Inequality, Identity, and Political Cleavages in Israel

Inequality, Identity, and Political Cleavages in Israel

In this paper, Yonatan Berman draws on pre- and post-election surveys to address the long run evolution of voting patterns in Israel from 1949 to 2019. The heterogeneous ethnic, cultural, educational, and religious backgrounds of Israelis created a range of political cleavages that evolved throughout its history and continue to shape its political climate and its society today. Despite Israel’s exceptional characteristics, Berman finds similar patterns to those found for France, the UK and the US. Notably, he stresses that in the 1960s–1970s, the vote for left-wing parties was associated with lower social class voters. It has gradually become associated with high social class voters during the late 1970s and later. He also finds a weak inter-relationship between inequality and political outcomes, suggesting that despite the social class cleavage, identity-based or “tribal” voting is still dominant in Israeli politics.

Key results

• Until the late 1990s lower classes were as likely to vote left (including center and Arab parties) as the general public. They became much less likely to vote left during the last three decades. The opposite occurred, to a lower extent, among the top 10% upper class (figures 2 and 3).
• There is a very weak inter-relationship between inequality and political outcomes (figure A4).

> Click here to read the paper

Figure – Inequality, Identity, and Political Cleavages in Israel

The figure shows how left vote depends on self-reported social class.

Contacts

Author
Yonatan Berman (London Mathematical Laboratory and City University of New-York): y.berman@lml.org.uk

Media inquiries
Olivia Ronsain: olivia.ronsain@wid.world; +33 7 63 91 81 68