Personalized politics and weakened parties—an axiom? Evidence from the Israeli case

Avital Friedman, Chen Friedberg

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Personalization of politics describes a process in which the power of individual politicians rises, ostensibly at the expense of the parties. This is manifested, among other ways, by the manner in which politicians use parliamentary tools. In this study, we focus on one such tool, the private member bill, assessing whether its use necessarily expresses personal behavior, which weakens the party, as suggested in the literature—or not. To test this, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the way Israeli legislators use private member bills in the Knesset, which is regarded as an indicator of personalized politics. We found that partisan-oriented behavior can be found even when using such a highly personal tool. This suggests that personalized politics does not always weaken the party. We also examined under which conditions Knesset members demonstrate partisan-oriented behavior while using private member bills. Testing institutional party-level variables revealed that MKs from parties with exclusive candidate selection methods, opposition parties, and small parties are more likely to exhibit such behavior.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)258-268
Number of pages11
JournalParty Politics
Volume27
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2021

Keywords

  • Israel
  • Knesset
  • personalization
  • personalized politics
  • political parties
  • private member bills

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Sociology and Political Science

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