study seeks to adjudicate between the two schools of intelligence: the “Orthodox School” which argues that the inherent pathologies and obstacles in the intelligence work make a significant degree of successful surprise inevitable in almost all attempts and the “Revisionist School” which asserts that the roots of surprise attacks lie in avoidable mistakes of certain intelligence officials. By examining the classic case of the Yom Kippur surprise attack, the paper finds the middle ground between the two schools. It distinguishes between the real limits facing analysts and surmountable obstacles. Based on this distinction it determines which problems can be corrected or mitigated and which cannot. It also provides criteria to determine the varying levels of difficulty for predicting attacks. Finally, it finds that intelligence inevitably involves making subjective judgments and utilizing experience correctly, and therefore successful prediction depends on the quality of the analysts.     

山东文物旅游发展战略研究

文物资源是人文旅游资源的重要组成部分,其内涵丰富,种类繁多。围绕着文物展开的旅游活动己成为当今社会生活的重要组成部分。现代旅游活动与文物保护之间种种的对立与统一越来越引起人们的关注,如何认识旅游活动对文物保护的影响,如何引导旅游活动在文物保护方面发挥它的有利作用,成为当前发展文物旅游非常具有现实意义的课题。本文从山东文物旅游发展的现状入手,提出了山东省文物旅游发展战略,主要从产品开发、形象塑造、管理体制、营销对策、人才培养等方面提出了一些具体的建议和对策。     

The Arendtian Dread: Courts with Power

Hannah Arendt was fearful not only of a populist President speaking in the name of the people and unbound by legality. She was also concerned that popular support could be harnessed by those responsible for limiting it. In other words, she was fearful of the American Supreme Court relying on popular support. This is the meaning of her obscure depiction of the American Supreme Court as “the true seat of authority in the American Republic” but unfit to power. I argue that Arendt's characterization of authority as requiring “neither coercion nor persuasion” means that the Court's source of legitimacy is expertise rather than public support. Yet the current dominant understanding among American Justices as well as scholars is that public support is the source of the Court's authority. In Arendt's mind, such an understanding means that the Court has become the seat of power. The corruption of the Court's authority and constitutional law as a language of expertise capable of resisting public opinion will inevitably follow.