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Chapter 8 EPILOGUE: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE I. The Cases of India and France Research is akin to a journey of exploration into areas of a country that have hitherto been inadequately mapped. It is not necessarily limited however to first encounters with foreign lands such as those proclaimed by the mappa mundi to be the haunt of monsters and dragons. Often enough it examines a known terrain anew, almost as though it were itself a foreign land. The insights may thereafter aid other expeditions, enabling the surveyor to examine different times or countries with a less innocent eye. With such aims in mind, this book charted the transformations undergone by the Israeli party system during the 35 years preceding the end of the twentieth century. Three types of change were considered. The first grew out of deliberate decisions of political leaders to manipulate party structures either to set in motion such alterations as would bring about the restructuring of the party system or to prevent such a restructuring and maintain the prevailing balance of power. The second derived from the reactions of party elites to internal and external events and processes (such as war or demographic and economic shifts), which were not of their making. Party adaptations reflected either the desire to exploit the new circumstances or to avoid the erosion of ideologically determined goals and the electoral penalties meted to those who were obdurate in resisting adaptation. The third type of change was contrary to the second, stemming as it did from processes that were unexpectedly unleashed or newly created as a result of deliberate efforts to affect the structural consequences of electoral outcomes. The election of the prime minister by separate and direct popular suffrage was not intended to modify party structures, ideologies , or modes of campaigning but it resulted in a profound breakaway change in all the above, thus indicating the limitations of purposive engineering of party systems. Of the three, the first seems the most extraordinary. Not only did it impart the impulse for the transformation of the party system bequeathed from the prestate era, it also points to situations where political considerations assumed 231 232 Ideology, Party Change, and Electoral Campaigns in Israel a far greater role in effecting party transformations than hitherto postulated by theories of party change. It is equally striking because such an autonomy of party politics proved to be temporary and determined by special conditions, so that in Israel the new forms were ephemeral and the party system was propelled under the pressure of circumstances into yet further metamorphoses. The initial changes thus served a role reminiscent of the little nail in the hoof of the horse that made it stumble, leading step by step to the loss of the kingdom. This raises the question whether the changes, including those of the 1990s, were the ripple effects of a particular situation that rendered Israel sui generis, namely, when at the helm there still were the heroic greater-than-life figures who had led the state to independence, although the heroic age itself was over and a degree of quiescence was prevailing. Significant similarities could however be found in other countries, especially where a government party or coalition that had won successive elections was confronted by two or more opposition parties that were consequently faced with the option of hanging together or hanging separately. One case in point is that of India that, notwithstanding vast differences from Israel, witnessed a comparable phenomenon in 1977, the very year Israeli Labor lost its dominance. Both countries won independence at about the same time and were ruled for the next 30 years or so by the parties that had presided over the transition. During these years both experienced analogous conditions. Mapai never enjoyed an outright majority, but its pivotal position enabled it to overcome a fragmented opposition. India, for its part, constituted an intriguing counterexample to the Duverger’s Law in that despite its first-past-the-post arrangements it featured a multiparty system within which Congress likewise never garnered 50 percent plus of the vote. Even more than its Israeli counterpart, it was a centrist party within which factions, ranging from the traditional and regional to the modern and nationwide, from left to right and numerous other variations, balanced one another. In this respect it reflected and coordinated the variety of forces characteristic of the subcontinent itself. The fact that it faced a disunited and regionally disparate opposition, comprised of more...

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