Mendilow Pens New Book
Dr. Jonathan Mendilow, professor of
political science, is the author of a new book, Ideology, Party
Change, and Electoral Campaigns in Israel, 1965-2001, published
by the State University of New York Press.
“For anyone interested in Israeli
political parties, this is a most impressive source. Mendilow provides
a new way of conceptualizing the Israeli party system. The topic is
important, not only in terms of Israeli politics, but also comparative
politics as a field,” said Harold M. Waller, co-author of Maintaining
Consensus: The Canadian Jewish Polity in the Postwar World.
The SUNY Press writes, “The tumultuous
and rapid political change experienced by Israel since 1965 has been
reflected in the history of its party system. In this book, Jonathan
Mendilow examines the party and party system transformations through
the lens of the electoral campaigns that defined and reflected them.”
Israel has undergone profound political
structural change. Mendilow describes how the relative stability of
the dominant party system from the pre-independence era was shattered
in the 1960s, and replaced by cluster parties that vied for power
in the ideological center, only to decline and be replaced in turn
in the 1980s and early 1990sby ideological party blocs locked in decentralized
competition.
With the separate election of the prime
minister since the mid-1990s, there has been yet a third profound
realignment in party structures, ideologies, and modes of campaigning,
according to Mendilow. In his book, he does comparative studies of
the Indian, France and Italian political structures.
A member of the Rider political science
faculty since 1987, Mendilow is the author of The Romantic Tradition
in British Political Thought, and the editor of Political Theory
from the French Revolution to the Rise of Fascism.
He has had numerous other professional
publications. Recent work includes a chapter on “The Likud’s
1999 Campaign and the Headwaters of Defeat,” in The Elections
in Israel 1999; “The Electoral Campaign of 2001 and the Weak-Strong
Prime Minister Syndrome” for the Israel Studies Forum; “The
Internet and the Problem of Legitimacy” in Cyberimperialism,
and “The Effects of Public Funding on Party Participation: An
Hypothesis and Case Study,” in the Handbook of Global Political
Policy.
Before joining the Rider faculty, Mendilow
taught at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, University
of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, University of
Tel Aviv in Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Yale University.
He was a Fulbright Scholar in 1980.
