4 - Democraticness of the Israeli Regime

Summary

This chapter provides a comprehensive description of the regime across dimensions and zones of control based on a short historical overview combined with several indexes reflecting different components of the regime. It shows that in Israel proper the highest levels of democraticness are in political contestation followed by protection, while the levels of coverage are much more limited. The regime in Israel proper is, overall, fairly stable despite some increase in democraticness after state consolidation and some more recent signs of possible decline. In the Occupied Territories, on the other hand, the levels of democraticness are minimal in the dimension of political contestation and coverage and highly limited in the area of protection. The regime in the Occupied Territories is not as stable as the regime in Israel proper due to changes in the zones of control. The zones of control shifted after the 1990s – a shift that can be seen as the major transformation of the Israeli regime up to date.