Party Switching in Israel

Csaba Nikolenyi is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies at Concordia University in Canada. He is the author of Institutional Design and Party Government in Post-Communist Europe and Minority Governments in India: The Puzzle of Elusive Majorities.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Conceptual and Comparative Considerations2. Kalanterism, the "Stinking Trick," and the Evolution of Israel's Anti-Defection Law3. The Growing Incidence of Party Switching in Israel4. "Acquire a Friend for Yourself!" The Rise of Collective Defections in the Knesset5. The Preponderance of Pre-Electoral Party Switching6. Between Government and Opposition: The Directionality of Exit7. Does Defection Pay? The Electoral Consequences of Party Switching8. Comparative Cases: Anti-Defections Laws and Their Consequences in India, New Zealand, and South AfricaConclusionAppendixNotesWorks CitedIndex

"…this scholarly work combines rich empirical detail with profound theoretical insights into institutional design and legislative behavior in parliamentary democracies. Its comprehensive analysis of Israel's distinctive approach to regulating party switching significantly enhances our understanding of this very complex phenomenon." — Israel Studies Review"…a comprehensive theoretical and empirical study of party switching in Israel from a comparative perspective … Csaba Nikolenyi has embarked on a challenging endeavour in this book: to distill coherence and rationale from an intricate and frequently tumultuous inter-play of self-interests and partisan ideologies." — Party Politics"Party Switching in Israel greatly adds to our knowledge of Israeli politics and invites important comparative questions. Although the detailed treatment of the subject of party defectors in multi-party parliamentary systems focuses on the case of Israel, Nikolenyi broadens the scope to include material on New Zealand, India, and South Africa. The material on the other countries does make the investigation comparative and definitely represents an important contribution to the literature on legislatures." — Harold M. Waller, McGill University