social cleavages, electoral reform and party choice: israel’s ‘natural’ experiment

Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 399–423www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud

Social cleavages, electoral reform and partychoice: Israel’s ‘natural’ experiment

Robert Andersena,1,∗, Meir Yaishb

a Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and CREST, 3 George Street Mews, Oxford, OX12AA, UK

b Nuffield College, Oxford, UK

Abstract

This paper examines party preferences in Israel from 1993 to 1999. This period provides aunique ‘natural’ experiment in that the middle was marked by a change from a single-ballotparty list to a two-ballot system that included direct election of the Prime Minister. The paperhas two goals: (1) to explore the patterns of social cleavage voting in Israel during this period;and (2) to determine whether the change in the electoral system in 1996 affected these patterns.Contrary to the findings of previous research — most of which used ad hoc measures of socialclass — our results indicate that party choice was significantly related to social class. More-over, the effects of ethnicity, class and religiosity on party preferences were strong and fairlyconstant throughout the period, suggesting that the change in electoral system had little impacton the party/cleavage relationship. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Israeli society; Voting behaviour; Electoral reform; Social cleavages

1. Introduction

The rules that govern an electoral system and social cleavages are of considerableimportance to students of political science because they mediate between individualpreferences and political outcomes (Ordeshook and Shvestova, 1994: 100). Mostinfluential is the ‘institutionalist’ school, which argues that electoral systems deter-mine the number of viable political parties in a given polity (Duverger, 1954; Sartori,

∗ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (R. Andersen); [email protected]

(M. Yaish).1 Authors are listed in alphabetical order.

0261-3794/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/S0261-3794(01)00055-5

400 R. Andersen, M. Yaish / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 399–423

1976; Riker, 1982; Lijphart, 1990, 1994). By dictating the method under which seatsare assigned from votes, the electoral system exerts pressures both on individualvoters who are presented with different choices given different systems, and on partyelites who must decide appropriate campaign strategies to achieve election (see Far-rell, 2001). This approach can be summarized by what is known as Duverger’s Law(Riker, 1982), which holds that simple majority single ballot systems, such as first-past-the-post electoral systems, will favour two-party competition structures. On theother hand, party-list systems characterized by proportional representation are moreconducive to multi-party competition.

Another influential tradition, the ‘sociological’ approach, de-emphasizes the roleof the electoral system and places paramount importance on the role of social struc-ture in determining party systems (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). According to thisapproach, party preferences are strongly influenced by the social groups to whichvoters belong. Parties arise, then, in response to the demands of these voters. Inother words, the number of parties in a given polity is seen as a reflection of thenumber of social cleavages. The sociological approach has a long history of success-fully explaining much of the variation in vote in industrialized countries (see forexample, Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; Berelson et al., 1954; Alford, 1962). Keen pro-ponents of the sociological school, moreover, discount the institutionalist argumentaltogether, arguing that the electoral system is determined by the structure of partycompetition rather than the other way around (see, for example, Eckstein, 1963;Lipson, 1964).

In recent years, a growing body of research suggests that both cleavage structuresand electoral systems have consequences for a society’s polity (Ordeshook andShvestova, 1994; Amorim Neto and Cox, 1997; Powell, 1982). However, a short-coming of existing research on electoral systems is its narrow focus on politicalparties as the political outcome of interest. Attempts to directly test the impact ofelectoral systems on individual party preferences are extremely rare (see Cox, 1997;Bowler, 1996; Bowler and Fowler, 1991). The lack of research in this area probablyhas less to do with an intentional neglect than with the unavailability of appropriatedata. Given the relative stability of electoral systems in Western democracies sincethe Second World War (Lijphart, 1994; Boix, 1999), the number of potential casesto examine is small. Moreover, for some countries that have experienced changesto their electoral systems, such as France and Greece, reliable representative surveysadministered in both the periods before and after the change are simply unavailable.

This paper is unique in that it examines the extent to which changes in an electoralsystem affect party preferences and cleavage/party relationships. In this context, Isra-eli society provides a good case study for several reasons: (1) it is a deeply dividedsociety (Smooha, 1993); (2) voting behaviour tends to reflect this division (Shamirand Arian, 1999); (3) its electoral system was reformed in 1996; and (4) high-qualitysurvey data are available for both before and after the electoral reform. Using surveydata we examine whether the electoral reform changed the relationship betweensocio–demographic characteristics and party preferences in Jewish Israeli society.We also contribute to the literature on class voting by re-assessing the relationship

401R. Andersen, M. Yaish / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 399–423

between class and party in Israel using better social class measures than have pre-viously been used with Israeli data.

The remaining of the paper is organized as follows. The next section discussesthe Israeli context, placing emphasis on the electoral reform and social structure, inparticular its relationship to party preferences. This section also discusses the variousmethodological problems associated with previous research on social cleavages inIsrael. Section 3 sets up the hypotheses of the paper. Section 4 describes the dataand methodology, and section 5 presents the results of our analysis. The final sectiondiscusses the implications of our results and concludes the paper.

2. The Israeli context

2.1. The change to the electoral system

The Israeli electoral system is often described as one that offers an extreme caseof representative democracy. It is a party-list proportional representation system(PR), where every 4 years citizens are asked to elect their party’s list to the Knesset(a one house parliament with 120 members). The number of members of the Knesset(MKs) awarded to each party is decided according to the proportion of the vote theparty obtains, provided that it is more than 1.5% (1% until 1992). Not surprisingly,given the nature of the PR system and the extent of social division, the Israeli parlia-ment is often characterized by fragmentation and problems of governability (Doronand Kay, 1995; Hazan and Rahat, 2000).

Severe governability problems in the 1980s led to the reform of Israel’s electoralsystem during the 1990s (Doron and Kay, 1995; Hazan and Rahat, 2000). After alengthy deliberative process, the Knesset amended Israel’s electoral rules on 18March 1992 [Basic Law: The government (Book of Laws, 1992)]. The mostimportant new feature of the reformed electoral system was the direct and popularelection of the Prime Minister. This would occur separately from, but concurrentlywith, the Knesset elections where voters continued to elect the party from whichMKs would be selected. In other words, on election-day Israeli citizens would nowcast two votes simultaneously. Although the new electoral system was adopted priorto the 1992 elections, its implementation was deferred until the 1996 election.2

Prior to the reform the leader of the largest party in a newly elected Knesset wouldbe asked by the President to form a governing coalition. This system led to a signifi-cant amount of tactical voting since voters could not directly choose the leader ofthe government (cf. Felsenthal and Brichta, 1985; Nixon et al., 1996). Tactical voterswould not necessarily choose the party that satisfied all their preferences but ratherthe party that satisfied part of their preferences and had the highest possibility ofbeing the largest party in the Knesset (Felsenthal, 1990). Simply put, tactical voters

2 For elaborate discussions on the routes to the electoral reform in Israel see Doron and Kay (1995),and Hazan and Rahat (2000).


attempted to avoid an undesirable government, even if that meant not choosing theirfirst choice.

