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Advances in information technology and communication through new social media platforms have enormous benefits in many contexts, including education. At the same time, self-distractive use of technology -- or 'absent presenteeism' -- can have negative effects in the classroom. The main research question of this study is the relationship between organisational leadership, enforcement of discipline and self-distractive use of technology in the secondary school setting. The finding indicated that the permissive style of discipline appeared to be the most effective at reducing self-distractive mobile phone use. However, a more authoritative style of discipline, short teacher tenure and the principal's transformational leadership style contributed to high self-distractive mobile phone use. The authors rely on empirical data collected in Israeli public high schools from two independent sources: 144 teachers and 591 students, which yielded 4440 teacher-student events. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the school setting characterised by rapid changes in technology.

We explore two complementary mechanisms that are designed to work together to reduce spatial inequality—redrawing municipal borders and the redistribution of tax resources. This study's methodology is based on the empirical analysis of 376 decisions of boundary commissions and permanent geographic commissions that resulted in land transfers and redistributed tax resources in Israel. Our findings indicate that the impact on spatial inequality is mixed. Over time, the amount of land transferred to low socio-economic municipalities has increased, provided that these municipalities are located in the center of the country, or have a Jewish ethnic majority, are politically affiliated with the Minister of the Interior and the ultra-Orthodox right, are financially sound, and have a large population and a large area. In contrast, the redistribution of tax resources provides revenue increases for low socio-economic municipalities that are in the periphery, largely populated by Arabs, are unaffiliated with powerful politicians, are financially weak and small in size and population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the central government's intervention in the operation of failed local authorities affect the functioning of local democracy? We examined the theoretical and practical factors associated with the opportunities and risks inherent in an intervention policy in Israel called convened committees. We developed an index called the Effective Number of Council Parties by Seats at the Municipal Level (ENCPSML) and a number of measures that together express the degree of democratic representation, governability and voter turnout. We compare the functioning of democracy before and after the convened committees in 31 local authorities and a control group of 191 local authorities during four elections in 2003-2018. Contrary to what one might expect, convened committees did not hurt the exercise of democracy and in some cases, improved it. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these findings in the context of multi-level governance, local democracy, regulation and coping with local crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of network governance have found that network management contributes to the effective performance of the network. Nevertheless, the influence of politics on the relationship between network management and network performance has not yet been examined. This is particularly true within traditional minority communities that have only partially adopted aspects of modernity and democratic governance. We conducted a survey among 160 Arab Israeli network members to examine the relationship between network management and perceived network performance by taking into account the effect of internal and external politics. Our findings show that network politics and hamula politics have a moderated mediation effect on this relationship. The study makes a theoretical contribution by emphasising the role of socio-cultural, managerial and political aspects of traditional communities when trying to develop local network governance. In these frameworks, the adoption of local network governance is challenging because democracy and network governance are still under-developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While theories of local democracy mark political representation as highly important in determining the quality and perception of public services, little has been done to explore the empirical connection. This represents a lacuna in our understanding of how representation affects citizen wellbeing and how citizens determine their satisfaction with public services. We focus on descriptive and symbolic dimensions of representation to elucidate how representation influences citizens', and minority citizens' in particular, experience with public services. Utilizing a survey of residents of Haifa, Israel, our findings imply that beyond the descriptive makeup of municipal elected bodies, symbolic dimensions of representation