Description: Analyzes the history of legislative party switching and its regulation in the Israeli Knesset.
Brief description: Csaba Nikolenyi is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies at Concordia University in Canada. He is the author of Institutional Design and Party Government in Post-Communist Europe and Minority Governments in India: The Puzzle of Elusive Majorities.
Review Quotes:
"...this scholarly work combines rich empirical detail with profound theoretical insights into institutional design and legislative behavior in parliamentary democracies. Its comprehensive analysis of Israel's distinctive approach to regulating party switching significantly enhances our understanding of this very complex phenomenon." -- Israel Studies Review
"...a comprehensive theoretical and empirical study of party switching in Israel from a comparative perspective ... Csaba Nikolenyi has embarked on a challenging endeavour in this book: to distill coherence and rationale from an intricate and frequently tumultuous inter-play of self-interests and partisan ideologies." -- Party Politics
"Party Switching in Israel greatly adds to our knowledge of Israeli politics and invites important comparative questions. Although the detailed treatment of the subject of party defectors in multi-party parliamentary systems focuses on the case of Israel, Nikolenyi broadens the scope to include material on New Zealand, India, and South Africa. The material on the other countries does make the investigation comparative and definitely represents an important contribution to the literature on legislatures." -- Harold M. Waller, McGill University