University of Utah Western Political Science Association

Split-Ticket Voting in Israel Author(s): Alan Arian and Shevah Weiss Source: The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1969), pp. 375-389 Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/447005 . Accessed: 04/01/2011 02:38
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SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL

ALAN ARIAN AND SHEVAH WEISS

Tel-Aviv University

IT

IS BEYOND DEBATE that the focus of poltical power in Israel is at the

national level. Politically and administratively, local government in Israel is dependent on the political parties and the government ministries which operate from the center.' Israeli politics, for historical and structural reasons, has always been dominated by national, rather than local, power. Since before the establishment of the state in 1948, an agrarian, almost anti-urban ideology has dominated the important political parties of the country.2 The relatively small size of the country and the newness of the settlers tended to prevent the establishment of regional sectional bases of cleavage. This lack of local autonomy coincided with the establishment of most of the Jewish settlements in Palestine, especially between the two world wars, by such national institutions as the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut, and, after independence, by the government itself.3 Since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the institutional map of local government has changed considerably. In 1948 there were 13 municipalities and 23 local councils, a total of 36 organized Jewish local authorities; by 1966 the total had jumped to 98 Jewish authorities, with 24 municipalities and 74 local councils. By 1966, only 0.3 percent of the Jewish population was not organized under an elected local authority.4 In electing both his national and local representatives, the voter casts his ballot for a list of candidates proposed by a political party rather than for individual candidates directly. The party receives mandates in national and local elections in proportion to the total number of votes it obtains. Since it is unusual for one party to win an absolute majority in the elections, an intense process of bargaining to form the ruling coalition at both the national and local levels follows closely upon the publication of the election results.5 This bargaining process is usually very complex and again demonstrates the dependence of local government on the national parties: coalition agreements in municipalities and local councils are often dictated by the political needs of the national party. It is not unusual for the coalition deliberations concerning many local authorities to be held simultaneously, headed by the officials of the various parties responsible for municipal affairs. The arrangements which will affect the local government are often deter'For a discussion of local government in Israel, see Emanuel Guttmann, "The development

of Local Government in Palestine" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1957). For a general introductionto Israeli politics see Leonard J. Fein, Politics in Israel (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967). 2 See Alan Arian, Ideological Change in Israel (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve U. Press, 1968). 3 See Erika Spiegel, New Towns in Israel (New York: Praeger, 1967). 4We have ignored Arab councils in this article and have concentrated on Jewish and mixed settlements. Examples of mixed Arab-Jewish communities are Acre and Ramle. See Government Annual, 1966-67 (Jerusalem: Government Printing Office, 1967), in Hebrew, p. 286. 5 In 22 of the 98 local elections in 1965, Mapai won an absolute majority of the votes. 375

376

THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

mined by functionaries of the national party who bring to the bargaining table their perceptions of the interests of the national party. Thus, hypothetically, a concession might be made concerning the terms of the coalition in Tel-Aviv in order to obtain a more beneficial arrangementin Jerusalem. The gains of the party at the local level are often traded in for political leverage at the center. Although local government has undoubtedly been subordinatedto the national center, it has developed its own political importance. Israelis are probably becoming increasingly aware of local issues and personalities. Even though a party-list ballot is used, the election at the local level often involves a dominant personality seeking office, an arrangement more usually found in a single-member district electoral system. The emergence of a popular vote-getter as local leader can influence the behavior of the national party and administration toward the local community and may well boost his own political career. The only meaningful opposition which the dominant Mapai party has faced in the political history of the country had its power base in large urban centers such as Tel-Aviv, Ramat-Gan and Netanya. The General Zionist party, which found its support primarily in the middle-class members of the country's cities, rose as an alternative to the ascendant left-of-center parties in the early 1950's. The first local election, held in November 1950- almost two years after the election of the First Knesset (parliament) in January 1949, and about eight months before the election of the Second Knesset in July 1951 - was in effect a test of confidence of the new national government rather than an indicator of concern with local issues. Times were hard in November 1950: rationing, unemployment and immigration were serious problems. Campaign platforms tended to stress solutions to national problems of the day. Following the local election of 1950, the General Zionists pressured for new national elections, arguing that the 1950 results indicated a vote of no confidence in the Mapai-led government. Whether or not they were right about the government is debatable; but they were certainly correct in assessing their own rise in popularity. In the First Knesset (1949) the General Zionists won 7 seats, while in the Second (1951) they were rewarded with 22 mandates.6 The General Zionists were restrainedin their attempt to become a real opposition to the left-of-center parties for two reasons. First, they could never command sufficient seats in the Knesset to threaten government programs. Second, because they lacked power at the national level, the realities of Israeli politics prevented them from sustaining their appeal at the local level; being outside of the government coalition, they could not deliver benefits to the local authorities under their control as could the government parties. At least until the 1959 election, the General Zionists represented an effective opposition on the local level to Mapai; since then, as we shall shortly see, Mapai has tended to consolidate its strength in the large urban areas as well.7
6 Technically,

the General Zionists won 20 seats and were joined after the election by two Knesset members of the Sephardic list. 7 By December 1965, 72 percent of the country's urban population had local governments headed by Mapai leadership. The major turning point came in 1959 when Mapai became the dominant party in Tel-Aviv, replacing the General Zionists.

