Nationalism and the Power of Business: The Manufacturers' Association of Israel

1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Levi-Faur

One of the few areas of consensus in the research on Israeli politics is that of the political weakness of the Israeli business sector during the first two decades of statehood. The author claims that this consensus does not, however, justify the avoidance by scholars of the Israeli polity of conducting a systematic research into the factors that shaped the weakness of such an important sector, and therefore aims to suggest an explanation of the power of the Israeli businesses through an examination of the role and the behaviour of one of the leading interest groups in Israeli society—The Manufacturers' Association of Israel (MAI). The passive role played by the MAI in shaping the industrial-development policy during the period 1956–65 is analysed through: (a) analysis of the organisational resources of the MAI; and (b) examination of the MAI's role in two cases of public-policy making, namely the Textile Industry Development Plan and the Trade Liberalisation Program. The current political science literature regarding the factors that are often mentioned as shaping the power of business only partially explains the weakness of Israeli businesses. The author's main arguments are that nationalism can explain the weakness of the MAI better than can any other factor, and that the literature concerning the power of business should therefore pay more attention to the relationship between nationalism and the power of business. In the concluding part of the paper the findings are used as a basis for a discussion of the weakness of the Israeli civil society, and of the role played by nationalism in shaping this weakness.

Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Czaplicki

This article explains how pasteurization—with few outspoken political supporters during this period—first became a primary milk purification strategy in Chicago and why eight years passed between pasteurization’s initial introduction into law and the city’s adoption of full mandatory pasteurization. It expands the current focus on the political agreement to pasteurize to include the organizational processes involved in incorporating pasteurization into both policy and practice. It shows that the decision to pasteurize did not occur at a clearly defined point but instead evolved over time as a consequence of the interplay of political interest groups, state-municipal legal relations, and the merging of different organizational practices. Such an approach considerably complicates and expands existing accounts of how political interests and agreements shaped pasteurization and milk purification policies and practice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 644
Author(s):  
Zhiying Zhang ◽  
Hua Cheng ◽  
Yabin Yu

The textile industry is a traditional pillar industry of the national economy in China. The strategic goal of Chinese innovation is to upgrade and transform traditional industries and make them develop in coordination with high-tech industries, so as to realize sustainable industrial development. At the core of industrial sustainable development, the innovation of the textile industry in China has become an important issue worthy of attention. Based on resource-based theory and signal transfer theory, the relationship between government funding, R&D models and the innovation performance of the Chinese textile industry is studied. The results show that government funding has a significant, direct promoting effect on the internal R&D and science-based cooperation of enterprises. Government funding indirectly promotes market-based cooperation through internal R&D. The promoting effect of internal R&D on innovation performance is greater than that of cooperative R&D. Internal R&D and cooperative R&D have more promoting effects on R&D reserve performance than those on market performance. Government funding indirectly promotes innovation performance through the mediation of internal R&D and science-based cooperation. The threshold effect of cooperative R&D indicates that only when the cooperative R&D intensity exceeds the threshold can government funding foster innovation performance more effectively. The conclusions can provide theoretical guidance for the formulation of innovation policy.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Vatter

The present article addresses the question of whether Switzerland can continue to be seen as an extreme case of federal consensus democracy, as illustrated by Arend Lijphart (1999). A re-analysis of Lijphart's (1999) study of the Swiss political system from 1997 to 2007 clearly demonstrates that due to recent political-institutional changes (a decreasing number of parties, growing electoral disproportionality, increasing decentralization and deregulation of the relationship between the state and interest groups), a consensus democracy with strong tendencies toward adjustment and normalization of the original exceptional Swiss case to meet the rest of the continental European consensus democracies has emerged. This development has been further strengthened by intensified public political contestation, rising polarization between the political camps in parliament, and the weakening of the cooperative search for consensus as the dominant mode of negotiation within the government. From the perspective of international comparison, Switzerland can thus be seen henceforth as a typical example, not an extreme case, of consensus democracy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 347
Author(s):  
Safutra Rantona ◽  
Asmaul Husna

Nineteen months have passed, but the action of the political religious social movements which born post religious sacrilege case on Elections Jakarta turned out to be far from over. The movement originally was a step of consolidation in order to evoke the political consciousness of Muslims, now began to be infiltrated by other groups with particular interests. These interest groups considered to sharpen the conflict and cause the political noise never ended across this country. This article try to expose how the social-political issues played massif and structured in virtual spaces by interest groups in order to form the force and gained the power of politics. And how the relationship between religion, state, and people are pitted in order that the collective identity look sharper. So no wonder that the people of Indonesia now seems to have split in two major axis, Religious versus Nationalist.Sembilan belas bulan telah berlalu, namun aksi dari gerakan sosial politik religius yang lahir pasca kasus penistaan agama pada Pilkada DKI Jakarta ternyata belumlah usai. Gerakan yang semula merupakan sebuah langkah konsolidasi guna membangkitkan kesadaran politik umat islam, kini mulai ditunggangi oleh kelompok lain dengan kepentingan tertentu. Kelompok kepentingan inilah yang ditengarai memperkeruh konflik dan menyebabkan kegaduhan politik tak kunjung usai di seantero negeri. Artikel ini mencoba memaparkan bagaimana isu-isu sosial politik kemudian dimainkan secara massif dan terstruktur dalam ruang-ruang virtual oleh kelompok kepentingan guna membentuk kekuatan politik dan demi meraih kekuasaan. Serta bagaimana relasi antara agama, rakyat, dan negara dibenturkan agar identitas kolektif terlihat lebih tajam. Maka tak heran jika kini rakyat Indonesia seolah telah terpropaganda dan terbelah dalam dua poros besar, Agamis dan Nasionalis.


