Ilana Shpaizman
Biographic Data
| ID | 4375289 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ilana Shpaizman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ilana |
| FAMILY NAME | Shpaizman |
| SIGNATURE | SHPAIZMAN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bar-Ilan University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6946-0334 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 83 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
How Democratic Backsliding Shapes the Entry, Non‐Entry, and Waiting of Potential Civil Servants
Democratic backsliding is coupled with politicians' undermining of the civil service's professionalism and commitment to liberal democratic values. Existing research has examined civil servants' responses. Nonetheless, politicians' attacks on democracy and the bureaucracy also affect potential recruits' career choices. Based on existing research and in‐depth interviews in Israel, we extend Hirschman's model to develop an abductive mirror‐image ty…
At the last minute: The Use of the Prime Minister's Power to Amend the Agenda During a Crisis
Guardians and Spenders in the Budgetary Process: More Than One Type of Relations
The budget is the outcome of bargaining between spenders and guardians. Most research on budgeting sees all spenders as a unitary actor. This article argues, instead, that there are different relations at play between guardians and each spending ministry. Based on a comparison between four social ministries in Israel, it shows that these relations differ in terms of the level of involvement of guardians in spenders' budgetary inputs and outputs, …
Career Civil Servants’ Socially Embedded Responses to Democratic Backsliding
Recent studies portray civil servants as potential guardians against populist attempts to undermine liberal democracy. However in polarized societies, bureaucrats, like citizens, tend to hold divergent perceptions of the threat that politicians’ actions pose to democracy. This, in turn, likely shapes bureaucrats’ responses. We examine this in the context of the attempt by Israel’s extreme right-wing populist government to curtail the powers and i…
From citizen input to a more egalitarian agenda: Public inquiries and the policy agenda
Public inquiries serve as a path for citizens to convey daily grievances directly to politicians, seeking resolutions. This paper examines their role as an information supply channel in the agenda-setting stage. Political agendas often exhibit socioeconomic bias, reflecting the interests of affluent groups, partly due to policymakers’ reliance on narrow information sources. We argue that exposing decision-makers to diverse, everyday citizen conce…
Power in the Pre‐Decisional Stage: Stability Sentences and Non‐Decisions in Coalition Agreements in Israel and Norway
Non‐decisions are manifestations of power in the policy process. This paper shows that in parliamentary democracies with coalition governments, stability sentences in coalition agreements entail non‐decisions. These sentences address policies which coalition partners explicitly decide not to change. Since coalition agreements provide the policy agenda for the incoming government, explicit statements maintaining the status quo are non‐decisions th…
Reassessing the Role and the Benefits of Junior Ministers in Coalition Governments
Junior ministers are very common in coalition governments. Existing research argues that parties assign junior ministers to satisfy the office goals of coalition partners or as a mechanism to manage delegation costs. This article aims to reassess this argument. Using interviews, personal calendars, coalition agreements and an original data set on junior ministers in Israel, it finds that junior ministers are engaged in policymaking either on gene…
Reevaluating the policy success of private members bills
Members of parliament routinely submit private bills. Yet, a minority of these bills are enacted. Existing research suggests that, because of the low enaction rates of private members' bills, policymaking motivation is not the primary purpose of members of parliament in submitting these bills. We question this assumption and argue that existing research examines the policy effect of Private Member Bills (PMB) too narrowly. Taking a policy process…
Ending the Transformation before the Goal is Fulfilled: The Case of Head Start
To make a comprehensive policy change, actors often turn to the gradual path where they introduce small-scale changes hoping that their accumulation will meet their goal over time. Nonetheless, they often stop the transformative process before meeting their original goal. This paper argues that this can be explained by policy learning. When actors learn from reliable information that the accumulation of the small-scale changes does not meet their…
Duty calls but not for all: The policy involvement of cabinet ministers during crisis
During a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabine…
Minding (Your Own and) Others’ Business: Assigning Co-Responsibility in Cabinet Decisions
In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighi…
Introducing a New Dataset: The Israeli Policy Agendas Project
This article introduces a new dataset to study Israeli politics. Taking an agenda-setting approach, the dataset includes longitudinal series of political outputs—legislative, executive, judicial, and public opinion—as a measure of policy attention in Israel from 1981 to 2019. Each item in each series is hand-coded using the coding scheme of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), providing a unified longitudinal overview of the Israeli political a…
Cabinet ministers and the use of agenda‐setting power: Evidence from cabinet ministers in Israel
Cabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies have significant agenda‐setting power. However, not all ministers use it equally. This paper examines what affects the ministers' use of their agenda‐setting power. It explores this question based on the case of Israel, using three measures of agenda change and in‐depth interviews with former ministers. The paper finds that limited agenda capacity constrains the ministers' agenda‐setting power. Howev…
The end–means nexus and policy conversion: Evidence from two cases in Israeli immigrant integration policy
Beyond the visible policy agenda: Problem Definitions Disappearing From the Agenda as Nondecisions
