No Politics under God

The sudden and meteoric rise of Otzma Yehudit has attracted significant media attention but has thus far escaped the interest of scholars. The Kahanist faction Otzma Yehudit represents constitutes an anti-democratic movement that had previously been repressed by elites in both right and left-wing parties. How did the Kahanists successfully adapt to elite pressure and build legitimacy both with the public and in government? I argue that the Kahanist movement embedded itself in larger networks to preserve avenues of state penetration. Adapting to the concentration of the party system, Kahanists pursued several strategies: external, rejecting traditional electoral competition; internal, seeking to commandeer elite-led parties; and oppositional, seeking to run as independent parties. Although each of these approaches initially proved unsuccessful, the fractionalization and personalization of Israel's political system paved the way for eventual legitimization

Elite · Fractionalization · Legitimacy · Personalization · Politics · State (computer science · Agricultural and Environmental Management · Belt and Road Initiative · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies