Israel is considered a developed country yet both security issues and its frequently changing demographic makeup set Israel apart and imply that Israeli policy analysts must operate in a unique ...environment and grapple with exceptional challenges. This volume, part of the successful International Library of Policy Analysis series, brings together for the first time a comprehensive study of policy analysis in Israel. Following an introductory chapter that discusses the paradoxical history of policy analysis in Israel by Yehezkel Dror, leading figures from both the Israeli public and academic spheres discuss different aspects of policy analysis in Israel.
While Israeli policy analysis is in some respects unique, Israel also represents a broad category of states that could be considered as policy analysis "late developers". Hence, while Israeli policy analysis is fascinating in and of itself, its study also holds important lessons for other countries.
Two main weaknesses of the new institutionalism literature, one associated with veto player theories and the other with path dependency theories, help account for the framework's inadequacy in ...theorizing change, especially radical change. A comparison of the divergent development of
public aid to private schools in three countries-Australia, New Zealand, and the United States-demonstrates the importance of two factors that potentially mitigate the status quo-preserving effect of veto points and path dependency: the multifaceted nature of veto points and the
political clout of status quo challengers. Even in what initially appear to be highly constrained institutional systems, significant reform can occur, at either a rapid or slow pace.
Disability policy is often characterized as comprising three different components: citizenship rights, labor market integration and social protection. In this study, we present a fourth component - ...disability-related innovation. Specifically we analyze two critical interrelated questions: what governments do to guide innovation in this area; and do patterns of greater government disability policy involvement in social-democratic welfare states apply in the case of innovation? Utilizing a qualitative comparison of Germany, Israel, Sweden and the United States, we find that while policy across all countries is at first glance decisively similar, the important differences that exist cannot be satisfactorily explained within the classical welfare state typology framework. Countries that are leaders in terms of social support for disabled people - Germany and Sweden - are not necessarily leaders in disability-related innovation. This is particularly noticeable in the case of programs for support of Assistive Technology development.
This study characterizes and compares innovation policy as it applies to disabled people in Germany, Israel, Sweden and the United States.
Innovation policy's two main components are regulation that requires Universal Design, which requires that new technologies are designed to be usable by disabled people as well as others, and financial and institutional support for the development of Assistive Technologies.
Cross-country ideological and political differences fail to explain differences in disability-related innovation because innovation policymaking tends to be apolitical.
Only Israel and the United States created government programs dedicated to the support of Assistive Technology development.
To better serve disabled people, policymakers should formalize and fully support the development of Assistive Technology, as well as expand Universal Design regulation and enforcement.
LGBTQ+ suffer from intolerance everywhere, but in certain conservative minority communities, intolerance is especially high. This study explores how non‐minority organizations—government and ...nonprofit—might support minority LGBTQ+ individuals on the backdrop of tense majority‐minority relations. While the extension of external support responds to LGBTQ+ plight, it is also likely to provoke community backlash. Research is based on a qualitative case study, which includes document analysis and 17 in‐depth interviews focusing on the institutional support system addressing the plight of LGBTQ+ Palestinian citizens of Israel. The research suggests that an outside‐inside strategy could be effective: A range of services outside of Palestinian spaces is adapted/established to support individual LGBTQ+ and inside Palestinian towns gradual progress is achieved by training local public workers to work with LGBTQ+. This approach contrasts with bottom‐up and straightforward top‐down approaches to intervention.
Israel is considered a developed country yet both security issues and its frequently changing demographic makeup set Israel apart and imply that Israeli policy analysts must operate in a unique ...environment and grapple with exceptional challenges. This volume, part of the successful International Library of Policy Analysis series, brings together for the first time a comprehensive study of policy analysis in Israel. Following an introductory chapter that discusses the paradoxical history of policy analysis in Israel by Yehezkel Dror, leading figures from both the Israeli public and academic spheres discuss different aspects of policy analysis in Israel. While Israeli policy analysis is in some respects unique, Israel also represents a broad category of states that could be considered as policy analysis late developers. Hence, while Israeli policy analysis is fascinating in and of itself, its study also holds important lessons for other countries.This volume, part of the successful International Library of Policy Analysis series, brings together for the first time leading figures from both the Israeli public and academic spheres to provide a comprehensive study of policy analysis in Israel.
