Religious Politics and Israel's Ethnic Democracy

Abstract

What is the significance of Yosef s statement? Is it simply another example of the ongoing chain of hostility between the leaders of the secular and religious parties dating back to the earliest days of the pre-state Zion ist Movement, or a sign of more serious conflict that is not manageable within the existing political framework? When is the antagonism between religious and secular politicians an actual threat to the democratic system? These questions take on greater significance in the wake of the Rabin assas sination by an extremist religious Zionist in 1995, and the unprecedented 27 seats gained by religious parties in the 1999 election. For the social scientist, the problem is not religious politics of one kind or another, but the theoretical framework we use for determining the significance of Yosef 's statement, or, for that matter, the significance of the actions of other religious political actors for Israeli democracy. Several dated works provide overviews of the historical development, theological positions, and political behavior of the religious political movements.1 To date, however, no theoretical paradigm exists to enable an informed debate about the consequence of particular religious actions for the larger political system. To build a paradigm for the study of the interaction between religion and democracy requires us to grapple with the meaning of both concepts