Party Strategies in Local Elections
Insights from Israel
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6384279 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tal Elovits (0000-0003-2681-1445, University of Milan), Nimrod Barnea (0009-0003-7750-7408, University of Illinois Chicago) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 180-199 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Swiss Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1424-7755 • E-ISSN: 1662-6370 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/spsr.12622 |
| OpenAlex | W4402321809 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 27 |
In this study, we investigate national parties' strategic choices in Israeli local elections, utilizing a dataset of 3,737 electoral lists across 200 municipalities over three election cycles (2013–2024). Employing label coding and multilevel analysis, we reveal that municipality size, previous electoral success, mayoral candidacy, and ruling coalition membership significantly influenced parties' decisions to compete and their choice of label. Notably, almost 30% of party lists conceal their identity by opting for ‘disguised’ labels. We argue that Israel's extreme party decline in local politics, characterized by the dominance of independent lists, may foreshadow global trends as national parties withdraw from municipal contests. Our findings highlight the prevalence of disguised party lists, raising questions about voter information, as party labels serve as crucial informational shortcuts. This study contributes to the literature on party strategies and electoral dynamics in multilevel polities by emphasizing label analysis in local elections
Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Political Conflict and Governance
From Party Politics to Personalized Politics?
Inverted First- and Second-Order Elections
Agenda Control by Committee Chairs in Fragmented Multi-party Parliaments
National party strategies in local elections
Democracy, Clan Politics and Weak Governance
An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy
Nationalisation of local party systems in Belgium (1976-2018)
The Israeli parties' positions in comparative perspective
Local candidate lists
Going Local. Voting for independent local Parties in the Netherlands 1986-2010
Local Party System Nationalisation
Dutch municipal elections 1998-2018
Declining partisan representation at the sub-national level
Pushed by national politics or pulled by localism? Voting for independent local parties in the Netherlands
The attractiveness of local and national list labels
An Informational Rationale for Political Parties
When Politics and Models Collide
Multi-level muddling
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |