Dani Filc – författare

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture.

Across five sections, a multidisciplinary group of experts, including sociologists, political scientists, historians and social scientists, engage in a wide variety of topics through different perspectives and insights. The book opens with a historical section outlining the formation of Israel and Jewish nationalism. The second section examines contemporary institutions in Israel, their developments and the contemporary challenges they face in light of social, economic, political and cultural changes. The third section explores geopolitics and Israel’s foreign relations, exploring conflicts, alliances and foreign policy with neighbors and powers. The fourth section engages with Israel’s internal divisions and schisms, highlighting questions of identity and inequality while also outlining processes of integration and marginalization between groups. The final section explores matters of culture, through the social and demographic shifts in contemporary music, poetry and cuisine, along with the struggles for inclusion and the impact of globalization on Israeli culture.

The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel is designed for academics along with undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on Israel, Israeli politics, and culture and society in modern Israel.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary Israel, accounting for changes, developments and contemporary debates. The different chapters offer both a historical background and an updated analysis of politics, economy, society and culture.

Across five sections, a multidisciplinary group of experts, including sociologists, political scientists, historians and social scientists, engage in a wide variety of topics through different perspectives and insights. The book opens with a historical section outlining the formation of Israel and Jewish nationalism. The second section examines contemporary institutions in Israel, their developments and the contemporary challenges they face in light of social, economic, political and cultural changes. The third section explores geopolitics and Israel’s foreign relations, exploring conflicts, alliances and foreign policy with neighbors and powers. The fourth section engages with Israel’s internal divisions and schisms, highlighting questions of identity and inequality while also outlining processes of integration and marginalization between groups. The final section explores matters of culture, through the social and demographic shifts in contemporary music, poetry and cuisine, along with the struggles for inclusion and the impact of globalization on Israeli culture.

The Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Israel is designed for academics along with undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on Israel, Israeli politics, and culture and society in modern Israel.

Dani Filc and Amit Avigur-Eshel employ a neo-Gramscian framework grounded in the distinct analytical concepts of ideology, historical blocs, and economic growth models to examine the long rule of Israel’s Likud party during 2009–2019. Exemplifying how public policies are crucial to exclusionary populists retaining power, they find that the combination of neoliberal and heterodox socio-economic policies and the exploitation of Israel’s export-led growth model to improve the material welfare of ''the people'', as well as deals struck with non-populist forces based on ideological commonalities were pivotal in Likud’s decade-long reign. Looking beyond Israel, Filc and Avigur-Eshel apply this analytical framework to successful exclusionary populist parties across Asia and Europe to emphasize the importance of understanding the interrelationship between populist historical blocs, their worldviews and growth models.

A pioneering study of populism, this book will appeal to students and scholars of political economy, political sociology, international and comparative politics, political parties, public policy, and governance. Policymakers and researchers interested in the relationship between populism and growth models will also find it beneficial.

This book takes a fresh look at the trajectories of Israeli politics since the election of Likud in 1977, examining how right wing parties have adopted populist policies in order to carve out an identity and win support at the polls. As such it demonstrates how populism has become a hugely significant factor in shaping Israeli politics and society.

The original perspective taken by the author allows for an understanding of the central phenomena of the contemporary political system in Israel, such as the Likud''s party centrality in Israeli politics, the political force of the religious Shas party and the growing influence of certain political leaders. Through this innovative analysis of the concept of populism, the book contributes to a better understanding of the Israeli political system.

With Israel playing such a central role in the Middle East conflict, this analysis of the ways in which populism contributes to the consolidation of governing political forces in Israel will allow for a better understanding of this conflict. Combining the theoretical elaboration of the concept of populism with its application in the analysis of a specific test-case, this novel approach contributes to the ongoing research on populist politics, and as such will be a useful tool for understanding many issues in the study of populism, comparative politics and the Middle East.