Split Corporatism in Israel (review)

Book Reviews 127 Split Corporatism in Israel, by L. L. Grinberg. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. 202 pp. $14.95. The author promises at the very outset of this book to shed light on the relationships of the Israeli labor movement, the Histadrut, with the labor party and with the state. In that, the book represents a bold attempt to allow interested readers an understanding of a complex state of interdependence , sometimes contradictory and full of peculiarities, between these participants in Israel's political economy. The first chapter of the book introduces the two theoretical frameworks on whose marriage the book rests: the neocorporatist and the dual labor market theories. The former relates to the political exchanges between national level elites, intermediated by the state, as explaining the political-economic scene. The latter accounts for the relative power position of labor groups by splits that occur in labor markets along national and ethnic lines. The claim that these frameworks are complementary and can be used jointly is based on the axiom that both involve shielding labor and capital from the vicissitudes of business cycles. However , their combined power hardly explains the developments that have occurred in Israel's business sector. Therefore, the author invokes the notion of split corporatism, which appears in the book's title. The split in the title means that the twin theories, in conjunction, purportedly explain the collective bargaining structure and process in the public sector, not in the business sector. The rest of the book, however, continues to cover both sectors, with clear preference given to the business sector's developments (in terms of space). The next chapter moves to provide readers with an historical account of the origin and growth of the Histadrut, the central labor movement of workers in Israel. The period covered is 1920-1977, but special emphasis is given. to the post-1967 era, in which the admittance of noncitizen employees from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel made its labor market dual or split. The book then presents a series of case studies, each occupying a chapter and each related to the author's earlier published work. The case studies cover (a) the rise and demise of the Forum, a coalition of strong trade unions that existed outside the formal structure of the Histadrut between 1980 and 1982, and that protested against the wage restraint policies followed by the Histadrut's leadership; (b) the emergence of split corporatism in the period of 1981-1983, as a reaction to the policies of the Finance Minister of the likud (the right-wing nationalistic party at the helm of the government in those years) to advance compulsory wage restraints and budgetary slashes; (c) the hyper- 128 SHOFAR Spring 1993 Vol. 11, No.3 inflationary period of 1984-1985; and (d) the new economic policy introduced in May 1985 in a national effort to stem it. This reviewer's job, carried out late in 1992, allows the dispassionate examination of the book's main research questions, posed in the introductory chapter. In it the author asks: What explains the inability of the Labor party to lead Israel toward peace? Why are the labor movement and the Histadrut so detached from the workers? Such questions appear awkwardly anachronistic at the time this review is being written, while the peace negotiations between the new Labor-led government of Israel and several of its Arab neighbors have entered a promising momentum, and when the rift between this government and the Histadrut over the functional status of the Histadrut's sick fund have reached a climax. However, this appears to be an unfair assessment in that the author made no claim of perpetuity for his research questions, and in fact devoted relatively little attention later in the book to the task of confronting them. I found the book .not easy to read, because of its fragmented structure , described above, and also since the author heretically adheres to neomarxist models and jargon (e.g., the Histadrut was described as having the peculiar feature of "... internal institutionalized corporatist interest mediation" [po 5]). Its major shortcoming, however, lies in the author's deficient understanding of the...