SHAMIR, Michal  <br/><br/>
Collective identity and electoral competition in Israel 

 - New York, NY :  Cambridge University Press,  June 1999 
<br/><br/> Comparative electoral research in advanced industrial societies suggests that voting has become more individualized and less structured by groupings; the bases of electoral mobilization and choice have changed from social cleavages to cognitive mobilization and issue cleavages. Social cleavages - class in particular, but also religion, ethnic affiliation, and the like - have declined in their ability to explain electoral behavior in advanced industrial democracies. At the same time issue voting has become more important in the calculus of voters. Altogether, our ability to account for voting decisions in these party systems has declined (Barnes 1997; Dalton, Flanagan, and Beck 1984; Dalton and Wattenberg 1993; Franklin, Mackie, and Valen 1992; Inglehart 1997; Rose and McAllister 1986).