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL

377

In light of this background, it is interesting that voting turnout rates for both national and local elections are high. In 1965, for example, 83 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots in the national elections and 82.7 percent in the local contests.8 Voters are evidently not deterred by the power gap between the national and local levels of government. Nor do they fail to vote in both elections even though it takes at least twice as long to vote in both elections as it does to vote in one. Israelis have gone to the polls to elect both national and local officials on the same day three times. In 1955, 1959, and 1965 they cast two ballots on election day, one for the Knesset and one for the local governmental authority.9 The voter went through identical procedurestwice in order to cast ballots in both the national and local elections. He came to the polling place, presented his identity card, received an envelope and entered the privacy of the polling booth. There he chose a slip of paper with the name of the party of his choice and its symbol (consisting of one or two Hebrew letters) from the stacks of slips of the competing parties and placed it in the envelope. He then deposited his sealed envelope in the ballot box and, if he so desired, began the entire procedure again - identity card, envelope, party slips, casting the ballot - in order to vote in the other election.10 It is clear from the voting statistics that some voters split their tickets, that is, they vote for different party lists in the national and local elections. They may do this to reward a hard-workinglocal politician or party or to punish a national party whose promises were not fulfilled. Perhaps the voter perceives that a party, which he would not vote for at the national level, is more closely identified with local intereststhan is the party of his choice in the national contest. The party he prefers in the local election may not even appear on the national ballot. It may be that different types of factors motivate the voter in the two elections. The position of the Knesset as the central symbol of political legitimacy and the glamour and publicity of the contest between the national parties attract much attention at the national level. Locally, voters may tend to be more personality and issue oriented; the physical proximity of the campaign may have its own allure. But lest we infer too much about the motivations of the Israeli voter from voting data, it would be best to leave these suggestions until the appropriate survey data are available and turn instead to a discussionbased on the aggregate data at hand. The Israeli voter is generally faced with a wide range of parties from which to choose; in the 1965 election in Tel-Aviv, for example, seventeen parties appeared on the national ballot and thirteen parties on the local one. Three of the local parties did not appear on the national list and seven parties which put up lists of candidates for the national elections did not do so for the Tel-Aviv municipal council. (The three religious parties in the national campaign agreed on one list
8 All voting statistics are from the various Results of Elections to the Knesset and to Local Authorities published by the Government's Central Bureau of Statistics. 9 The Knesset elections of 1949, 1951 and 1961 were not accompanied by local elections. The election of 1950 was for local authorities only. Some communities have elected local authorities in special local elections in addition to, or instead of, the dates set for the general elections. 10Paragraph 31 (c) of the Local Authorities Act - Elections of 1965 specifies that the ballot box for the local election must be in a different room from the one used for the Knesset election.

378

THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

in the local election.) Yet even with this tremendous range of choice, split-ticket voting appears to be the exception rather than the rule (see Table 1). Most parties do as well on the national level as they do on the local level. This, of course, is an overall judgment as some parties do very well in the local elections in some communities and very poorly in others. In Ramat-Gan, the list which was composed of the Herut and Liberal (formerly General Zionist) parties, received 38.7 percent of the vote in the local election but only 29.2 percent to the Knesset. But in Jerusalem, Herut-Liberal fortunes were reversed: there 29.3 percent of the electors voted for the list in the national election and 17.2 percent in the local balloting. Presently we shall explain these phenomena by pointing out the role of the longtime political leader affiliated with the Herut-Liberal list in Ramat-Gan; in Jerusalem, the rise of Rafi, the Ben-Gurion led splinter from the dominant Mapai party whose local 1965 list was headed by the popular Teddy Kolleck, explains much of the difference. But before specific local explanations are offered, suffice it to say that only the overall picture is presented in Table 1 and that local variations tend to be balanced out. We can overcome the problem of analyzing the gross statistics of the performance of the national parties by breaking down the results by community; this we shall do shortly. We face a much more difficult problem when we attempt to infer the degree of split-ticket voting based on the aggregate voting data; that is,
TABLE 1
VOTING STRENGTH OF MAJOR JEWISH PARTIES IN NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTIONS,

1955, 1959 AND1965*

1955 National Local 1959 National Local 1965 National Local

Valid votest Party Mapai .......................... Ahdut Haavoda ............ -----------..... Rafi ....-.......-Mapam .................... . Communist..-............... Religious:- .- ...........Independent Liberal? .. Liberal# ..................... Herut .-....-...................

