The Palestinian Elections
An Assessment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12015673 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Khalil Shikaki (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 17-22 |
| Publication date | 1996-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Palestine Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0377-919X • E-ISSN: 1533-8614 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2538255 |
| OpenAlex | W2044998426 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Contrary to the predictions after Oslo that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinian Authority would press for elections, in the end they were held and served the purposes of both. For the Israelis, because the Palestinian issue is the crux of their legitimacy, it was not enough to make peace with a dictatorship or narrow leadership, as had been the case with Egypt or Jordan; they needed to make peace with the Palestinian people, to make sure that the Palestinians supported the process. For the PLO, since the old Palestinian consensus was gone, the elections were needed to give Arafat a mandate and to give legitimacy to a new political order. Therefore the democratic agenda is absent, and elections should not be seen necessarily as the start of transition to democracy but in their role of nation building and peacemaking. This explains the attempts to manipulate the elections to serve both Israeli and Palestinian needs, why Arafat adopted an electoral law that favored the strongest party-his own faction-and did not encourage the participation of opposition forces beyond a token participation
Democracy · Democratic legitimacy · Dictatorship · Legitimacy · Mandate · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Public Administration
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 1999 - 2004 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |