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The economic weaknesses of Israel’s periphery have attracted media attention and have shifted upwards as a priority in the national agenda. There has been a heightened awareness of gaps between the haves and the have-nots and of growing inequality. One important facet of the public debate on issues of centre and periphery has been the degree of professionalism of the leaders running local government compared to that of their counterparts in the centre. In this paper, there is an examination of the relationship between three variables – periphery, professionalism and (to a lesser extent) local government stability. A vicious cycle has been identified which seems to perpetuate the economic and political weakness of local government in the periphery.

The performance of local authority heads in times of emergency is a topic that has apparently received very little attention in the research literature. The same is true with regards to the relationship between performance and re-election chances in crisis situations. The hybrid macro polity view makes it possible to ‘pit’ the rational school of objective performance against the bounded rationality school of perceived performance. We examine which of the two is better at explaining the replacement or re-election of the incumbent local authority head in 17 local authorities in the North of Israel, after the Second Lebanon War. In the “Beauty Queen” contest between perceived and objective performance, the perceived performance appears to be a clear winner.