657,686 32.1% 8.1 5.8 4.1 14.2 4.8 12.7 14.9

648,288 30.8% 7.0 6.1 3.6 13.5 5.0 15.0 12.3

816,710 39.1% 5.5 5.5 3.0 14.7 4.9 7.0 15.2

821,257 34.7% 5.6 5.9 2.4 15.1 4.4 11.1 11.5

1,028,416 1,022,487 36.9% 33.6% (Maarach) 8.0 7.9 5.3 6.1 1.3 1.0 14.1 14.1 3.9 4.0 23.6 21.9 (Gahal)

Others** .....-----------------

2.1

2.4

5.6

1.4

6.2

* Adapted from Results of Elections to the Sixth Knesset and to Local Authorities, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1967), Tables 1 and 2. t The data presented in the table reflect the vote for the Knesset (national parliament) in those communities which also held local elections. Since local elected government has not yet been instituted in all communities, the total number of valid votes in the national elections is not the same as reported here. In 1955, the total number of valid votes was 853,219; in 1959 it was 969,337 and in 1965 it was 1,206,728. Only marginal differences are found when the party percentage of the national vote is computed on the broader base. t Including the Mafdal, Agudat Israel and Poalei Agudat Israel. ? Formerly the Progressive party. # Formerly the General Zionists. ** These are Jewish ethnic or splinter parties. Not included in this table are the two parties which appeared in 1965 for the first time- the New Communist party and Haolam Hazeh- or the Arab parties. Excluding these parties from the table explains why the percentages do not total 100.

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL

379

reasoning about the behavior of the individual voter from the reported behavior of the group. We feel it reasonable to assume that, in the case of a party which received 35 percent of the vote to the Knesset and 30 percent of the vote to the municipality, approximately 30 percent of the voters voted twice for the same party. Although survey data to back up our feeling are lacking, it seems unlikely that the party in question received the votes (at least once) of some 65 percent of the electors. Most likely, 30 percent of the electorate voted for the party twice and 5 percent "split" their vote, casting the ballot in the local election for a different party.11 Our assumption that the difference between the votes received in the two ballots represents the extent of split-ticket voting based on the aggregate data is central to the analyses which follow. Much of the split-ticket voting reported in Table 1 occurs when a voter casts his ballot for a national party in the Knesset election and for a home-grown list in the local election. This is hardly a widespread phenomenon, "other" parties receiving only 6.2 percent of the local vote in 1965. But the percentage attained by "other" and especially local "other" parties has increased over the years. Usually these "other" parties run on one ballot rather than on both.'2 It is clear that these parties have a much stronger appeal in local than in national elections. These local parties tend to emerge in communities which are ethnically homogeneous. In Kiryat Bialik and Rosh Haayin, for example, populated largely by Israelis of German and Yemeni origins, respectively, local parties have been very successful. In the local council of Kiryat Bialik in 1965 five of the eleven seats went to a local party which did not appear on the national ballot; in Rosh Haayin, half of the total vote went to parties which did not run in the national election.13 Although these two cases represent polar differences in ethnic origin, there are striking similarities in voting behavior. The voters of these two communities are not necessarily protesting against the national parties; the ethnic composition of their communities provides the conditions for the success of the purely local list in attracting the votes of the electorate. In order to compare the extent of split-ticket voting between communities in a single election or in the same community in more than one election we developed the following index: 14 n
EZ

(Xi

y,)

i=l

Index = n n For our purposes, this description of the process is probably close enough to what really happens. In reality, it is likely that things are much more complicated,with some voters splitting in one mannerand some another and some not at all. 1 A few of the "other" local parties are actually affiliated with national (usually center) parties who have adopted local names or affiliated with the national party after being established independently. "But the local lists did not receive half of the power. Of the fifteen lists that put up candidates (competing for 4,838 votes) in the 1965 local election in Rosh Haayin, seven were of local vintage and only one of the local parties received enough votes to be represented on the local council. Of the nine seats on the council, three national parties won six mandates among them and the victorious local list gained three seats; local lists received half the votes and a third of the power. 14 In practice, the index will always give us a positive number. Theoretically,if x were greater