In the agenda-setting process, prior to the decision-making process, there is a predecisional process whereby some issues are systematically blocked by powerful actors from being placed on the formal agenda. These issues are termed “nondecisions”. This article argues that the predecisional process exists not only at the issue level but also at the level of problem definitions. Because of the empirical challenge of studying problem definitions tha…
A dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes
How do institutions transform? To answer that question, this article introduces a dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes. Instead of looking at each mode of gradual change—like layering or drift—as a stand‐alone process, we examine how the application of one mode of change affects the opportunities of change agents to induce additional modes of gradual transformation. We first point to the fact that any single mode of chan…
Policy drift and its reversal: The case of prescription drug coverage in the United States
Policy drift occurs when actors block attempts to adjust policies to changing realities, thereby changing policy impact. We know much about the conditions for policy drifting, but lack theorization of the conditions for reversing the drift by updating the policy. This article examines when and how actors favouring drift decide to reverse it. These actors have different characteristics from those favouring policy update. Based on the case of presc…
Identifying Relevant Cases of Conversion and Drift Using the Comparative Agendas Project
One of the most important phases of case‐oriented research is identifying the relevant population of cases. The best practice scheme suggests first identifying the positive and then the negative cases, based on the assumption that the population is small and known. This scheme is inapplicable when the population is unknown, as is the case with many public administration and public policy outcomes, which are often less visible. However, most resea…
Policy Change Inch by Inch: Policy Entrepreneurs in the Holy Basin of Jerusalem
Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneurs often shift their activities to a more favourable venue. In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a significant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs' role in the policy process by examining the st…
Ideas and Institutional Conversion Through Layering: The Case of Israeli Immigration Policy
Gradual transformative policy change has attracted increasing attention in recent times. However, existing explanations for the evolvement of the various modes of such change do not account for the direction and content of change and also have difficulty with more complex policy change processes in which several modes are employed. Ideational analysis can fill this gap, albeit most ideational research does not address gradual policy and ideationa…
Can perceptions of similarity reduce the ability to see the other’s needs? The case of immigrant students’ integration policy
Ideas and Institutional Conversion Through Layering: The Case of Israeli Immigration Policy
Gradual transformative policy change has attracted increasing attention in recent times. However, existing explanations for the evolvement of the various modes of such change do not account for the direction and content of change and also have difficulty with more complex policy change processes in which several modes are employed. Ideational analysis can fill this gap, albeit most ideational research does not address gradual policy and ideationa…
Career Civil Servants’ Socially Embedded Responses to Democratic Backsliding
Recent studies portray civil servants as potential guardians against populist attempts to undermine liberal democracy. However in polarized societies, bureaucrats, like citizens, tend to hold divergent perceptions of the threat that politicians’ actions pose to democracy. This, in turn, likely shapes bureaucrats’ responses. We examine this in the context of the attempt by Israel’s extreme right-wing populist government to curtail the powers and i…
Introducing a New Dataset: The Israeli Policy Agendas Project
This article introduces a new dataset to study Israeli politics. Taking an agenda-setting approach, the dataset includes longitudinal series of political outputs—legislative, executive, judicial, and public opinion—as a measure of policy attention in Israel from 1981 to 2019. Each item in each series is hand-coded using the coding scheme of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), providing a unified longitudinal overview of the Israeli political a…
Beyond the visible policy agenda: Problem Definitions Disappearing From the Agenda as Nondecisions
In the agenda-setting process, prior to the decision-making process, there is a predecisional process whereby some issues are systematically blocked by powerful actors from being placed on the formal agenda. These issues are termed “nondecisions”. This article argues that the predecisional process exists not only at the issue level but also at the level of problem definitions. Because of the empirical challenge of studying problem definitions tha…
Policy drift and its reversal: The case of prescription drug coverage in the United States
Policy drift occurs when actors block attempts to adjust policies to changing realities, thereby changing policy impact. We know much about the conditions for policy drifting, but lack theorization of the conditions for reversing the drift by updating the policy. This article examines when and how actors favouring drift decide to reverse it. These actors have different characteristics from those favouring policy update. Based on the case of presc…
Policy Change Inch by Inch: Policy Entrepreneurs in the Holy Basin of Jerusalem
Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneurs often shift their activities to a more favourable venue. In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a significant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs' role in the policy process by examining the st…
A dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes
