The Political Impact of Inequality: Social Cleavages and Voting in the 1999 Elections

Previous studies of electoral behavior in Israel have demonstrated the importance of ethnic and religious cleavages while finding little evidence for class divisions as a factor structuring politics and predicting voter preferences. We challenge this empirical consensus by employing three different methodologies: a reanalysis of standard survey data; ecological analysis of aggregate election and census results; and multilevel analysis of pooled individual and aggregate data. All three methods attribute a major role to class along with other social cleavages. They vary however in their anawers to the question of whether class effects are independent of ethnicity and religion or conditional upon them. Several factors explain the divergence between our findings and prior research. The impact of class on voting is stronger in ecological than survey correlations because (a)the higher quality of aggregate data allows more sophisticated conceptualization and measurement of class; (b)class (and other social variables) are in fact grounded in communities as well as individuals; and (c)unlike surveys, comparisons across communities capture local biases as well as the effects of individual differences. The paper illustrates the power of multilevel analysis to operationalize the analytical distinction between effects at the two levels of analysis, individual voters and their local mileux. The conclusion reflects on the Israeli paradox of class voting without traditional class politics. We speculate that this paradox is explained by the interplay between class, ethnicity and culture under the specific conditions that pertain in the Israeli case. The class position of Ashkenazim and Mizrachim, and the contemporary surge of identity politics, are interconnected-not alternative-foundations of class voting among non-Arab Israelis. 2 The key divisions between political parties, and the key fault-lines of political discourse in Israel, are closely aligned with the country's most explosive social cleavages. The most visible of these cleavages are those between Arabs and Jews, and among Jews, between Mizrachim vs. Ashkenazim and religious vs. secular. Studies of electoral behavior in Israel show that attachment to competing collective identities and positions on key political issues are more powerful predictors of voter preferences than ethnicity and religion. Since the distribution of these attachments and identities itself parallels the main social cleavages the cleavage structure is of double importance, influencing voting both directly and indirectly. What is puzzling about the Israeli case is the apparent irrelevance or near-irrelevance of class divisions as a factor structuring politics and predicting voter preferences. This article engages in three different types …