might be even more important for understanding citizen satisfaction. Symbolic representation may impact satisfaction directly and through its contribution to other feelings about government. These findings expand understandings of the importance of diversity in political representation, determinants of satisfaction and how dynamics of good governance contribute to citizens' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popularity metrics, such as "likes" are key features in social media (SM). In the political sphere, politicians use popularity metrics as indicators of the extent to which opinions and agendas are widely held by the public. However, popularity metrics have an inherent potential to increase rapidly, making today's not-so-popular content tomorrow's potential hit. Hence the lack of popularity indices or their low values may not indicate the full popularity potential of any specific SM content. This is crucial for politicians as they aim to identify and respond to popular public opinions in their constant effort to boost and maintain public support. Considering SM's ever-growing role in politics, and the significant portion of SM content with no popularity metrics, exploring politicians' responsiveness to public opinion in SM with and without popularity metrics may shed light on contemporary democratic process and their impact on representation and policy making. Based on Prospect Theory of choice under uncertainty, and the lack of an anchor to base their perception of popularity on, we claim that politicians will be more responsive to public opinion content without "likes" than with "likes." Findings of a survey-experiment of 100 Israeli politicians support this claim. Possible implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the issue of mobilization policies, that is, government practices directed at making the mass public voluntarily perform various behaviors for the collective benefit during a crisis. As COVID‐19 vaccinations became accessible, governments faced the challenge of mass vaccination mobilization in order to achieve herd immunization. Aiming to effectively realize this goal, policy designers and regulators worldwide considered various mobilizing tools for vaccination compliance, including rewards and penalties, as they targeted vaccine opposers and hesitators, while trying to avoid the crowding‐out effect among individuals who were intrinsically motivated to get vaccinated. However, the unique circumstances of the Coronavirus pandemic may have eliminated the crowding‐out effect. Thus, our study explored the effect of regulation in the form of positive and negative incentivizing tools (i.e., rewards and penalties) during the coronavirus pandemic on vaccination intentions of 1184 Israeli citizens, prior to the national vaccination campaign. Results indicate that (1) both negative and positive incentives have a similar positive effect on individuals who declare they will not get vaccinated and those who hesitate to get the shot; (2) both positive and negative incentives induce the crowding‐out effect; and (3) negative incentives generate a larger crowding‐out effect in individuals who report preliminary intentions to get vaccinated, compared to positive ones. This emphasizes the need to avoid the crowding‐out effect during the current and similar crises, and suggests considering applying a gradual and adaptive policy design in order to maximize regulatory efficacy and compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Most writings on Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) to date have focused on analysis at the individual level and paid less attention to other analytical frameworks at the group level (i.e., team, unit, or organization). This article approaches OCB from the less conventional perspective of group-level activities and uses it to develop and validate a scale of Group-level Organizational Citizenship Behavior (GOCB) in the education system. Data Collection: Data were collected from a survey of 206 Israeli teachers and their principals at 13 schools. Findings: The scores were found to be statistically valid and demonstrated a high degree of reliability. In addition, two intra-factors (GOCB-I [group-level OCB toward individuals] and GOCB-O [group-level OCB toward the organization]) that are quite similar to those suggested in previous OCB literature emerged as key components. Conclusions: The advantages of the group-level scale over other individual-level scales are explored and discussed in detail. The article ends with theoretical and practical implications for future studies that may focus on the "good platoon syndrome" of educational and other administrative systems rather than merely on the "good soldier syndrome." The authors elaborate on the potential reconstruction of group-level measures of OCB that can enrich studies on organizational climate, culture, and social norms. Finally, the authors argue that their results as well as those suggested in previous research may direct future studies to develop the idea of "organizational citizenship climate" in the educational system and beyond. (Contains 6 tables and 1 note.)