380

THE WESTERNPOLITICALQUARTERLY

where x is the percentage of the vote won in the Knesset election by a given party and y the percentage of the vote won in the local election by that party, and n the total number of parties competing.'5 To compute the index of split-ticket voting for the entire country in 1965, for example, (see Table 1) one would take the difference between the local and national percentages for the eight parties listed in Table 1, square the differences so that signs will be positive, sum the squares and divide by eight, the total number of parties. When these various operations are performed we find that the 1965 index of split-ticket voting for the eight parties listed is 4.7.16 To test the pattern of split-ticket voting in Israel we applied the index to the 41 Jewish communities whose 1965 population exceeded 10,000 inhabitants. These 41 communities contained 76 percent of those Israelis who voted in the 1965 Knesset election. For the three elections we shall consider (1955, 1959 and 1966) twelve communities' local elections were not held on the same day that the Knesset elections were held, leaving 111 cases whose indices were computed.17 Holon, a Tel-Aviv suburb, recorded the lowest index, 0.7 in 1955; the highest index was recorded by Rosh Haayin in 1965 with a phenomenal 387.9 (see Appendix). While we lack survey data to document our impression, our feeling is that split-ticket voting is not a widespread phenomenon in Israel. What is more, we are not convinced that it is increasing from election to election. But since the aggregate data at hand do not tell us how an individual voted in either of the elections we simply cannot know for sure. We can, however, test the frequency of split-ticket voting when the community, rather than the individual, is the unit of analysis. When focusing on communities, it is clear that there is a trend toward split-ticket voting (see Table 2). In 1955, 63.7 percent of the communities considered had an index lower than 10, while in 1959 the percentage fell to 46.2 and to 33.4 by 1965. On the other hand, an index above 20 was recorded by only 15.2 percent of the communities in 1955; by 1959 the percentage had risen to 23.1 and by 1965 to 43.6. This trend seems to reflect the emergence of the local charismatic leader in a number of communities as the successful vote-getter, regardless of political party. When his party also happens to be the party which has been traditionally strong in that community in the national elections the index is not affected. But if his party is a purely local list or a different national one, the behavior of the index may well be dramatic. The indices of Haifa and Jerusalem demonstrate this point well (see
than y and both were negative, the index would be negative. But since we are dealing with votes received, neither x nor y is ever negative.

based on Table 1. In computing the indices for 1955 and 1959 the n used was 9 - the nine lists which appear in Table 1; in 1965 the n used was 8. 1 The national indices for 1955, 1959 and 1965, respectively, are 1.8, 6.8, and 4.7. These data, interestingly, follow the same pattern presented by Tel-Aviv, the country's largest city, and provide evidence that, on the whole, split-ticket voting has not increased over time. 17 The indices for these communities are not reported in the Appendix. Where two of the three election year indices were available, the missing index was projected from the two available ones, and the community was categorized accordingly. Technically, the index could be computed but since the election for the local authority took place on a different date from the national Knesset election, we decided not to include these cases.

15The n which we used was constant for a given election year among communities and was

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL TABLE 2

DISTRIBUTION OF INDEX OF SPLIT-TICKET VOTING FOR 41 COMMUNITIES WITH MORE

381

THAN 10,000 INHABITANTS (IN 1965) FORTHE 1955, 1959 AND 1965 ELECTIONS (in percentages) 1955 1959 1965

(Number of cases)* 0- 4.9 .................................... 5- 9.9 ..................................... ................. 10- 19.9 .................................................... 20-49.9 ................................... 50+ ...................... ........................................ Total ..............................................

(33) 48.5 15.2 21.2 9.1 6.1 100.1

(39) 35.9 10.3 30.8 12.8 10.3 100.1

(39) 23.1 10.3 23.1 28.2 15.4 100.1

* Eight of the 41 communities in 1955 and two each in 1959 and 1965 did not hold local elections on the same day that the Knesset elections were held; hence they were omitted from these calculations.

Table 3). In Haifa, Mayor Abba Choushi of Mapai had the personal support of many citizens because of his efficient administration and his successful filling of the role of big-city political "boss." The low index which the Haifa vote generates is explained by the combination of his personal popular appeal and the well-oiled political machine which he and Mapai ran in the city. Jerusalem had three strong vote-getting parties in 1955 and 1959 - Mapai, Herut, and the religious partieseach getting a balanced percentage of the vote in both Knesset and municipality elections in Jerusalem. But when Teddy Kolleck's Rafi list was introduced into the Jerusalem election of 1965 the traditional pattern was upset. Rafi's local list, headed by the dynamic Kolleck, received 20.6 percent of the vote whereas the national Rafi ticket won only 7.5 percent of the Jerusalem vote. This explains the Jerusalem indices of 6.4 and 4.3 in 1955 and 1959, respectively, and the jump in 1965 to 44.0.
TABLE 3
INDEX OF SPLIT-TICKET VOTING FOR THE SIX LARGEST for CITIES,

1965

City

Knesset, 1965

Voters

1955

INDEX 1959

1965

Tel-Aviv .......................................... Haifa ....... .......................Jerusalem ....................................... Ramat Gan .................................. Petah Tikva .................................. Holon ..........................................

