Project Director: Prof. Tamar Hermann
Research Staff: Dr. Karmit Haber and Mr. Yuval Lebel
Research conducted by IDI and others has shown that Israelis feel that democracy is in crisis. Shared by politicians, academicians, media figures, and the general public, this perception creates a vicious circle. The more the people feel estranged from the political establishment and its leaders, the more the political establishment and its leaders feel alienated from the people, and the opposite, of course, is also true. This creates a cycle of ever-increasing distance and alienation, in which the people feel disconnected from their political leaders and political leaders feel unaccountable to their constituents.
Recognizing this problem is not enough. IDI’s “Renewing the Israeli Social Contract” project aims to find ways to untie this Gordian knot. Basing their work on IDI’s research on anti-politics and guided by IDI Senior Fellow Prof. Tamar Hermann, the research team will propose ways for renewing the ‘social contract’ between the Israeli public and its political establishment and leadership—a contract that is a vital underpinning of any democratic society.
A restoration process of this nature is both complex and lengthy. It must be developed and implemented carefully, taking into account the experience of other democracies, and must be adapted to local Israeli conditions. It must formulate realistic and implementable proposals for improving the conduct and outputs of political authorities, include plans for improving communication between voters and their elected officials, and increase public awareness of the dangers of alienation from the political system.
Above all, this project hopes to develop a new democratic narrative that will infuse meaning, restore trust, and increase civic participation. This process must be conducted on several levels simultaneously: legislative, executive, legal, educational, and within the media, with a shared democratic narrative connecting the structures and processes of representative democracy in our time.
Main Activities
- Reviewing theoretical and empirical research on the nature and dynamics of political crises of confidence, and analyzing the success of steps taken in such cases.
- Identifying think tanks, research institutes, policy institutes, and semi-governmental bodies in other countries that are addressing similar issues and initiating dialogue with them.
- Analyzing the perceptions and expectations of the Israeli public, decision- makers, and change agents by means of polls, focus groups, and content analysis, in order to understand their expectations of each other and determine their willingness to participate in renewing the social contract.
- Positioning IDI as a 'hub' that will coordinate joint activities of civil organizations devoted to improving the political system. Each organization will retain its autonomy and set its own agenda, while resources will be conserved and impact increased.
- Formulating proposals that will address a number of acute problems within Israeli democracy and presenting them to the Israeli public and decision-makers.
- Promoting the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to make governance more open, effective, and responsible. (For more on this initiative and IDI's involvement in it, click here.)