Ariel Sharon and Israel’s Unique Democracy
Jim Lederman
12 - 1 - 2006
The question of who succeeds Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister is less important than to understand what the Israeli polity has become - a new form of democratic governance, says Jim Lederman.
Ariel Sharon’s battle for life has been accompanied by a wave of commentary assessing the implications of his departure from the political scene for Israel’s elections on 28 March and for the prospects of peace and security in the region. What has been missing is any attempt to place the soldier-politician’s career in the context of the political development of the country he served for more than half a century.
More particularly, the dawn of the post-Sharon era is an opportunity to identify the unique political character of the Israeli body-politic as it has developed over the last generation – a character that Sharon himself has both helped to shape and been forced to adapt to, and whose form of governance arguably represents an innovative formation in the world’s democratic politics. Whoever replaces Sharon as Israel’s prime minister, this is a reality likely to endure.
Israel is Different
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 | This article originally appeared on openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. To view the original article, please click here. |
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