The switch to the new electoral system allowed voters to make different votingdecisions. The separate ballot for Prime Minister meant, among other things, thatvoters could choose directly who would form a governing coalition. One can makeparallels between this new Israeli electoral system and the US electoral system wherethere are separate votes for Congress and President (Wattenberg, 1998). One expla-nation for the fact that American governments were divided throughout most of thesecond half of the 20th century is ticket-splitting (Fiorina, 1996: Table 2-1 p. 7),where voters typically voted for different parties for President and Congress.Research indicates that this split was frequently based on different voting consider-ations. For example, voters typically evaluated presidential candidates according totheir views on national issues, and congressional candidates on issues more particularto their district (cf. Jacobson, 1990, Ch. 6).

Based on the US experience, one might expect similar ballot splitting in Israelafter the electoral reform of 1996. Following from the institutionalist school, onemight also expect an increase in cleavage voting for parties after the electoral reformbecause the vote for Prime Minister would absorb most of the so-called ‘ issue’ or‘popularity’ vote (cf. Jacobson, 1990, Ch. 6). In other words, party vote would beless influenced by issues — such as foreign affairs, defence, and the economy —than previously, allowing parties to compete on a more particular basis in responseto cleavage demands (cf. Hazan and Rahat, 2000: 1322). By implication, the size ofpolitical parties would become less important to voters than it was before 1996 andthose who previously voted tactically could now vote for the party that satisfied their‘ real’ preference. This suggests, of course, that in the new electoral system the mainlosers would be the two largest parties — Labour and Likud — while smaller partiesshould receive greater support.

2.2. Changes in Israel’s polity, 1949–1999

We now turn to a discussion of how Israel’s polity has changed over time, parti-cularly before and after the implementation of the electoral reform in 1996. Fig. 1presents changes since 1949 in the relative size of religious and ethnic parties,3 andthe two main parties, Labour and Likud. Several observations are noteworthy. First,although sectarian parties existed as early as 1949, their relative size has dramaticallyincreased since the early 1980s. Moreover, the rate of this increase has been evengreater since the electoral reform in 1996. Secondly, the size of the religious partiesexceeded that of the ethnic parties until the 1999 election, when the two occupiedroughly equal numbers of seats in the Knesset. Thirdly, until the early 1980s, theLikud party increased in size, while the opposite trend characterised the Labour party.

3 We included the two immigrants’ parties (Israel Ba’aliya and Israel Betenu) as part of the ethnicparty category. Shas was included in the religious party category.


Fig. 1. Percentage of seats in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) for different ‘ types’ of political parties,1949–1999. Data used in this graph are based on official elections results (see,http://knesset.gov.il/knesset/hebframe.htm).

Since the two parties achieved parity in the 1980s, however, the relative size of bothparties has declined.

Fig. 2 displays trends in three measures of Israel’s polity: the number of parties;and the mean and standard deviation of the number of MKs per party. AlthoughIsrael’s polity is highly fragmented (i.e., there are many parties, some of which arevery small), changes over time in the degree of this fragmentation are best describedas ‘ trendless fluctuations’ — i.e., there are no obvious long term trends. Moreover,Fig. 2 gives no clear indication of an immediate ‘system’ effect, as all three measuresappear to have similar values both in the 1961 elections — before the change inelectoral system — and in the 1996 elections — after the change in electoral system.These measures become somewhat distinct after the 1999 elections, however. Theresults of the 1999 elections produced a Knesset in which for the first time both theaverage number of MKs per party and its standard deviation were very low, whilethe overall number of parties in the Knesset was very high. The further reductionin the size of the two big parties — Likud and Labour — coupled with the increasein the size of the religious and ethnic parties, particularly after the 1996 elections(see also Fig. 1 above), partially explains this pattern. This indicates the possibilityof a learning process where voters and parties were not fully aware of the impli-cations of the new electoral system immediately after its inception in 1996, but by

http://knesset.gov.il/knesset/hebframe.htm


Fig. 2. The Israeli Polity, 1949–1999. Data used in this graph are based on official elections results (see,http://knesset.gov.il/knesset/hebframe.htm)

1999 they had become more aware of the advantages of ticket-splitting. Later in thepaper we will address whether this argument holds up using individual-level data.

2.3. Israel’s cleavage structure: does class matter?

Research typically shows Israeli society to be a deeply divided society (Smooha,1978, 1993; Yaish, 2001). In his seminal study of Israel’s social structure, Smooha(1978: 2–3) emphasized the existence of three main cleavages: the national cleavage,the religious cleavage, and the ethnic cleavage.4 Smooha was also perhaps the firstto suggest that class was becoming a significant cleavage in Israel (Smooha, 1978:261), and indeed he later portrayed social class as one of the major cleavages(Smooha, 1993). More recent studies have confirmed the importance of social classin Israel, particularly with respect to social mobility and stratification processes(Goldthorpe et al., 1997; Yaish, 2000, 2001).

The majority of research on the cleavage/party relationship in Israel has empha-sised the role of ethnicity and religiosity, and ignored social class (an exception is

4 For reasons explained below, we excluded the Arabic population from the analysis. This being thecase, we do not discusss issues that are associated with the national cleavage.

http://knesset.gov.il/knesset/hebframe.htm


Shalev, forthcoming).5 Indeed, ethnicity and religiosity have consistently been shownto have strong effects on voting behaviour in Israel (Shamir and Arian, 1999; Shamirand Arian, 1983; Shalev, in press). There is also evidence that the impact of thesevariables, particularly that of religious observance, has increased over time (Shamirand Arian, 1999). On the other hand, empirical research on Israel has failed to revealthe typical class/party relationship found in most western industrialized societies. Toexplain this it has been argued that social class is intertwined with ethnicity andreligiosity making it difficult to distinguish class politics (Swirski, 1984; Smooha,1993: 316), and more simply, that class consciousness has never developed in Israel(Smooha, 1993: 315). While this can perhaps account for the lack of traditionalWestern-style class politics in Israel, it should not prevent individuals from votingbased on their class position. Here we accept Merton’s (1949: 223) view that anindividual’s position within the class structure can affect social and political pro-cesses. In other words, despite the lack of class consciousness, Israeli voters mayvote according to personal concerns that arise largely because of their class position.

