Maoz Rosenthal

The Determinants of Government Budgetary Implementation: Policy Analysis of the Israeli Case

Abstract This paper examines the determinants of budgetary implementation in multiparty parliamentary democracies. In such government systems, the likelihood of bureaucracies’ budgetary implementation increases when pro-spending parties take over welfare ministries. This happens since the parties’ electoral interests and bureaucrats’ organizational incentives coincide and aim at budgetary implementation. Likelihood of implementation decreases as the policy gap between the sides increases or when both politicians and bureaucrats have pro-market policy positions. When politicians and bureaucrats have different positions regarding implementation, budget implementation depends on politicians’ ability to monitor the bureaucracy. This ability increases when political parties have a strong bargaining power in a stable coalition. Other factors affecting implementation include stagnation in government budgetary spending, as well as macro-economic and national security concerns. These claims are validated using accounting reports of the Israeli government’s budget implementation from the years 2004 to 2008.

National party strategies in local elections: a theory and some evidence from the Israeli case

Abstract Israeli national parties show a high variance in their tendency to compete in local elections for local authorities’ mayoral position and council seats. Indeed national parties can use local electoral competition to garner support for national elections. However, national parties might be also exposed to local losses and commitments which will hurt their performance in national elections. The results of Israeli ballot-box data from the 2006 national and the 2008 local elections show that Israeli national parties’ decision whether to compete in local elections is affected by the local support patterns in national elections, parties’ valence and the locality’s peripherality.

Voting locally abstaining nationally: descriptive representation, substantive representation and minority voters’ turnout

ABSTRACT Do disadvantaged minorities turnout less when they have descriptive yet not substantive representation? When minorities have descriptive representation, their representatives’ activities and preferences might not necessarily increase minorities’ public goods’ access. With substantive representation, minority representatives pursue policies that improve minorities’ public goods’ provisions. We claim that voters’ calculus might decrease turnout in the first case and increase it in the latter case. We examine this claim in the Israeli context focusing on the Arab-Muslim minority in Israel and comparing it to the Jewish majority and Druze minority. We show that different minority representation qualities in different institutions induce different turnout behaviours across institutions within the same minority. Specifically, Muslim Arabs decreased their turnout in national elections and increased it in local elections.