Democracy in Non-governmental Organizations in Israel

Although political participation can take many different forms within a democratic regime, there is no doubt that in one way or another the notion is central to the very idea of a democracy. It is difficult to find a piece of research reported in contemporary journals of political science that does not purport to describe some form of political participation: studies of the voter, the party activist, the candidate, and the interest group all fall under the category of studies of participation. One of the reasons for such an interest in participation is that participation is a political fact, not an obscure and debatable value, which allows the political scientist to criticize the depth and extent of a democracy. In other words, participation is a behavioral phenomenon, in the sense that citizens either do or they do not participate, political scientists can to measure and assess how democratic a democracy is. That is, the more citizens of a state are engaged in political life, the more democratic it is.