It is also possible that class concerns are overwhelmed by, or even intertwinedwith, the Israeli–Arab conflict. This is evident in party platforms where there is littledifference in terms of economic issues (cf. Ben-Porath, 1983), but major differencesin terms of views on the peace process. This peculiar state of Israeli politics hasproduced completely different meanings for Left and Right than in other Westerndemocracies. A more appropriate characterization of this division in Israel is betweenHawks, which are considered right-wing parties, and Doves, which are the left-wingparties (Shamir and Arian, 1999). Given this ideological division, it is not surprisingthat political commentators in Israel (see also Smooha, 1993: 315; Shamir and Arian,1999: 266) commonly suggest that the middle classes support parties from the left,the Labour party in particular, and the lower classes support the Right and the Likudparty. Nonetheless, as said earlier, previous research has failed to substantiate thisview empirically.

The evidence against class voting in Israel is not convincing because the researchupon which it is based typically suffers from poor model specification and inadequatemeasures of social class. The most obvious problem is the use of ad hoc measuresof social class without any sound theoretical rationale for their use. For example,income and density of dwelling are often used as proxies for social class (cf. Shamirand Arian, 1999; Shalev, in press) despite that financial position is only one elementrelated to class. Such measures do not consider the level of control and power peoplehold in the labour market. Although it is now common practice for research on classvoting in Western democracies to use measures of social class based on occupation(see Evans, 1999), no such measures have been used in studies of voting patternsin Israel. This undoubtedly reflects that the Israeli Election Studies do not includea comprehensive measure of occupation. We improve on previous research by usingthe modules from International Social Survey Program (ISSP), which do contain

5 However, Shalev studies the class vote association in Israel based on an ecological analysis. Theaim of this paper, in contrast, is to study the individual’s voting behaviour in Israel.


appropriate measures of occupation and thus allow us to construct a sound socialclass variable.

Another problem of previous research on Israel is the use of a simple dichotomousmeasure of party or vote as the dependent variable. Even the most influential researchhas tended to dichotomise vote choice, typically looking at the contrast between thetwo largest parties — Likud and Labour — or between the left and right blocs only(see Shamir and Arian, 1999). It is quite possible that such a simple measure of voteloses too much information, and in turn, is unable to accurately account for cleavageeffects — class included — on party preferences or vote. Presumably, this approachhas been taken to simplify the analysis since it allows the use of easy to interpretbinary logit models.

The problems associated with a binary vote variable are even more pronouncedwhen analysing the cleavage/party relationship in Israel after the electoral reform of1996.6 As said earlier, one possible consequence of the electoral reform is the relativedecline in size of the two dominant parties, and increase in the size of the religiousand ethnic parties. Thus, a more complex dependent variable is required if one aimsto model the pattern of Israeli voting behaviour adequately. Simply put, the multi-party system in Israel requires a multi-category vote or party preference dependentvariable. This, in turn, requires the use of multinomial logit models, which despitebeing somewhat more difficult to interpret are able to detect more subtle differencesin party choice.

3. Hypotheses

To recapitulate, this paper examines the effects of social cleavages — class, reli-gion and ethnicity in particular — on party preference in Israeli from 1993–1999.Just as important, we assess the implications of electoral reform for patterns of cleav-age voting. Our analysis is guided by four hypotheses.

H1: Ethnicity and religious observance will have a significant impact on partypreference.

H2: Social class will have a significant impact on party preference.

H3: The new electoral system induced an increase in vote for small left and smallright parties relative to Labour and Likud respectively.

6 Shamir and Arian (1999) take precisely this approach in their study. Moreover, these authors specifiedthe left and right blocs differently for the pre-1996 elections and for the 1996 elections. Whereas in theformer period these blocs were defined according to party preference, in the latter they were definedaccording to vote intentions for the PM (1999: Appendix B: 275). As our discussion from above onticket-splitting indicates, this may introduce further bias to the analysis of the cleavage-vote association.


H4: The change in electoral system will positively affect cleavage voting. In otherwords, the effects of class, ethnicity, and religious observance on voting will bestronger in the period after the electoral reform (1996–99) than they were in theperiod before it (1993–1994).

As outlined earlier, the first hypothesis is now a well-established finding withrespect to Israeli society. The second hypothesis contradicts previous findings but isconsistent with ‘common knowledge’ about Israeli society. We expect that by usinga better operationalization of social class we will uncover this relationship. Finally,the third and fourth hypotheses are based on the literature of electoral systems andpolitical outcomes.

4. Research design

4.1. Data

We use data from four International Social Survey Program (ISSP) modules inIsrael: the 1993 survey on the environment (N=1198); the 1994 survey on familyand changing gender roles (N=1287); the 1996 survey on the role of government(N=1043); and the 1999 survey on inequality (N=1057). Since we are interested intesting for changes in the cleavage/party relationship over time, it was necessary topool the four datasets. After omitting missing cases, the sample size of the pooleddataset is 3562.

The ISSP is conducted as a collective effort by more than 20 participating nations.Within each of the countries, a national representative sample of the adult populationwas drawn and respondents were given face-to-face interviews. In addition to modulespecific questions respondents were asked to report on demographic characteristics(e.g., country of origin), social characteristics (e.g., occupation), and party support.

The data we employ in this study are representative of the non-Arabic populationin Israel aged 18 and over.7 We excluded the Arabic population from the analysisfor two reasons. First, only in two out of the four ISSP modules we use (1996 and1999) did information on Israeli Arabs exist. Secondly, Israeli Arabs are not onlysegregated geographically in Israel, with their own enclave economy (cf. Semyonov,1988; Shavit, 1992; Yaish, 2001), but also politically, with parties that aim to rep-resent mainly their own specific interests. Moreover, these parties gain little supportfrom the dominant Jewish population.

The major attraction of the ISSP data is that they contain detailed measures ofoccupation thus allowing us to construct theoretically and empirically valid measuresof social class. These data are also attractive in that all the variables used in ouranalysis were measured almost identically in each year. This was an important con-

7 We use the term ‘non-Arabic’ population rather than Jewish population because about one third ofthe new immigrants in Israel who arrive from the former Soviet Union are not Jewish (cf. Lustick, 1999).


sideration for our analysis considering that the data from the four cross-sectionswere combined.

