Search

Studies of electoral geography have traditionally examined the impact of spatial context on vote choice at the neighborhood or larger geographical level, overlooking potential effects of the immediate physical environment in the polling station. Observations of actual polling stations located in schools in Israel revealed a strong presence of nationalist and religious content in and around voting booths, in the form of naïve décor such as murals and children's drawings (Study 1). In three experimental studies (Studies 2–4), we examine the effect on voters of such seemingly apolitical cues. The experimental studies were conducted in the days prior to Israeli general elections for the 21st and 22nd Knesset. Using a virtual-reality interface based on real-life content in actual polling stations (Study 2, student sample) and simulated environments (Studies 3 and 4, representative samples of Jewish Israeli voters), the three experiments document an effect of naïve nationalist décor on simulated voting, particularly for left-wing less-nationalist voters. In Study 5, based on actual voting in the 22nd Knesset, we capitalize on the random allocation of voters to polling stations in schools and find a correlation between the content displayed around polling places and voting patterns among distinctively left-wing populations. Investigating the influence of the encounter with the immediate environment at a resolution of meters and seconds exposes the potential impact of the (ultra-)micro temporo-spatial scale on decision-making and enriches theoretical discussions on the multiscalarity of contexts in electoral geography analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Israeli ‘Tent Protest’ movement enjoyed wide popular support, but displayed a distinct lack of political radicalism. Not only did calls for discrete welfare policies replace explicit anti-capitalism, but there was a widespread insistence on the movement's ‘apolitical’ nature and an avoidance of any direct confrontation with the neoliberal Netanyahu government or calls for new elections. The article argues that these anomalies can be explained by the chilling effect of the patriotic, state-loyalist discourses which reached unprecedented prominence in Israeli society in the past year. This led movement participants to avoid at all costs being perceived as left-wing and disloyal, and created an atmosphere of deliberate self-censorship which silenced any engagement with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during the mobilization. The movement is understood here as an all-too-brief interlude in Israel's ongoing move away from democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the development of Hamas and its prospects for power in the wake of electoral successes, changes within the broader movement of Palestinian nationalism and the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip. The challenges that now beset Hamas are discussed in tandem with a reflection of demands related to governance, democracy, security and reform that affect many societies emerging from conflict. The major contention lies with the question of systems of transitional governance and whether they can withstand growing internal fragmentation and necessary demands for power sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]