Central governments often restrict municipalities' ability to raise or reduce taxes, but, in many jurisdictions, municipalities can ask the central government's permission to set aside these limitations. Using an Israeli dataset, we explore this prevalent, yet unexplored, mechanism we call Permission to Override (PtO). We find that in Israel, at least, the central government's approval and rejection of these permission requests seem to be equitable and non-political. However, despite the central neutrality, municipalities with lower socio-economic status and fewer political connections tend not to submit requests. Municipalities are also reluctant to submit requests before elections and tend to submit them only afterwards. These socio-economic and political biases may create inequalities and hinder a successful use of the PtO mechanism. We discuss the limited use of this mechanism (requests amount to approximately 0.6 percent of the total property tax income) and its shortcomings and draw conclusions from the Israeli case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study extends our understanding about the interrelationship between taxation policy, democracy and financial performance in local governments. Every government, particularly local ones, would like to make their residents more willing to pay taxes. Based on the trend of making local authorities less reliant on national budgets and the ever‐increasing expectations that they provide high quality services, we investigated how public perceptions about the local government's fairness, tax enforcement, governability and the outsourcing of local tax collection affect the percentage of local property taxes collected. We used a survey of 607 Israeli residents randomly sampled from municipalities that do and do not outsource, and independent data about tax collection rates. The results indicate that perceptions about tax enforcement and governability mediate the relationship between perceptions about fairness and tax collection rates. However, only within local authorities that outsourced tax collection was there a positive relationship between perceptions about tax enforcement and tax collection rates and a positive relationship between perceptions about governability and tax collection rates. Implications of the findings are discussed in the era of local democracy and local governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated the crucial effect of the public’s compliance with the government’s health instructions on the population’s health. However, evidence shows that some communities are less likely to comply with such instructions than others. This study highlights the factors related to intentions to comply with newly issued health directives during an ongoing extreme crisis, such as the current pandemic. In addition, it compares the impact of these factors on different minority groups and the general population in Israel. Methods: Using an online survey (N=1005), we examined the impact of compliance-related factors on compliance intentions with newly issued health directives in two minority groups in Israel: the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community (N=323) and the Arab community (N=361), as well as in the general population (N=321), during the first outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Participants were presented with a new made-up COVID-19-related instruction simulated to be issued by the Israeli Ministry of Health. Compliance intentions and compliance-related factors were measured. Results: The Arab minority expressed greater intentions of complying with the instructions than the other groups. Perceptions on risk and the effectiveness of the instruction were the only two significantly associated factors with compliance intentions in all of the social groups. Additional factors affected different groups to different extents. Trust in government was related to compliance intentions only in the Arab minority. Conclusion: Intentions to comply with health instructions during a crisis differ in various minority groups and in comparison to the general population, both in their levels and in the factors related to them. Policy-makers and health authorities should consider providing information about the risks and negative outcomes of the crisis as well as the expected effectiveness of the recommended behaviors. Future research should examine other minority groups and other types of instructions in different stages of a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of reform or the slow pace of reform in public management is an issue that plagues Israel, particularly in local government (Beeri & Razin, 2015; Levi et al., 2020; Razin & Lindsey, 2017). Based on the assumption that public reform, meaning changes to the structures and processes of public organizations designed to improve their performance (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017), is a feature of modern governance, studies investigating lack of reform have suggested it as evidence of non-governability, lack of management, lack of leadership and even public anarchy (e.g., Jeffery, 2008; Rahat & Hazan, 2011). However, its wide-ranging and theoretical influence has not yet been examined in depth, its connections to recent trends in public management have yet to be clarified, and its ramifications for the management of Israeli local municipalities are unclear. Thus, I explore the theoretical and practical interactions between the attributes and circumstances of the lack of reform of local government in Israel – especially in its management. I also examine how recent global trends such as the co-production of value and the coronavirus outbreak may postpone or accelerate such reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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How do different policy environments influence the choice of policy entrepreneurship (PE) strategies? Using data collected from a systematic review of the PE literature, the authors identify subcomponents of the three streams of the policy process and empirically test the relationship between dominance of each stream and PE strategies. Findings show that when the political and policy streams dominate, policy entrepreneurs focus on policy formation and policy implementation strategies and not on problem identification and policy evaluation strategies. Surprisingly, there is no correlation between dominance of the problem stream and PE strategies. This should lead to the normative claim that PE is not necessarily a positive phenomenon. The article concludes with suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: What can be learned from two decades of studies on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries? Policy entrepreneurship is a rapidly evolving analytical concept. A growing number of studies exploring public policy in developing countries use policy entrepreneurship as an explanatory theoretical concept. However, a substantial part of this research relies on qualitative case study analysis, lacking a comprehensive overview of the concept of policy entrepreneurship. This paper conducts a systematic review of the literature on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. A total of 47 papers addressing policy entrepreneurship in the developing world, published between 1993 and 2017, have been analysed. The purpose and contribution of this paper are to offer a clearer picture of policy entrepreneurship in the developing world by concentrating on two aspects. First, we describe the characteristics of the studies on policy entrepreneurship in the developing world. Second, we analyse such studies, identifying the lessons that can be drawn on the phenomenon of policy entrepreneurship in the developing world. We conclude with an agenda for future studies, examining new theoretical, methodological, and empirical opportunities to advance the understanding of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]