The Athenaeum ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 133-156
Author(s):  
Michael Wheeler

This chapter assesses the Athenæum's 'hospitality' towards a wide range of ideologies and social backgrounds among candidates and members. Non-partisan politically, it accommodated both sides in the Reform debates of the 1830s, with members engaging in pamphlet wars rather than calling for resignations, as happened at the political clubs. Similarly, the pattern of early Rule II elections indicates a willingness to introduce new members of outstanding ability in science, literature, and the arts who were known to be the chief antagonists of equally prominent existing members. The chapter looks at some of the flashpoints in the club's history between 1860 and 1890, when liberal opinion in politics, religion, and science assumed the ascendancy in Britain, and the Athenæum strove to maintain its tradition of tolerance and balance. It is at these flashpoints, and at times when conservative sexual mores influenced public life, that the relationship between national developments and the life of the club, conducted on the margins between the private and the public, is most revealing.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Gajda

Modern historians have long recognised that conceptions of the ‘ancient’ history of both parliament and the Protestant Church were vital to the political, legal and religious argument of the period, but the relationship between these two types of historical thinking has rarely been established. This article contends that the need to establish a pre-Reformation history of the Royal Supremacy, so as to counter Catholic challenges of religious innovation, required Elizabethans to create related myths of kings-in-parliament through the ages, exercising jurisdiction over the national Church. It was therefore under Elizabeth that the antiquity of parliament, its centrality to an ‘ancient constitution’, was first asserted by Elizabethan divines to validate the parliamentary framework of the English Protestant Church. It is argued that historical argument about parliament’s origins and evolution derived from the polemical battles fought by various religious interest groups on both sides of the confessional divide who defended, criticised or denounced the type of Church established in 1559. The history of parliament, then, first emerged in the war of ideas waged around the Royal Supremacy.


1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 439-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen A. Frankovic

The relationship between sex and political behavior has been discussed only in passing in the political science literature, if it is discussed at all. There has been little evidence from the 1940s to the 1970s that gender plays a role in determining issue positions, candidate evaluations, or candidate preference, as a quick perusal of some well-read political science works would confirm.Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee inVoting, the seminal work on opinion formation in a presidential campaign, discovered no relationship between vote preference and sex. The researchers did discover a difference in reported interest in the 1948 campaign between men and women early in the campaign, but even that difference faded as the election drew near.Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes inThe American Votermake no mention of either the existence or non-existence of sex difference in policy or candidate preference. They focus instead on differences in turnout, involvement and efficacy. Although they suggest that at one time opinions about Prohibition may have separated men from women, the authors conclude, “In the current era, there is no reason to believe that womenas womenare differentially attracted to one of the political parties.”Pomper inVoters' Choicedoes find a relationship between sex and one issue dimension–the dimension of war and peace. But Pomper, Campbell and Berelson agree that any sex differences cannot, by definition, be long-lasting. Berelson cites the lack of differentiation in the way policies affect the sexes, the lack of differences in intergenerational transmission, and the lack of segregation between the sexes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-160
Author(s):  
Christian Hey

The role of the federal states (Länder) in Germany’s sustainability transformation has received comparatively little attention in the political science literature. This article examines the contributions, capacities and competencies of the Länder in relation to Germany’s sustainability transformation with a focus on the role of Hesse. Hesse is a particularly interesting federal state to consider as it introduced a differentiated and demanding sustainable development policy already in 2008.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas T. Holyoke ◽  
Jeff Cummins

Does more lobbying by more interest groups, especially groups representing a state’s largest business sector, lead to greater spending and debt? Or does the blame really rest with state lawmakers and their political parties, which compete to attract and retain the allegiance of these powerful organized interests so they can win control of state government? We test this question with data on annual state budgets from 2006 to 2015, the number of interest groups in each state for those years, the size of the constituencies in different economic and social sectors these groups potentially represent, and the degree of competition between the political parties. Our results reveal that while there is a positive interest group effect on spending, the effect becomes negative as parties compete more for control of the state. As the gatekeepers, lawmakers and their parties, more than interest groups, are ultimately responsible for a state’s fiscal condition.


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