On November 1, 1988, more than 2.5 million Israeli voters went to the polls to elect the country's twelfth Knesset. The election came after four years of a national unity government that many thought would collapse soon after its installation in September 1984. Because the two major parties around whom the grand coalition was built-Labor and Likud-had nowhere to go, the government survived the full term.

In both major parties, the 1988 elections were hotly contested and many new faces appeared. The big news of the election was the gain in strength of the religious right, the ultra-Orthodox parties, a trend not predicted by a single election analyst. In many ways, the 1988 Knesset elections indicated a transformed Israeli polity, but not a revolutionized one.

Who's the Boss in Israel is the first book on Israeli politics to cover an entire cycle of Israeli elections-for the Knesset, local authorities, and the Histadrut-which occurred over a fifteen-month span beginning in November 1988. Thirteen world class scholars present a consistent, clear, and convincing picture of one of Israel's more puzzling elections. Their essays focus on the major political parties; campaign issues, such as foreign policy, war and peace, and party financing; and municipal and labor union elections. Included is first-hand data not easily found elsewhere, and the chapters on the local and Histadrut elections add a dimension that is not well known but helps in understanding electoral behavior. This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive discussion of the Israeli electoral scene as it existed prior to the 1988 elections and the present state and course of Israeli politics.