Abstract
The 2015 Israeli general elections provide rare intellectual stimuli to trace and characterize some of the larger sociopolitical stances in Israeli society. Since Israeli politics has undergone many changes over the last decades, a focus on electoral moment unpacks the issues and general perception regarding geopolitics (i.e. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and the domestic health of the country (i.e. sociopolitical reforms and policy-developments). This paper aims at analyzing the three main dimensions, which were emphasized during the electoral campaign and the turnout, while it connects them with what we may refer to as the Israeli political "state of mind".
Highlights
Israeli politics has changed quite a bit due to external factors, namely the everlasting conflict with the Palestinians and Arab states, as well as domestic ones, e.g. trends in policies regarding the welfare state, centerperiphery tensions or the ethnic issue dividing Ashkenazi and Sephardi Israelis; which all characterize Israeli society
A tricky political «state of mind»? Following the scope conditions the article laid out, it seems that the 2015 general elections in Israel did not change the country's political "self"
The issue of security was still perceived in geopolitical terms and rapidly liquidated the former's interpretation as welfare, which had its origin in the social protests of 2011
Summary
Israeli politics has changed quite a bit due to external factors, namely the everlasting conflict with the Palestinians and Arab states, as well as domestic ones, e.g. trends in policies regarding the welfare state, centerperiphery tensions or the ethnic issue dividing Ashkenazi and Sephardi Israelis; which all characterize Israeli society. It hypothesizes that it is fruitful to use the concept of «state of mind» as a container of sociopolitical macro trends with micro specificities in time and place The latter enables to introduce a broader range of changing phenomena (the focal aspects of analysis) as they emerge from and during the elections. The combination of 'state of mind' (a semi-flexible concept vis-à-vis the more ambiguous concept of 'identity' and the structuralist concept of 'habitus') combined to a time span,- which is osservable and delimitable-, allow us to identify mechanisms (namely, the emphatization of the different interpretations of 'security' as experienced by Israelis, the personalization of politics,-and the role charismatic leadership occupies in the process-, as well as the broader political discourse and its legitimacy) that cross the eventful elections and situate them in time and space. These lists gained approx. 190,000 votes (circa 4.5% of the total amount) and did not surpass the legal threshold
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