4.2. Variables

Our dependent variable — ‘party’ — is based on the information that individualsreported about their political party preferences. For the 1993, 1994 and 1999 moduleswe use a question about which party respondents supported. The same question wasnot asked in 1996, but we use a nearly identical question that asked respondentswhich party they voted for in the recent May 1996 election. From these questionswe construct two party support variables — a five-category and three-category vari-able — each of which were used in separate models.

The simple three-category variable distinguishes between support for the Left-Bloc, Right-Bloc, and others. We define the left and the right blocs following fromShamir and Arian (1999: Appendix B).8 Contrary to their analysis, however, ourmodels include a separate category called ‘other’ that contains the undecided, indif-ferent, and those who would not vote if elections were held in the day of the survey.Omitting this category would distort the results of the analysis since any claims ofa cleavage/party relationship must include all citizens, regardless of whether theysupport major parties or not.

It was expected that small parties would benefit from the fact that under the newsystem Israeli voters could split their vote between the party and the Prime Minister.To capture this effect it was necessary to distinguish between small and big partiesin each of the two main ideological blocs. Thus, we also employ a five-categoryversion of party support variable, containing the following categories: Likud, Labour,small parties from the left bloc, small parties from the right bloc, and the ‘other’category as above.

The independent variables of primary concern are social class, religiosity andethnicity. To measure social class we adapt the commonly used Goldthorpe classschema.9 The basis of the conceptualisation for this schema is employment relations(see esp. Goldthorpe, 2000: ch. 10), while its operationalization is based on a crosstabulation of occupations and status at work (see Yaish, 1995 for a detailed expla-nation of the application of the Goldthorpe class schema to Israel). Variants of thisclass measure have been applied previously in social mobility studies of Israelisociety (Goldthorpe et al., 1997; Yaish, 2000, 2001), and in studies of voting behav-iour across a large number of societies (cf. Evans, 1999).

We allocated individuals to class positions on the basis of their current occu-

8 The Left-Bloc includes the following parties: ‘Labour’ , ‘Meretz’ , ‘Shinuy’ , ‘Am-Ehad’ , ‘The Centre’ ,‘Hadash’ , ‘The Third Way’ , and ‘other parties from the Left’ . The Right-Bloc includes the followingparties: ‘Likud’ , ‘Shas’ , ‘Mafdal’ , ‘Yahadut Hatora’ , ‘Haihud Haleumi’ , ‘ Israel Baaliya’ , ‘ Israel Betenu’ ,‘Moledet’ , ‘Tehiya’ , ‘Tzomet’ , ‘other parties from the Right’ , and ‘other Religious parties’ .

9 We employ a variant of the Goldthorpe class schema that is appropriate for the study of both menand women’s position in the labour market (cf. Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992: Ch. 7).


pation.10 Our class variable includes the following six categories: (1) professionalemployees and managers; (2): high-grade routine non-manual employees; (3) self-employed, including farmers; (4) skilled manual employees; (5) low-grade routinenon-manual employees and unskilled manual employees, including farm labourers;and (6) those not in the labour force. In our models, we code social class as aset of five dummy variables with the professionals and managers category as thereference category.

For ethnicity, we follow other research on Israeli society by distinguishing betweentwo groups among the Jewish population — the Ashkenazi and Sephardi. The basisof this distinction is country of origin (cf. Kraus and Hodge, 1990; Shamir and Arian,1999). Ashkenazi Jews are those who were either born in Europe or the Americas,or born in Israel to a European, American, or Israeli born father. Sephardi Jews areall those who were born either in Asia or Africa, or in Israel to an Asian or Africanfather. Our models include ethnicity as a dummy variable, coded 1 for Sephardi Jewsand 0 for Ashkenazi Jews.

Religiosity was determined by respondents’ self-reports of level of participationin religious activities (such as attending services in a synagogue) on a scale rangingfrom every day to never. We collapsed this information into three categories: (1)those who attended a synagogue on a regular basis (one or more times a month),(2) those who rarely attended a synagogue (few times a years), and (3) those whonever attended a synagogue. Throughout this paper we will refer to these groups asthe ‘highly religious’ , ‘moderately religious’ and ‘nonreligious’ . In the analysis wehandle this variable as two dummy regressors with the ‘nonreligious’ as the refer-ence category.

Control variables in the models are gender (a dummy variable coded 1 for men,0 for women), age (measured in years), education (measured in years of schooling),and locality (a dummy variable coded 1 if the respondent lives in an urban area, 0if otherwise).

4.3. Statistical models

To test our hypotheses we fit a series of multinomial logit models. The basiclongitudinal model, using the pooled data, takes the following form:

Logit� pij

pim� � b0j � b1jgenderi � b2jagei � b3jlocalityi � b4jeducationi

10 The Goldthorpe schema typically allocates individuals according tot heir current occupation or lastoccupation if they are currently out of work. The ISSP data do not contain information about the lastoccupation of those unemployed so these individuals are included together with the “not in the labourforce” category. We also introduce a change related to the farmer class and the class of farm workers.The very few Jewish farmers (and farm workers) in our data (and indeed in the population; see CBS,2000) would result in unreliable and unstable estimates of our models. We thus include the farm withthe self-employed, and the farm labourer with the unskilled workers.


� �5

i � 1

gjclassi � b5jethnicityi � �2

i � 1

ljreligiosityi � �3

i � 1

ajperiodi (1)

� �15

i � 1

xj(classi × periodi) � �3

i � 1

yj(ethnicityi × periodi)

� �6

i � 1

zj(religiosityi × periodi)

where the dependent variable has m-1 categories, and provides estimates for the logitbetween each category, j, and the baseline category, m. Model A employs the five-category party support variable as the dependent variable. In order to facilitateinterpretation, the same model is fitted twice — alternatively with Likud and Labouras the baseline category. Model B employs the three-category party dependent vari-able with the Left Bloc as the baseline category.

We are interested in both whether the party/cleavage relationship was generallystable and whether electoral reform had a unique impact on cleavage voting. Sincewe have only four time periods, it makes little sense to specify a linear trend, anda set of dummy variables representing survey years would not allow us to test bothrelationships simultaneously. Our solution, then, was to test for period effects usingdeviation regressors. Deviation coding requires k�1 deviation regressors, P1, P2, …,Pk�1, where each regressor is coded 1 for the period of interest, �1 for the periodit is being contrasted with, and 0 for all other years (see Fox, 1997:158). We employa set of three deviation regressors to test for three period effects: pre- and post systemchange (P1), the within pre-system period (P2), and the within post-system period(P3). The coding of these variables is displayed in Table 1 (parameters are inparentheses).

