Candidates, parties and blocs

The Israeli party system, its parties and its voters, have undergone tremendous change. From a stable dominant party system through a competitive two-bloc system, it finds itself in the 1990s in a state of dealignment, with weakening parties, loosening party ties, fragmen-tation, growing volatility and frequent turnover in government. The combination of electoral reform, which instituted direct elections of the Prime Minister, new voting groups, and international shifts exacerbated in Israel the processes which characterize all Western democracies. While the party system and the parties are in disarray, candidates, issues and the political blocs of left and right grow in importance. KEY WORDS _ dealignment _ Israel _ issue voting _ left-right blocs Political systems change, and they change in complex ways. Just as a range of factors affects the decision of the individual voter, myriad forces drive the transformation of a society and its political system. The rules of the game may be altered; new groups of voters may emerge; international or econ-omic shifts may present new challenges. Were one to seek an apt site and an appropriate setting to study these matters, the choice of the 1999 elections in Israel would be most felicitous. Some observers, especially in the foreign media, interpreted the election of Ehud Barak as prime minister as a fundamental sea change in Israeli priorities and belief patterns. This analysis was encouraged by the fact that the voting resulted in the largest margin ever achieved in Israeli elections. Consider: No party had ever won an absolute majority of the votes; the Netanyahu-Peres contest of 1996 was decided by less than 1 percent of the vote; accordingly, the 1999 spread (Barak 56 percent, Netanyahu 44 percent) seemed like a landslide. But this view was incorrect. Old pattern