217,183 109,516 83,960 55,278 35,694 33,982

6.3 1.9 6.4 38.0 3.9 0.7

12.5 2.2 4.3 35.7 17.3 2.3

2.5 1.3 44.0 20.2 25.3 1.6

The emergence of the charismatic leader as the focus of the local election in the 41 communities studied is even more likely since 21 of these communities with more than 10,000 inhabitants had fewer than 10,000 voters. The small size of the community is likely to assure the visibility of the local leader and increase his ability to know his constituents and their problems. The fact that more than half of the communities considered here had fewer than 10,000 voters fortifies our impression that split-ticket voting seems to be increasing by community but not necessarilyin an absolute sense when total numbersof voters are considered. Three

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THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

of the six largest cities in the country, totalling more than 350,000 voters, (see Table 3) exhibit very low indices. In Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Ramat-Gan, three of the country's four largest cities, the 1965 index was lower than for either of the previous elections. The importance of split-ticket voting seems to be increasing in terms of the number of local contests whose outcomes are affected by the phenomenon. It is obvious that the impact of split-ticket voting in Israel is greatest at the level of local government. The monumental generalization about Israeli national politics, with all of its factional splits and mergers and ideological uproars, is that the distribution of electoral strength from election to election barely changes (see Table 1). The subtle differences which are recorded in the total number of seats a party gains in the Knesset are less noteworthy than the pattern of continuity which election results have provided. On the local level, however, the shifting of a few thousands votes due to intraparty friction or the rise of a local personality may be enough to bring a new leadership to office. Those few thousand votes will have little impact on the national scene; locally they may be crucial. Thus, while there is no convincing evidence that the incidence of split-ticket voting is increasing in an absolute sense, it seems to be assuming a more pivotal role in the Israeli political
system.18

The trend is clearly toward an increase in the number of communities which evidence more split-ticket voting from election to election. The extent of the increase can be measured by the split-ticket voting index. Comparing the indices over the three elections for a given community reveals that three major patterns have developed. Eight communities, including Haifa, Holon, and Afula, evidenced a pattern of no change (see Table 4 and Appendix). For our purposes, "no change" is defined as a community whose indices are below 6.9 for the three elections. While this definition allows some room for variation in index behavior, a community whose index remained below the 6.9 level can be regarded as stable in terms of split-ticket voting since, in any event, the index is not an exact measure. Our thesis that split-ticket voting in communities is increasing is supported by the fact that the second, and largest group, with 21 of the 41 cases, demonstrates a pattern of steady increases in the size of the index from election to election. For more than half of Israel's largest communities the trend over time is clear: splitticket voting has been increasing steadily. Within this group of 21 we can distinguish between those communities whose 1955 index was low (below 6.9) and those communities whose starting point was above 10 (although the distinction will not be used in the analyses which follow). Among the twelve communities in the subgroup in which increase began from an index below 6.9 are Petah Tikva, Safed, and Bnei Brak; Netanya, Rehovot, and Acre are three of the nine communities whose steady increase over the three elections began above the score of 10 on the split-ticket voting index.
18

While it is technically possible to recalculate each index by weighting it by the number of voters in each community,this procedurewould not add to the validity of the measurement since without survey data there is no way of knowing if the pattern of split-ticket voting across communitiesis identical.

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL

383

These two groups - no change and steady increase- account for 29 of the 41 communities. A third group of five communities follows the national pattern and that of Tel-Aviv in which the 1959 index is higher than the one recorded in 1955 or 1965. This pattern fortifies our contention that split-ticket voting is significant on the community level and is not necessarilya phenomenon whose incidence is increasing in an absolute sense throughout the country. The seven remaining
communities offer a variety of patterns and are grouped together for our purposes in the "other" category. They provide too few cases to warrant separate categories or to allow for even preliminary analysis. For three of them, Herzliya, Lydda, and Rishon Letzion, the 1959 index represents the nadir of the pattern over the three elections. For Ramat Gan and Raanana, the index declines consistently from election to election. In two cases, insufficient information is available since local elections were not held at the same time Knesset elections were. Having described the pattern of split-ticket voting in Israel's largest communities, we must turn to the task of explaining the differences which the patterns reveal. No clear explanation is offered when we look at the demographic variables usually associated with social and political change in Israel: size of community, year of founding, ethnic composition, and period of immigration of the inhabitants. It can be argued that the phenomenon of split-ticket voting demonstrates a process of differentiation occuring on the Israeli political scene in which voters increasingly turn to the local authority for the fulfillment of their political demands. We would TABLE 4
DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNITIES BY BEHAVIOR OF INDEX AND EXPLANATIONS* EXPLANATIONS
A. MAPAI B. CHARISMA C. LOCALISM D. OTHER

1. Stability 2. Instability 3. Rafi Behavior of Index I. No Changet

........

II. Steady Increase . III. Hump in 1959 .... IV. Other ...............

1 -

7 1

4 1

7 1 2

3 2 2

1 1

21 5 7

N .....................