Table 1Deviation coding for period effect variables in the multinomial logit models

Year P1 (α1) P2 (α2) P3 (α3)

1993 �1 �1 01994 �1 1 01996 1 0 �11999 1 0 1

Here α1 tests for changes in voting due to the electoral system change in 1996;α2 tests for differences between 1993 and 1994; and α3 tests for differences between1996 and 1999. As can be seen in Eq. 1, as well as main effects, we include two-way interaction terms for each of the cleavage variables with the period deviationregressors.

In order to visualize more subtle changes over time, we also fit multinomial logitmodels for each year separately. Aside from the omission of the unnecessary period-


related parameters, these models parallel the pooled-data models, taking the follow-ing form:

Logit� pij

pim� � b0j � b1jgenderi � b2jagei � b3jlocalityi � b4jeducationi (2)

� �5

i � 1

gjclassi � b5jethnicityi � �2

i � 1

ljreligiosityi

Rather than simply report the coefficients, we graph the trend in the fitted prob-abilities from these models for each group of the three major cleavages — class,ethnicity and religiosity. These probabilities are calculated with all other variablesset to their means (see Fox, 1987).

5. Results

Table 2 displays likelihood ratio tests for the independent variables in both ModelA and Model B. Aside from the education effects — which are of little interest to

Table 2Likelihood ratio tests for terms in the multinomial logit models

Model A Model BTerm Chi-Square df p-value Chi-Square df p-value

Main effectsAge 99.16 4 �0.001 37.39 2 �0.001Gender 2.07 4 0.722 0.91 2 0.635Urban locality 5.86 4 0.210 4.97 2 0.084Education 91.49 4 �0.001 3.95 2 0.139Ethnicity (Sephardi) 156.97 4 �0.001 117.57 2 �0.001Religious observance 350.76 8 �0.001 257.86 4 �0.001Social class 69.21 20 �0.001 48.13 10 �0.001Period interaction effectsEthnicity (Sephardi)P1 (system effect) 5.09 4 0.278 2.57 2 0.278P2 (1993–94) 2.59 4 0.630 1.90 2 0.388P3 (1996–99) 6.09 4 0.193 3.24 2 0.198Religious observanceP1 (system effect) 9.29 8 0.319 1.62 4 0.805P2 (1993–94) 5.30 8 0.725 2.26 4 0.688P3 (1996–99) 4.80 8 0.779 6.96 4 0.139Social classP1 (system effect) 24.66 20 0.215 17.93 10 0.056P2 (1993–94) 17.44 20 0.624 10.35 10 0.411P3 (1996–99) 16.22 20 0.703 9.50 10 0.485Lack of Fit 13221.9 156 �0.001 796.42 78 �0.001Cox and Snell R2 0.31 0.20N 3562 3562


the present paper — the results are quite similar for the two models. Both modelsgive a statistically significant improvement in fit over the constant only model. Eventhe pseudo R2s are quite large given that the models do not include any attitudinalmeasures. More importantly, in both cases ethnicity, religiosity and social class havea highly significant impact on voting, lending support to hypotheses one and two.In other words, the Goldthorpe class schema does, in fact, produce social class effectsthat have not been seen before in Israeli research. Moreover, there is no significantdifference in these relationships for the three time periods tested. In both modelsinteractions between the three cleavage variables and the three period deviationregressors are statistically insignificant. Finally, as expected, Model A explains sub-stantially more of the variation in the data than Model B.

We now turn to Table 3 for an examination of the coefficients from the models.We report only the coefficients for the dependent variable contrasts pertaining to ourhypotheses. The first three columns of coefficients are from different contrasts ofthe dependent variable from Model A; the coefficients in the fourth column are fromModel B.

Before we assess the influence of social cleavages, it is necessary to assess thegeneral impact of the electoral reform. Recall that P1 represents the changes in votingbefore and after the change in the electoral system in 1996. In both Model A andModel B it is evident that the system change had no initial impact on party support —i.e., small parties did not immediately benefit from the change in system. However,in 1999 respondents’ were more likely to support small right parties than Likud thanthey were previously, including 1996. Similar to our suggestion regarding the Israelipolity, this again indicates the possibility of a learning effect. Finally, the electoralreform had no significant impact on the contrast of support for left parties versus Lab-our.

Our analysis now addresses the effects of social cleavages on party choice. Wefirst consider ethnicity. In agreement with previous research (see Smooha, 1993;Shamir and Arian, 1999), the findings here suggest that Sephardi Jews were muchmore likely to vote for the Right Bloc than Left Bloc. This can be seen both inModel B and in the contrast between Labour and Likud in Model A. Sephardi Jewswere also more likely to vote for larger parties than smaller ones. As can be seenfrom the interaction terms between ethnicity and the period effects in Table 3B, thisrelationship remained stable over time. Although there was a statistically significantchange after the new system was implemented, it was with respect to the choicebetween the two largest parties — Likud and Labour — and not between the largeand small parties as one would expect if ticket-splitting were to influence cleavagevoting. In other words, this change more than likely reflects something other thanan effect of the electoral reform.

The relationship between religiosity and party choice is also as expected in bothModel A and Model B (see Shamir and Arian, 1999). The more religious voterswere, the more likely they were to favour right-wing parties. The coefficients inTable 3B indicate that this relationship remained generally stable through the courseof the period under study, except for the case of the highly religious. Here we findtwo patterns of change. First, in the periods before and after the electoral reform in


Tab

le3A

Coe

ffici

ents

from

the

mul

tinom

ial

logi

tm

odel

sof

votin

g(m

ain

effe

cts

only

)a

Mod

elA

Mod

elB

Dep

ende

ntva

riab

leco

ntra

st:

Lik

ud/L

abou

rSm

all

righ

tpa

rtie

s/L

ikud

Smal

lle

ftpa

rtie

s/L

abou

rR

ight

bloc

/left

bloc

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

Inte

rcep

t0.

148

0.38

4�

2.54

8∗∗∗

0.45

6�

0.79

00.

470

�0.

583

0.31

0A

ge�

0.22

∗∗∗

0.00

3�

0.00

40.

004

�0.

030∗

∗∗0.

004

�0.

016∗

∗∗0.

003

Gen

der

(men

)�

0.12

20.

102

0.13

50.

115

0.01

00.

130

�0.

081

0.08

5U

rban

loca

lity

0.23

00.

171

0.08

80.

203

0.11

90.

214

0.22

30.

142

Edu

catio

n�

0.07

6∗∗∗

0.01

70.

169∗

∗∗0.

021

0.09

7∗∗∗

0.02

4�

0.02

50.

014

Per

iod

effe

cts

(dev

iati

onco

ding

)P

1(s

yste

mef

fect

)�

0.02

20.

141

�0.

178

0.17

40.

155

0.12

7�

0.11

20.

107

P2

(199

3–94

)�

0.19

50.

203

0.23

80.

241

�0.

258

0.18

90.

035

0.15

2P

3(1

996–

99)

0.14

20.

197

0.68

1∗∗

0.25

2�

.060

0.16

70.

411∗

∗0.

150

Eth

nici

ty(S

epha

rdi)

1.02

9∗∗∗

0.10

0�

0.68

9∗∗∗

0.11

4�

0.43

1∗∗

0.14

80.

891∗

∗∗0.

084

Rel

igio

usob

serv

ance

Hig

h0.

797∗

∗∗0.

118

1.09

4∗∗∗

0.14

0�

0.85

1∗∗∗

0.17

91.

480∗

∗∗0.

097

Mod

erat

e0.

285∗

0.13

60.

265

0.18

5�

0.45

6∗0.

178

0.51

0∗∗∗

0.11

3N

onre

ligio

us0

00

00

00

0So

cial

clas

sPr

ofes

sion

als

00

00

00

00

Non

-man

ual

0.45

7∗0.

204

�0.

222

0.23

4�

0.13

10.

233

0.36

9∗0.

162

Self

-em

ploy

ed0.

977∗

∗∗0.

233

�0.

918∗

∗0.

296

�0.

102

0.31

40.

607∗

∗0.

195

Skill

ed0.

603∗

∗0.

196

�0.

361

0.22

3�

0.33

90.

275

0.45

3∗∗

0.16

0U

nski

lled

0.94

2∗∗∗

0.19

0�

0.61

0∗∗

0.22

10.

167

0.23

20.

640∗

∗∗0.

154

Not

empl

oyed

0.80

8∗∗∗

0.15

4�

0.19

60.

172

0.01

30.

170

0.67

1∗∗∗

0.11

9

a∗p

-val

ue�

0.05

;∗∗

p-va

lue

�0.

01;

∗∗∗p

-val

ue�

0.00

1.


Tab

le3B

Coe

ffici

ents

from

the

mul

tinom

ial

logi

tm

odel

sof

votin

g(p

erio

din

tera

ctio

nef

fect

s)a

Mod

elA

Mod

elB

Dep

ende

ntva

riab

leco

ntra

st:

Lik

ud/L

abou

rSm

all

righ

tpa

rtie

s/L

ikud

Smal

lle

ftpa

rtie

s/L

abou

rR

ight

bloc

/left

bloc

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

Eth

nici

ty(S

epha

rdi)

P1

(sys

tem

effe

ct)

0.19

9∗0.

098

�0.

065

0.11

20.

228

0.14

50.

130

0.08

1P

2(1

993–

94)

�0.

024

0.13

9�

0.04

40.

157

0.22

30.

221

�0.

075

0.11

7P

319

96–9

9�

0.12

40.

138

�0.

247

0.15

9�

0.22

50.

188

�0.

187

0.11

3R

elig

ious

obse

rvan

cew

ith

P1

(sys

tem

effe

ct)

Hig

h�

0.11

10.

117

0.37

6∗∗

0.13

90.

075

0.17

80.

067

0.09

6M

oder

ate

�0.

079

0.13

60.

136

0.18

5�

0.06

00.

178

�0.

042

0.11

3N

onre

ligio

us0

00

00

00

0R

elig

ious

obse

rvan

cew

ith

P2

(199

3–94

)H

igh

0.31

2∗0.

158

�0.

081

0.19

40.

219

0.24

80.

153

0.13

0M

oder

ate

0.22

50.

191

�0.

121

0.25

20.

169

0.24

50.

108

0.15

8N

onre

ligio

us0

00

00

00

0R

elig

ious

obse

rvan

cew

ith

P3

(199

6–99

)H

igh

0.22

40.

173

�0.

070

0.19

90.

205

0.25

50.

358∗

0.14

1M

oder

ate

0.13

50.

193

0.00

50.

272

0.44

70.

257

0.05

10.

162

Non

relig

ious

00

00

00

00

Soci

alcl

ass

wit

hP

1(s

yste

mef

fect

)Pr

ofes

sion

als

00

00

00

00

Non

-man

ual

0.04

80.

198

0.13

80.

227

�0.

382

0.22

30.

186

0.15

7Se

lf-e

mpl

oyed

�0.

064

0.22

80.

038

0.29

10.

081

0.30

7�

0.05

70.

190

Skill

ed0.

226

0.18

6�

0.04

80.

210

0.24

10.

261

0.18

90.

151

Uns

kille

d�

0.04

90.

183

0.12

70.

211

�0.

253

0.22

20.

072

0.14

8N

otem

ploy

ed0.

155

0.14

30.

066

0.16

0�

0.17

40.

157

0.24

4∗0.

110

(Con

tinu

ed.)


Tab

le3B

Con

tinue

da

Mod

elA

Mod

elB

Dep

ende

ntva

riab

leco

ntra

st:

Lik

ud/L

abou

rSm

all

righ

tpa

rtie

s/L

ikud

Smal

lle

ftpa

rtie

s/L

abou

rR

ight

bloc

/left

bloc

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

bS.

E.

Soci

alcl

ass

wit

hP

2(1

993–

94)

Prof

essi

onal

s0

00

00

00

0N

on-m

anua

l0.

527

0.31

7�

0.74

4∗0.

361

0.06

10.

350

0.21

20.

249

Self

-em

ploy

ed0.

292

0.30

2�

0.26

90.

372

�0.

321

0.44

00.

220

0.25

5Sk

illed

0.02

70.

264

�0.

277

0.29

4�

0.17

70.

420

�0.

092

0.21

6U

nski

lled

0.20

50.

250

�0.

430

0.28

2�

0.18

70.

322

0.10

60.

202

Not

empl

oyed

0.20

70.

202

�0.

