Forward (Kadima) to the Centre. - The Rise and Fall of Israeli Centre Parties 12+

📕 Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: 1,7, University of Heidelberg, 140 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The political earthquake that shook Israel in November 2006 eventually led to the establishment of a new party with a centre image, KADIMA, led by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Only four months later, after a lot of political turmoil (domestic as well as external), including losing its charismatic leader as Sharon fell into a coma, KADIMA entered the Knesset as the largest party, and its new leader, Ehud Olmert, formed the new government. Never before had an Israeli centre party been this successful.While political parties, party systems and party positioning along the left-right continuum have been subject to research by scholars of political science, the phenomenon of the centre party has been neglected until recently. Maurice Duverger's verdict that "the centre does not exist in politics," seems to have had a devastating effect on centre party research: there is no universal definition and hardly any theoretical groundwork on which to base an analysis of past and contemporary centre parties.This thesis seeks to make a contribution to the quest for such a universal definition by proposing one of its own. It is partly drawn from the findings of others, such as Hans Daalder and Reuven Hazan, combining several features proposed for centre parties in...