From Periphery to the Core: Sources of Ethnic Political Leadership

This chapter analyzes the association between ethnicity and local government or leadership and discusses the geographical, sociological and political significance of the findings. The establishment of the sovereign state of Israel created a need to redefine the relationships between local government and the national leadership. The chapter presents demographic findings and the relationship between ethnicity and the various political parties. The relationship between social and geographical peripherality transformed the link between ethnicity and status into a structural phenomenon that was almost impossible to circumvent. H. Herzog found that the process of enlisting voters' support, and the legitimization of appealing to ethnicity, are inherently contradictory. She argues that an important characteristic of the Israeli political system is the double message transmitted by the dominant groups. The importance of local government as an arena of political activity that influences the core goes back only as far as the establishment of the state.