How do institutions transform? To answer that question, this article introduces a dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes. Instead of looking at each mode of gradual change—like layering or drift—as a stand‐alone process, we examine how the application of one mode of change affects the opportunities of change agents to induce additional modes of gradual transformation. We first point to the fact that any single mode of chan…
Identifying Relevant Cases of Conversion and Drift Using the Comparative Agendas Project
One of the most important phases of case‐oriented research is identifying the relevant population of cases. The best practice scheme suggests first identifying the positive and then the negative cases, based on the assumption that the population is small and known. This scheme is inapplicable when the population is unknown, as is the case with many public administration and public policy outcomes, which are often less visible. However, most resea…
Minding (Your Own and) Others’ Business: Assigning Co-Responsibility in Cabinet Decisions
In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighi…
Reevaluating the policy success of private members bills
Members of parliament routinely submit private bills. Yet, a minority of these bills are enacted. Existing research suggests that, because of the low enaction rates of private members' bills, policymaking motivation is not the primary purpose of members of parliament in submitting these bills. We question this assumption and argue that existing research examines the policy effect of Private Member Bills (PMB) too narrowly. Taking a policy process…
Duty calls but not for all: The policy involvement of cabinet ministers during crisis
During a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabine…
At the last minute: The Use of the Prime Minister's Power to Amend the Agenda During a Crisis
Power in the Pre‐Decisional Stage: Stability Sentences and Non‐Decisions in Coalition Agreements in Israel and Norway
Non‐decisions are manifestations of power in the policy process. This paper shows that in parliamentary democracies with coalition governments, stability sentences in coalition agreements entail non‐decisions. These sentences address policies which coalition partners explicitly decide not to change. Since coalition agreements provide the policy agenda for the incoming government, explicit statements maintaining the status quo are non‐decisions th…
Cabinet ministers and the use of agenda‐setting power: Evidence from cabinet ministers in Israel
Cabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies have significant agenda‐setting power. However, not all ministers use it equally. This paper examines what affects the ministers' use of their agenda‐setting power. It explores this question based on the case of Israel, using three measures of agenda change and in‐depth interviews with former ministers. The paper finds that limited agenda capacity constrains the ministers' agenda‐setting power. Howev…
Can perceptions of similarity reduce the ability to see the other’s needs? The case of immigrant students’ integration policy
Ideas and Institutional Conversion Through Layering: The Case of Israeli Immigration Policy
Gradual transformative policy change has attracted increasing attention in recent times. However, existing explanations for the evolvement of the various modes of such change do not account for the direction and content of change and also have difficulty with more complex policy change processes in which several modes are employed. Ideational analysis can fill this gap, albeit most ideational research does not address gradual policy and ideationa…
Policy Change Inch by Inch: Policy Entrepreneurs in the Holy Basin of Jerusalem
Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneurs often shift their activities to a more favourable venue. In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a significant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs' role in the policy process by examining the st…
Policy drift and its reversal: The case of prescription drug coverage in the United States
Policy drift occurs when actors block attempts to adjust policies to changing realities, thereby changing policy impact. We know much about the conditions for policy drifting, but lack theorization of the conditions for reversing the drift by updating the policy. This article examines when and how actors favouring drift decide to reverse it. These actors have different characteristics from those favouring policy update. Based on the case of presc…
Identifying Relevant Cases of Conversion and Drift Using the Comparative Agendas Project
One of the most important phases of case‐oriented research is identifying the relevant population of cases. The best practice scheme suggests first identifying the positive and then the negative cases, based on the assumption that the population is small and known. This scheme is inapplicable when the population is unknown, as is the case with many public administration and public policy outcomes, which are often less visible. However, most resea…
A dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes
How do institutions transform? To answer that question, this article introduces a dynamic theoretical framework of gradual institutional changes. Instead of looking at each mode of gradual change—like layering or drift—as a stand‐alone process, we examine how the application of one mode of change affects the opportunities of change agents to induce additional modes of gradual transformation. We first point to the fact that any single mode of chan…
The end–means nexus and policy conversion: Evidence from two cases in Israeli immigrant integration policy
Beyond the visible policy agenda: Problem Definitions Disappearing From the Agenda as Nondecisions
In the agenda-setting process, prior to the decision-making process, there is a predecisional process whereby some issues are systematically blocked by powerful actors from being placed on the formal agenda. These issues are termed “nondecisions”. This article argues that the predecisional process exists not only at the issue level but also at the level of problem definitions. Because of the empirical challenge of studying problem definitions tha…
Introducing a New Dataset: The Israeli Policy Agendas Project
This article introduces a new dataset to study Israeli politics. Taking an agenda-setting approach, the dataset includes longitudinal series of political outputs—legislative, executive, judicial, and public opinion—as a measure of policy attention in Israel from 1981 to 2019. Each item in each series is hand-coded using the coding scheme of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), providing a unified longitudinal overview of the Israeli political a…