446∗

0.22

4�

0.23

20.

231

0.05

80.

156

Soci

alcl

ass

wit

hP

3(1

996–

99)

Prof

essi

onal

s0

00

00

00

0N

on-m

anua

l�

0.28

70.

238

�0.

095

0.27

60.

130

0.27

5�

0.37

9∗0.

190

Self

-em

ploy

ed0.

419

0.34

1�

0.29

90.

446

0.70

80.

427

0.11

40.

282

Skill

ed0.

096

0.26

2�

0.35

60.

300

0.41

80.

310

�0.

184

0.21

1U

nski

lled

0.10

50.

266

0.05

10.

314

0.09

20.

306

0.04

60.

215

Not

empl

oyed

�0.

047

0.20

2�

0.00

10.

229

0.17

00.

211

�0.

101

0.15

5

a∗p

-val

ue�

0.05

;∗∗

p-va

lue

�0.

01.


1996 (i.e., with P2 and P3), this association has strengthened with respect to choosingLikud versus Labour and the Right bloc versus the Left bloc. These results are con-sistent with those of Shamir and Arian (1999) based on the Israeli Elections Studies.Secondly, Model A in Table 3B reveals that the highly religious (compared to thenonreligious) became even more likely to vote for the small right parties rather thanthe Likud party after the electoral reform (see parameter estimates for P1). Thischange is consistent with our third and fourth hypotheses, indicating that electoralreform may have had some effect on cleavage voting. Considering that many smallright parties also represent religious groups this result makes perfect sense. Remem-ber from Table 2, however, that adding the interactions between religiosity and theperiod deviation regressors did not significantly improve the overall fit of our models,suggesting that the overall impact of the electoral reform was rather small.

One of the goals of the paper is to test arguments that social class is related toparty support in Israel. As can be seen in Table 3A, our results support the hypothesisthat there are indeed class effects in Israel. Even when controlling for ethnicity andreligiosity, we are able to substantiate the so-called ‘common knowledge’ in Israelisociety about class voting. As expected, we find that compared to other social classes,the upper middle classes (i.e., professionals and managers), were significantly morelikely to support parties from the Left Bloc rather than parties from the Right Bloc.This pattern is obvious both from Model A and Model B. Just as important, theclass/party relationship was unaltered after the electoral reform, and there is no evi-dence of a general decline in class effects throughout the entire period under study.Finally, the relatively strong and statistically significant class effects in Model B (forthe Right Bloc/Left Bloc contrast) can be attributed to the even stronger class effectsin the Likud/Labour contrast, shown in Model A (Note that the same effects areweaker and generally not statistically significant in the contrasts between big andsmall parties). In other words, class voting in Israel is associated more with the twomajor parties — Likud and Labour — than with the left/right division in Israel’s poli-tics.

We now turn to a more detailed description of the cleavage/party relationshipduring the course of the period under study. The various graphs in Fig. 3 plot thefitted probabilities for each of the ethnic and religious groups for different dependentvariable contrasts. As we initially found from the pooled-data models, the relation-ships between ethnicity and party, and religiosity and party, were fairly stable.

This is particularly the case with the Right Bloc/Left Bloc, and the Likud/Labourcontrasts. For example, holding all other variables at their means, the probability ofAsian/Afrian Jews supporting right parties over left parties was steady at around0.60; for European/American Jews the probability for the same contrast never wenthigher than 0.49 and was as low as 0.38. The pattern was similar for religiosity. Thefitted probabilities for the highly religious supporting parties from the right neverwent below 0.66, and showed a significant increase in 1999 (reflecting the statisti-cally significant religiosity/period interaction in Model B) when it reached 0.84. Onthe other hand, for the nonreligious the fitted probability remained fairly constant atabout 0.35. A nearly identical pattern of association can be seen in Fig. 3(b), forthe Likud versus Labour contrast.


Fig. 3. Fitted probabilities for various dependent variable contrasts from the multinomial logit modelsof party support, by religious observance and ethnicity. The horizontal axis represents year; Probabilityis on the vertical axis.

We can also notice from the figures the fairly constant relationship between religi-osity and support for small left parties versus Labour. The more religious one was,the more likely they were to vote for the smaller parties versus Labour. Althoughthe differences are smaller, the pattern is generally the same for ethnicity. The pat-terns are less stable for the contrast between small right parties and Likud. Recallthere was a statistically significant interaction between religiosity and support forsmall right parties versus Likud in Model A. This pattern shows up clearly in the


figure, where the more religious became more likely to support small right partiesafter the electoral reform. The change is most evident in 1999 by which point thefitted probability for the highly religious was 0.70 while in all previous years it wasnever higher than 0.54. Although the likelihood for both ethnic groups of supportingthe small right parties versus Likud fluctuated throughout the period, the differencein probabilities between them remained fairly constant.

The four graphs of Fig. 4 display the fitted probabilities of various party support

Fig. 4. Fitted probabilities for various dependent variable contrasts from the multinomial logit modelsof party support, by social class. The horizontal axis represents year; Probability is on the vertical axis.


contrasts for the six social class categories. Although the pooled-data analysisrevealed some small statistically significant changes in the association between classand party (particularly in the small right parties/Likud contrast), aside from seeminglyrandom effects across years there is no obvious pattern in the four graphs of Fig. 4.The only apparent pattern (which was also revealed in the pooled-data analysis)relates to the Right Bloc/Left Bloc and Likud/Labour contrasts (Fig. 4(a) and (b)respectively). Here we see that professionals and managers were much less likelythan others to support either the Right Bloc or Likud. For example, the fitted prob-abilities of this class for the Right Bloc or Likud never reached 0.5 and 0.4, respect-ively. On the other hand, the fitted probabilities for all other classes were seldomless than 0.5.

6. Conclusions and discussion

The results of this study can be summarised as follows. First, we found strongcleavage effects on party choice in Israel. That ethnicity and religiosity are relatedto party choice in Israeli society is not a new finding. What is new, however, is ourfinding that even controlling for ethnicity and religiosity there was substantial classeffects on party choice. Secondly, and just as importantly, we found that the electoralreform had only a minimal effect on the cleavage/party association. Below, we dis-cuss the implications of these findings in the context of Israeli society.