10

41

* See Appendix for names, size of electorate and indices of the various communities. t All three indices below 6.9.

maintain that the basic conception in that description is erroneous: political power in Israel has always been controlled at the center. It is probably the case that the reactions of the local voters to the national party or the central government will be translated into immediate political terms at the local level; conversely, the performance of the dominant parties and personalities in local government will influence the returns - both national and local - in the next election. But the relationship between national and local levels is hardly symbiotic. The local branch of the party is much more exposed to the fluctuations of the electorate than is the national party. Because of its size and importance, the national party is relatively immune to changes in the election returns due to developments at the local level.

384

THE WESTERNPOLITICALQUARTERLY

The local party, on the other hand, is in a truly subordinate position: its power and scope of activities are limited by legal, political, and budgetary power concentrated at the center, yet it is the first to suffer the wrath of the electorate. It is a fact of Israeli political life that without the active participation of the center, local government cannot fulfill demands. If the differentiation analysisis accepted as the explanation for the increase in split-ticket voting, we must posit an irrational voter. For only the irrational voter and/or one unexposed to Israeli politics would suppose that he could have his demands filled by deserting Mapai and voting in the local elections for a Roumanian ethnic party. The variations in the patterns of split-ticket voting indices are best explained by considering (as in almost every other political topic in Israel) the role of Mapai. With the type of data available, it is best to concentrate on political organization and leadership in the communities in which split-ticket voting occurs. When we introduce stability of the local Mapai branch as the explanatory factor, we can account directly for the patterns of 22 of the 41 communities. It is premature to use the motivations of individual voters to explain split-ticket voting by assuming that voters are in search of alternative political channels through which to have their demands fllfilled. Besides, the hypothesis is unreasonablein light of the structure of Israeli politics. That the internal condition of Mapai's local branch is associated with voting behavior in the community demonstratesthe tremendous impact Mapai has on the structureand processof Israeli politics. When no change occurred in the index, the reason was clear: Mapai. In each of the eight communities in the "no change" category, a solid, Mapai-controlled local government has always been in power. Mapai, in constant control of those eight communities which have not recorded split-ticket voting, has usually had its local "boss"serving as mayor or head of the local authority. The stability of these communities can be explained by the support the local branch gets from the national authorities, on one hand, and the votes Mapai gets from the local electorate, on the other hand. The process, of course, is self-perpetuating. The more support, the more votes; the more votes, the more support. Votes are translated into housing and employment; a job well done in furthering local interests is translated into more electoral support. When change in the index occurs, the chances are good that it can also be explained by referring to the local branch of Mapai. When instability hits Mapai's local branch, the index is likely to increase. When stability returns after a period of instability,the index is likely to decrease. As long as the local leadership presents a solid front to the voters and to the national party and administration, it is likely that it will follow the pattern of a stable index. But when that front is shaken, the repercussions are likely to be reflected in the size of the index. The instability usually results from a conflict based either on personality or principle - which originates in the local headquarters of Mapai and ultimately leads to strained relations between the party branch and the administration of the local authority. Tension between party and government is not new in Israel; but when the semblance of united leadership is shattered at the local level, the fluctuations of voting behavior which stem from

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL

385

this situation increase the incidence of split-ticket voting in the face of a divided Mapai. The splintering-off of Rafi from Mapai in 1965 is a major variation on the same theme of internal instability in the Mapai branch. Here a substantial proportion of each branch split off in a nationally organized effort to challenge Mapai's traditional leadership. Rafi's impact was especially felt in those communities in which the top man of the Mapai list in 1959 switched to head the Rafi list in 1965. The process is well demonstrated in Or Yehuda where the former Mapai mayor switched to Rafi. In the 1959 elections there, Mapai received more than a third of the vote in both the national and local contests. By 1965, both the Maarach (the Alignment between Mapai and Ahdut Haavoda) and Rafi received some 22 percent of the national vote each, but in the local contest, the Maarach received only 16 percent of the vote while the now-Rafi mayor led his new party in capturing 33 percent of the vote in the local balloting. Lydda, Dimona, Kiryat Shmone, and Kfar Saba are other instances in which the sharp increase in the index can be explained by the former Mapai leader switching to Rafi. The success Rafi had in a number of local communities emphasized important processes at work in the Israeli political system. First and foremost, the creation of Rafi presented Mapai with a serious crisis of internal organization and laid bare the paucity of Mapai's sourcesof young leadership by draining off much of Mapai's dynamic and creative manpower. One of the motivating factors that led Mapai to negotiate reuniting with Rafi and/or Ahdut Haavoda in the last half of 1967 was the lack of a strong "second generation" of leadership to run the powerful party machine, which the older generation had built and perfected. The union of the labor parties of Israel - which took place in 1968 - will undoubtedly have a minimizing effect on our index if it brings in its wake increased stability in the local headquartersof the party. But besides depriving Mapai of potential leaders and establishinganother ideological party in the political spectrum, Rafi's performance in the 1965 election also reinforced the tendency of popular leaders emerging as election winners in local contests. In Jerusalem, the staid Mapai mayor was overtaken in the election by the hardy Teddy Kolleck of Rafi whose image was one of youth and vigor. But while Kolleck could pull votes from Mapai for himself and his Rafi list in the local election, he was unsuccessful in attracting such support for Rafi's Knesset list in Jerusalem. The Rafi switch can be understood as instability in the local Mapai branch; we have included in the category the five cases of a Mapai mayor who shifted to Rafi and caused an increase in the index. Ten other cases, somewhat similar, are those in which the increased split-ticket voting index can be explained by the emergence of a popular local leader. The popular local leader's achievement of being a vote-getter, although not necessarily a party man, explains much of his political dilemma. It also reveals much of the story of split-ticket voting in Israel. As often as not, he is a dynamic, young, and inspiring officeholder in a political system which prizes order, age, and organization. If the populace is his source of inspiration, he cannot avoid the hard fact of Israeli political life that the party and his success in dealing with the govern-