•Innovation policy could be employed as a social policy tool to address social disadvantageThis study explores four types of innovation policies that address different categories of social ...disadvantage.•While such policies are employed across different developed nations, they are adopted for primarily economic, not social, purposes.
Innovation is essential to economic growth. However, it appears that the ways in which we pursue innovation policies generate economic inequities. In this paper, we explore policies that could be devised and employed with the aim of increasing growth while taking into account economic distribution. We call these policies distribution-sensitive innovation policies (DSIP). Following an exploratory theoretical approach, the paper focuses on a specific set of DSIP which are focused on particular groups of disadvantaged producers and consumers. We first categorize such programs into four types, and then employ a comparative approach to analyze existing programs in terms of these types, first, in our primary case study, Israel, and, then, using the United States, Germany, and Sweden as limited shadow cases to elaborate on the finding from our primary case. We conclude by arguing that although these programs are currently driven primarily by a concern for economic efficiency and not distribution, they show that our approach utilizing innovation policy to reach dual economic and social policy goals has potential for success.
Public attitudes regarding privatization are important for both political and normative reasons. Past studies of public opinion on privatization have shown how socio-economic variables and ideology ...shape public views. In this study, we focus on a relatively under-researched factor: identity as it relates to actor preference formation. We explore attitudes toward different privatization types in a society, in which the main political fault lines are not economic, but identity-based: primarily predicated on ethnic group membership and religiosity. Based on a random sample of 1142 Israeli adults, we find that unlike most other countries, identity variables matter more than Socio-Economic Status (SES) in this type of society despite the fact that privatization is primarily perceived as an economic policy. While high levels of religiosity are associated with support for privatization, membership in an ethnic minority, in contrast, is related to negative attitudes. The contrast between the relatively favourable views of ultra-orthodox Jews to the negative ones of Arabs suggests that identity group attitudes toward neoliberal policies cannot simply be explained by SES. Moreover, not only does identity matter for shaping views on public policy, but also the particular specifics of a given identity.
Citizen Participation (CP) produces instrumental benefits and realises democratic ideals. However, administrators are aware of its administrative and political downsides. This might lead ...administrators to adopt symbolic forms of CP in which there is little significance to CP's process and outputs. We investigate how mayors think about CP and the ways in which they shape the practice. Based on in-depth interviews with 15 Israeli mayors, this article studies mayoral views of CP and how these inform practice. We find that mayors adopt 'delimited CP', which goes beyond 'symbolic' CP, in allowing for some significant CP even at the planning level. However, at the same time, mayors reduce possible political and administrative costs in four ways: deciding when to convene CP, controlling its agenda, managing ex-ante and ex-post information flows, and retaining exclusive decision-making power. Lessons from the Israeli case could apply to other 'strong mayor' systems that engage in CP.
This article explores whether recent social and political developments have transformed religious organisations' involvement in welfare activities. Most developed countries have undergone a process ...of secularisation in which the religious attachments of major segments of society, and also certain state institutions, have weakened. In recent years, welfare state expansion has stalled and most welfare states have entered an ‘age of austerity’. Changes in the welfare state terrain – primarily restructuring – have transformed the opportunity structure faced by faith-based organisations. A survey of faith-based organisation involvement in welfare across four countries – England, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands – reveals a complex picture. While in some countries welfare state restructuring creates opportunities for faith-based organisations to expand their role, in others the combination of secularisation and restructuring create unfavourable conditions for these organisations.
This article asks whether alleged partisan policy convergence has eradicated differences in relation to privatization of delivery of welfare state services. The study utilizes a novel methodological ...approach—numerous intrastate comparisons set in a consilience research framework—to assess the extent of convergence and its underlying reasons. It explores the partisan politics of school privatization of delivery across five countries that differ in their position on the left–right continuum: England, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. Privatization of delivery in health care was selected as a secondary policy domain. Analysis of within-country variation in both domains indicates that there remain significant differences between left and right across all countries. The right tends to set the privatization agenda, and the left is more reluctant than the right to privatize delivery of services. This difference in approach is related to the disparate influence that public and private program constituencies have over left and right parties.