Cabinet ministers and the use of agenda‐setting power: Evidence from cabinet ministers in Israel
Cabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies have significant agenda‐setting power. However, not all ministers use it equally. This paper examines what affects the ministers' use of their agenda‐setting power. It explores this question based on the case of Israel, using three measures of agenda change and in‐depth interviews with former ministers. The paper finds that limited agenda capacity constrains the ministers' agenda‐setting power. Howev…
Reevaluating the policy success of private members bills
Members of parliament routinely submit private bills. Yet, a minority of these bills are enacted. Existing research suggests that, because of the low enaction rates of private members' bills, policymaking motivation is not the primary purpose of members of parliament in submitting these bills. We question this assumption and argue that existing research examines the policy effect of Private Member Bills (PMB) too narrowly. Taking a policy process…
Ending the Transformation before the Goal is Fulfilled: The Case of Head Start
To make a comprehensive policy change, actors often turn to the gradual path where they introduce small-scale changes hoping that their accumulation will meet their goal over time. Nonetheless, they often stop the transformative process before meeting their original goal. This paper argues that this can be explained by policy learning. When actors learn from reliable information that the accumulation of the small-scale changes does not meet their…
Duty calls but not for all: The policy involvement of cabinet ministers during crisis
During a crisis, the public expects the government to handle the situation. In parliamentary democracies, these expectations are directed to the cabinet and its ministers. Cabinet ministers are expected to be highly involved in policy making under their jurisdiction and in general. During periods of politics as usual, ministers differ in their policy involvement. This paper asks whether that changes during a crisis. Based on an analysis of cabine…
Minding (Your Own and) Others’ Business: Assigning Co-Responsibility in Cabinet Decisions
In coalition governments, parties invest much effort to manage delegation costs to individual ministers. In this article, we examine an intra-executive mechanism for managing delegation costs: Assigning ministerial co-responsibility in cabinet decisions. Using data of cabinet decisions in Israel, we test when and under what conditions co-responsibility is assigned. We find that co-responsibility is assigned strategically by cabinet members weighi…
Reassessing the Role and the Benefits of Junior Ministers in Coalition Governments
Junior ministers are very common in coalition governments. Existing research argues that parties assign junior ministers to satisfy the office goals of coalition partners or as a mechanism to manage delegation costs. This article aims to reassess this argument. Using interviews, personal calendars, coalition agreements and an original data set on junior ministers in Israel, it finds that junior ministers are engaged in policymaking either on gene…
Guardians and Spenders in the Budgetary Process: More Than One Type of Relations
The budget is the outcome of bargaining between spenders and guardians. Most research on budgeting sees all spenders as a unitary actor. This article argues, instead, that there are different relations at play between guardians and each spending ministry. Based on a comparison between four social ministries in Israel, it shows that these relations differ in terms of the level of involvement of guardians in spenders' budgetary inputs and outputs, …
Career Civil Servants’ Socially Embedded Responses to Democratic Backsliding
Recent studies portray civil servants as potential guardians against populist attempts to undermine liberal democracy. However in polarized societies, bureaucrats, like citizens, tend to hold divergent perceptions of the threat that politicians’ actions pose to democracy. This, in turn, likely shapes bureaucrats’ responses. We examine this in the context of the attempt by Israel’s extreme right-wing populist government to curtail the powers and i…
From citizen input to a more egalitarian agenda: Public inquiries and the policy agenda
Public inquiries serve as a path for citizens to convey daily grievances directly to politicians, seeking resolutions. This paper examines their role as an information supply channel in the agenda-setting stage. Political agendas often exhibit socioeconomic bias, reflecting the interests of affluent groups, partly due to policymakers’ reliance on narrow information sources. We argue that exposing decision-makers to diverse, everyday citizen conce…
Power in the Pre‐Decisional Stage: Stability Sentences and Non‐Decisions in Coalition Agreements in Israel and Norway
Non‐decisions are manifestations of power in the policy process. This paper shows that in parliamentary democracies with coalition governments, stability sentences in coalition agreements entail non‐decisions. These sentences address policies which coalition partners explicitly decide not to change. Since coalition agreements provide the policy agenda for the incoming government, explicit statements maintaining the status quo are non‐decisions th…
How Democratic Backsliding Shapes the Entry, Non‐Entry, and Waiting of Potential Civil Servants
Democratic backsliding is coupled with politicians' undermining of the civil service's professionalism and commitment to liberal democratic values. Existing research has examined civil servants' responses. Nonetheless, politicians' attacks on democracy and the bureaucracy also affect potential recruits' career choices. Based on existing research and in‐depth interviews in Israel, we extend Hirschman's model to develop an abductive mirror‐image ty…
At the last minute: The Use of the Prime Minister's Power to Amend the Agenda During a Crisis
Political science (19 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Policy Transfer and Learning (8 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (7 works)