386

THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

ment bureaucracy are his sources of power.19 It has been shown time and time again that a popular leader can be elected in Israel (while formally at the head of a party list). But the only popular base that he can build is at the local level; it is at this level, too, that ethnic factors are most likely to be significant. While local leaders may retain their individual identities, national leaders are party men. In practice, a proven local leader is likely to be recruited into national party service in an attempt to extend his local following to the national level while "balancing" the ticket. Through this process of cooptation of local leaders, the party tries to create a semblance of pluralism while, advertently or inadvertently, it weakens the leadership ranks at the local level. When mayor, they voted for him regardless of party; but since the party called him to national headquarters, they could no longer vote for him, they had to vote for the party. Hypothetical as these last remarks are, we are confident that the impact of the charismatic leader on split-ticket voting is greatest when he is a local officeholder. Once he loses visibility at the local level, it is by no means certain that he can transfer his appeal to his replacement. On the whole, perhaps, the national party receivesmore votes because he is now in national headquarters; but at the community level, there is no assurance that the party or his successorwill do as well in the next local election. We have seen that split-ticket voting behavior may result from instability in Mapai's local branch (whether through bickering or a full-scale split within the party) or the emergence of a popular "independent" local leader who is able to attract votes regardless of the electorate's previous voting record. Yet another major explanation of split-ticket voting can be found in purely local, generally ethnic, issues. In communities such as Kiryat-Bialik, Rosh Haayin, and Rehovoth, split-ticket voting is associated with the traditional success of a local ethnic list. It is one of the anomalies of Israeli politics that ethnic politics has not played more of a role in fragmenting the electorate. When ethnicity does emerge as an important factor in politics it is generally confined to the local community and rarely spills over into the national arena; hence its impact on the split-ticket voting index. The relationship between the three major patterns of the index and the three reasons we have used to explain split-ticket voting (Mapai, charismatic leadership and local issues) are presented in Table 4. There, in summary form, our analysis is concentrated. Stability of the local Mapai branch and low levels of split-ticket voting are related. An increase in the index over time is observed in more than half of the communities; this increase is usually explained by instability in the Mapai branch or the emergence of a strong local leader. If the party cannot present a solid front or is rent by the defection of local leaders (as in the case of Rafi) or the rise of a home-grown vote-getter, the index is bound to rise. The role of Mapai must be stressedin any explanation of split-ticket voting in Israel since Mapai is the largest vote-getter in the country and dominates in most of the local contests. But Mapai's importance will be better understood if con'9The Mayor of Beer Sheba, A. Noi, demanded the support of the Mapai leader, Golda Meir, claiming that the national party appointed him mayor of Beer Sheba. The statement, which ignores the fact that he was elected by the citizens of Beer Sheba, reveals much more about the relations between Mapai and local officialsthan it does about Mr. Noi's memory.

