On Sunday, May 25, IDI researchers Mr. Nir Atmor and Mr. Michael Philippov hosted a group of political science students from the University of Wisconsin. The group came to Israel as part of a course they had taken this past year with Prof. Ken Goldstein, which dealt with Israeli politics and focused on voting behavior, social cleavages, and the relationship between military and civil aspects of Israeli society.
Mr. Amnon Cavari, a former researcher at IDI now writing his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, led the expedition and brought the group to IDI to hear about the Democracy Index, which audits and evaluates democracy in Israel through a series of polls conducted yearly.
Mr. Atmor and Mr. Phlippov presented some of the data they had collected over the past year, which will be published soon as part of the 2008 Democracy Index:
- Mr. Atmor suggested that one must consider some recent trends in several areas, such as the decline in voter turnout over the past few years, and the increase in corruption within Israeli bureaucracy, which may compromise the strength of Israeli democracy. Other data presented by Mr. Atmor touched on Israeli citizens' feelings toward democratic institutions – the Supreme Court, the Knesset, and politics in general.
- Mr. Philippov chose to focus his presentation on the integration of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) into Israeli society. The enormous wave of immigration from the FSU to Israel has created some unique research opportunities, because of their interesting background and complex political identity. Mr. Philippov's maintained that many immigrants from the FSU had been raised in totalitarian regime, have a secular background and are generally highly-educated. These characteristics create a unique situation in which it is difficult for them to feel part of a democracy and to endorse democratic values. This explains the Russian immigrants' tendency to be less interested in politics, to vote for someone they perceive as a "strong" leader, and their negative sentiments toward Israeli Arabs compared to other Israelis.