To begin with, unlike most empirical analysis in Israeli society, our findings revealthat class does affect party choice in Jewish Israeli society. It is clear to us that thelack of empirical support for this pattern of class voting has been largely due topoor operationalizations of the concept of ‘social class’ in previous research in Israel.We used an occupation-based measure that taps different levels of power and auth-ority in the workplace and position in the labour market. Previous research typicallyconstructed ad hoc measures based on income and assets. Our results suggest thatfuture research on cleavage voting in Israel must incorporate these occupation-basedmeasures of social class.

Secondly, our result regarding the pattern of the class/party association is unique incomparative perspective (cf. Evans, 1999). Contrary to findings from most Westerndemocracies — where the working class is more likely to support parties from theleft while the upper classes support parties from the right — we have shown thatthe Israeli upper classes are significantly more likely to vote for parties from theLeft Bloc than any other social class. We can put these findings into context byrecalling that the appropriate characterisation of the right/left division in Israel isbetween ‘Hawks’ (commonly referred to as ‘ right’ ), and ‘Doves’ (commonly referredto as ‘ left’ ), and that most political commentators in Israel suggest that the Israeliupper classes are more ‘Dovish’ , while the working classes are more ‘Hawkish’ (cf.Smooha, 1993).

Why, then, should class affect party choice in a society whose political discoursedoes not explicitly address traditional class concerns? Speculating on this issue, weoffer two possible explanations. The first is based on the premise that peace in the


Middle East will lead to economic integration, prosperity and growth for all countriesinvolved. In this context, however, there is good reason to believe that the economicgains from peace would not be perceived as such by all members of Jewish Israelisociety. Members of the lower classes (i.e., the more vulnerable and flexible workforce) might believe that in the ‘New Middle East’ their employment and economicprospects would be further undermined, and hence they may be more likely to sup-port ‘Hawkish’ parties. Members of the upper classes (i.e., the more secured workforce, and big employers), on the other hand, might view peace as a unique opport-unity for enhancing their economic prosperity and prospects, and hence they maybe more likely to support ‘Dovish’ parties.

These perceptions are not necessarily irrational. After all, it is evident that Israel’sGDP per capita is substantially higher than that of any of its neighbouring countries.This means, inter alia, that the cost of labour (particularly semi- and unskilled) ishigher in Israel relative to the rest of the region. A comprehensive peace in theregion would make it possible for Israeli employers to exploit this discrepancy byexporting some of their production to neighbouring countries.11 Thus, the economicconsequences of peace for the lower classes of Israeli society might be detrimentalin terms of job losses. In contrast, employees within the upper classes are betterprotected against competition — either because many of them are state employeeswith a secured job or because they are highly skilled and thus less likely to bereplaced — and thus they may believe that they would benefit economically fromthe positive association between peace and economic growth and prosperity.

The second possible rationale is based on the premise that one’s position in socialstructure largely influences their attitudes and behaviour (cf. Merton, 1949). We canadd to this Merton’s (1957: Ch. X) typology that distinguishes between ‘ localite’and ‘cosmopolitan’ individuals. A localite individual is ‘preoccupied with local prob-lems, to the virtual exclusion of the national or the international scene’ (p. 393). Incontrast, a cosmopolitan individual is “oriented significantly to the world outside[…], and regards himself as an integral part of that world” (p. 393). Following fromthis, it is sensible to suggest that members of the upper class are more likely to becosmopolitans, while member of the lower classes are more likely to be the localites.Professional employees (e.g., government officials, lecturers in universities, etc.), forexample, are more likely than an assembly-line worker to interact with, and be apart of, the international community and thus more likely to have friends and col-leagues from that community who may influence their attitudes and behaviour (cf.Parkin, 1967; Andersen and Heath, in press). This implies, then, that the Israeli upperclasses might support the peace process to a greater extent than the working classpartly because they share the Western World’s concern about the necessity of alasting peace in the Middle-East.

Finally, our findings about the impact of the electoral system were somewhat lessconclusive. On the one hand, we found no evidence of a general effect of the change

11 Indeed, soon after the peace agreements with Jordan were signed in the mid 1990s, part of the textileindustry relocated its production to Jordan.


in electoral system on party choice. Likewise, we found no evidence of a change inthe relationship between social cleavages and support for Labour or the small leftparties. On the other hand, our results regarding vote for parties within the RightBloc suggest a possible system effect. Here there was hint of a learning processwhere voters and parties may have become increasingly more aware of the possiblebenefits of ticket-splitting as time went on. Thus, although there was no effect duringthe first year of the new system, changes in voting patterns did occur in 1999. Thiswas especially the case for the highly religious, where although they had preferredsmall right parties more than Likud before, they did even more so in 1999. Perhapsmore learning would take place in the long term and we would then find obvioussystem effects. It is impossible to directly test this proposition, however, becauseIsrael has since returned to the previous electoral system. Nonetheless, public opinionpolls after the return of the system show a rise in support for Likud and a declinein support for Shas (a religious Sephardi right wing party), indicating that perhapsthe system did effect voting patterns.

Why then did our analysis detect system ‘effects’ with respect to the religiouscleavage on voting for parties within the Right Bloc, but not with respect to the LeftBloc? In answering this question one has to begin with the fact that supporters ofthe Right Bloc are very clearly divided with respect to religiosity, while supportersof the Left Bloc are much more religiously homogeneous. This being the case, theopportunity given to religious voters to split their vote should have a stronger effecton the small right parties/Likud choice. The parties involved also recognised thisopportunity — although only after some delay. For example, the 1999 election cam-paign of Shas encouraged Sepharadi and Orthodox Jews to split their vote betweenNetanyahu and Shas. Their slogan in that campaign was very simple: “Netanyahu-Shas, Shas-Netanyahu” . Amongst voters for the Left Bloc, however, the peace pro-cess was the focal point of the campaign. Since this issue is strongly associated withreligiosity and ethnicity (see, Shamir and Arian, 1999; Smooha, 1993; Yishai, 1999),and since the Left Bloc is very homogeneous with respect to these two cleavages,the change of the system should have not affected the cleavage/party relationship.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Noah Lewin-Epstein and Anat Oren for making the ISSP dataavailable to us. We also wish to thank Geoff Evans, John Fox, John Goldthorpe,David Mayhew, Yossi Shavit, Ilan Talmud, Yuval Yonay and two anonymousreviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. A version of this paper waspresented to the ISA RC-28 on Social Stratification and Mobility, Berkeley, August2001. We wish to thank the participants of this conference for their useful commentsand suggestions. The first author also thanks CREST (Centre for Research into Elec-tions and Social Trends) for funding part of the time devoted to this research. Theusual disclaimer applies.


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