SPLIT-TICKET

VOTING

IN ISRAEL

387

sidered in terms of other parties on the political scene. One of the factors which has assured the perpetuation of Mapai's power has been its close association with the religious parties. Always in the national coalition, Mapai and the religious parties generally manage to divide the spoils of the local elections in an elegant and gentlemanly manner. In communities where their mandates are sufficientfor forming a ruling coalition, the religious parties and Mapai generally agree between themselves regarding patronage and power. New settlements are often designated the "property"of one party or the other and the "owner" party provides the new settlers with housing, employment, and services. Since the "rival"party has agreed not to compete in that town, it is little wonder that the town stays solidly in the ranks of the patron party in both national and local elections. The moderate socialist Mapai and the religious parties make very strange, but extremely effective, bedfellows. By controlling the municipal governments of key urban areas, the parties of the center and right (especially the Liberal party -formerly the General Zionists - and Herut) have presented to Mapai the only seriousopposition that Mapai has ever known. In a Knesset debate, the then-Prime Minister Ben Gurion of Mapai referred to Tel Aviv as a "state within a state" since it was headed by a General Zionist mayor.20 When the tide finally turned in 1959 and Mapai became the dominant party in Tel Aviv, an editorial in a Mapai publication could afford to be expansive-and revealing: "After 30 years of government by the right in Tel Aviv, it is now possible that the leaders of Tel Aviv and the leaders of the national government will finally be able to speak to and understandone another."21 Mapai is the bridge over which the predominantly one-way traffic in power and resourcesfrom the national to the local level of Israeli government and politics travels. Our data reveal no exaggerated tendency toward split-ticket voting since there is no real division of power between the national and local levels of Israeli government and politics. Power is concentrated at the national level; local government is in a dependent, subordinateposition. If anything, the power of Mapai and the national government appears to be growing. As Mapai continues to consolidate its rule in local authorities, the national party and government become even more powerful than before. This dependency relationship was evident during the economic recession which began in 1966 when entire local councils threatened collective resignationsif the national government would not take steps to "save"them. Local government in Israel tends to be yet another extension of the centers of power which control much of the country's political life. A tendency toward local autonomy cannot be read into the split-ticket voting data since the incidence of split-ticket voting is low and has not increased consistently. The impact of splitticket voting is greatest on the politics of individual communities, but it is misleading to think of this as a muffled indicator of greater autonomy, for local authorities in Israel do not have the prerequisites of autonomy. Taking into account his behavior at the polls, the Israeli voter seems to recognize this fact.
0 Israel, Knesset Proceedings, VII, 150. 21Hapoel Hatzair, December 15, 1959, p. 3.

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POLITICAL

QUARTERLY

APPENDIX The 41 communities by behavior of index and explanations (see Table 4), size of the electorate which voted for the Knesset in 1965 and the split-ticket voting index for 1955, 1959, and 1965.
Table 4 Matrix Voters for Knesset, 1965 1955 INDEX 1959 1965

Community

I/A.1. Haifa Holon Bat Yam Nahariya Kfar Ata Afula Nes Ziona Beit Shean II/A.2. Petah Tikva Givatayim Ashkelon Acre Kiryat Yam Safed Eilat II/A.3. Kfar Saba Dimona Kiryat Shmone Or Yehuda Jerusalem Bnei Brak Netanya Hadera Kiryat Bialik Kiryat Gat Tirat Hacarmel Beer Sheba Rehovoth Rosh Haayin III/A. 1. Ramat Hasharon III/B. Kiryat Motzkin III/C. Ramle Tiberias III/D. Tel Aviv IV/A.2. Herzliya IV/A.3. Lydda IV/B. Hod Hasharon Raanana 5,912 5,277 11.8 10.4 12.3 2.0 10,248 16,370 217,183 11,866 9,465 1.7 5.6 6.3 14.6 17.1 15.3 11.7 12.5 3.0 8.4 13.3 9.3 2.5 11.7 16.9 6,972 30.9 49.2 21.7 6,291 10,498 6,317 5,471 4,451 83,960 28,202 25,795 14,755 6,173 6,103 5,860 25,183 16,918 3,898 1.6 3.5 6.4 2.7 16.0 5.3 145.5 12.3 40.2 19.4 8.9 4.4 12.4 14.3 11.1 4.3 11.2 48.3 17.4 204.4 6.5 9.4 64.0 65.4 163.3 29.9 15.3 33.8 24.6 49.8 44.0 11.0 61.9 55.3 215.5 39.3 13.6 35,694 21,260 13,901 12,927 6,914 5,545 3,595 3.9 2.8 18.5 4.1 3.3 17.3 7.8 3.4 19.9 4.8 10.7 4.7 25.3 16.2 18.8 37.9 9.2 28.4 23.9 109,516 33,982 24,611 9,485 8,686 7,260 5,919 4,605 1.9 0.7 2.4 1.3 3.6 1.6 1.0 4.3 2.2 2.3 3.6 2.1 4.1 3.5 3.3 4.2 1.3 1.6 2.0 2.9 3.6 5.3 2.7 5.1

107.2 387.9 4.3

SPLIT-TICKET VOTING IN ISRAEL

APPENDIX
Table 4 Matrix

389

(CONTINUED)
Voters for Knesset, 1965 I ND E X 1959

Community

1955

1965

IV/C. IV/D.

Rishon Letzion
Ashdod

17,333
7,895

60.7
-

33.8
-

77.7
-

Ramat Gan

55,278

38.0

35.7

20.2