18. See Kimmerling, “Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli Control System.”
CHAPTER 2
Building an Immigrant Settler State
Analyzed in terms of the state/civil-society paradigm that seeks to “bring the state back into” sociological discourse, contrasting it to civil society,1 the Israeli sociopolitical system presents something of a puzzle, because there is contradictory evidence about the strength of the Israeli state, its capacity to govern, and its ability to make critical decisions.
On the one hand, the Israeli state has been classified, by Joel Migdal, for example, as a “strong state” with a tremendous capacity to mobilize its citizens (e.g., for wars or shaping an emergency economy).2 This capacity is characterized by considerable law-enforcement power, which penetrates into almost every social formation and grouping of Jewish citizens, as well as by the ability to maintain surveillance over the Israeli Arab population and over noncitizens.3 To these characteristics, one must add the state's extraordinary role in the economic sphere: its ownership and control of enormous material and financial resources, and also its ability to control and intervene, through various agencies, in almost any economic activity. The state's ability to regulate economic activity is evidenced, not only by its high capacity to raise taxes and formulate monetary policy,4 but also by its ownership of over 90 percent of the land within its territory and enjoyment of an overwhelming influx of resources from external sources (loans and grants from other states and organizations such as the WZO, as well as private donations). Additionally, until the mid 1980s, the state not only owned its own economic (or business) sector, but also both closely controlled the public sector and was highly involved in the private business sector.
On the other hand, and perhaps in light of these characteristics, some have characterized the situation in Israel as “trouble in utopia.”5 This view implies that the autonomy of the Israeli state tends to be low, placing it at the mercy of rival groups.6 As these authors put it, the “ungovernable” tendencies of the system reflect an overburdened condition that stems from the state's inability to meet the contradictory political demands of certain groups and spheres, which are rooted in opposing fundamental ideological positions. These positions result from the state's dual identity, or what Hegel calls a “historically produced sphere of ethical life,” grounded in the identities of two rival civil societies (gesellschaftlich and biirgerlich)—one based on primordial ties and the other on civic orientations.7 In analyzing the dynamic between these rival ideological positions, like this book as a whole, this chapter takes a somewhat different approach to the Israeli collectivity, diverging from the conventional and orthodox views that have dominated the macro-sociology, social history, political science, and historiography of Israel.8
In order to develop this argument, it is necessary to introduce an additional dimension to the notion of the state that has been neglected by scholars of the state/civil-society paradigm. The founding father of this approach was Max Weber,9 and the additional dimension is collective identity, the unique “fingerprint” that distinguishes each state-society complex and is created through interaction between the state and civil society. Collective identities tend to impose explicit and implicit rules on the game, which serve to establish the perceived degree of freedom permitted by the state to its subjects from its position as “power container” and without regard to any specific value system or culture.10 As powerful and strong as it may be, however, the state cannot detach itself from the identities and mythic self-perceptions of its society's various populations.11 In the case at hand, “society” refers to the population who identifies with a somewhat abstract notion of “Israel” that cuts across institutions such as the state, family, civil institutions, and voluntary associations (in the pre-state period, the Yishuv, or Palestinian Jewish ethnic community, was perceived similarly; see chapter 3). In addition, we are dealing here with the notion of a nation-state (the term “nation” indicating a generalized kind of primordial or ethnic identity with some structural implications), wherein “Israel” is primarily and ultimately conceived of as a “Jewish nation-state” (see chapter 6). In order to understand the major trend of development in this state, its strengths and weaknesses, and its degree of autonomy, it is thus necessary to analyze the diverse meanings of the term “Jewish nation-state,” together with the structural and cultural aspects of the state.
The term “state autonomy” refers to the ability of the state to prevent unsolicited interventions from, and the imposition of particularistic definitions of collective identity by, one or another segment of civil society. The intervention of a specific collective identity can determine the rules of the game or the practices of a certain distributive or coercive policy (both by making formal, constitutional impositions and by shaping informal political culture).12 A spectacular demonstration of the social and political strength of particularistic identities powerful enough to destroy states and erect alternate strong ties and loyalties in their place can be seen in the dismantlement of powerful multinational states such as the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Republic, in which particularistic groups associated themselves with ideologies that acted as alternatives to the officially defined identity of the state.
In contrast, the term “state strength” refers to the state's ability to enforce law and order, to mobilize the population for war, and to manage distributive and extractive fiscal policies, as well as to its ability to impose its own definition of collective identity on all segments of society.13 The first dimension of the notion of the “state” adopts the traditional Weberian concept. This concept views the modern state as a corporate body that has compulsory jurisdiction and claims a monopoly on legitimate means of violence over a territory and its population, a monopoly that extends to all action that arises in the territories under this entity's control.14
The state must have an institutionalized organizational structure, minimally including military and police forces, some sort of tax-collection and resource-redistribution apparatus (the state bureaucracy), some rule-making institution (parliamentary or otherwise), a decision-making institution (rulers and their delegates), and a judicial body (courts that act on the basis of a written code). These traits, however, constitute only one dimension of any state.
The second dimension is what makes each state cognitively and culturally different from the next, that is, its collective identity, collective memory, and culture. This body of collective knowledge is the core that tends to persist in the event of changes of government or even of the state's regime.15 It is not a mere matter of convenience that each state has its own name, banner, symbols, and anthem. The question of what makes the French state “French” and the Swiss state “Swiss” is much more essential. The collective identity determines, not only the geographical and societal boundaries of the collectivity,16 its basic credo or political culture, its specific “civic religion,”17 and its civil society, but also the implicit and explicit rules of the game.18
Finally, “state's logic” is understood to mean the basic codes, traditions, rules of the game, and practices that are unaffected by changes of government, administration, or even entire regimes. This “logic” is imposed by geographical constraints rooted in the human and material resources possessed by the state, its identity, collective memory, traditions, historiography, and political culture. This logic is employed mainly in the state's bureaucracy and in other state agencies, which represent particular intrastate agency identities and class interests. Thus, the degree of change when a Tory government in England is replaced by a Labour government, or when a Democratic administration in the United States gives way to a Republican one, is basically limited and restricted. Even after the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union and then returned to being the Russian state, some basic practices and perceptions of the Russian state persisted through the “revolutions” and were even protected and amplified by the new regimes. This is not to say that the “state's logic”