Fragmentation of Political Authority and Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship: Explaining Instances of Minority Accommodation in Israel and Estonia

Abstract

Why do some ethnic nation-states committed to preferential treatment of the dominant nation choose to accommodate their ethnic minorities in some realms? I argue that power struggles between elected and non-elected officials account for the variation in the treatment of ethnic minorities. Fragmentation of authority creates opportunities for entrepreneurial bureaucrats to initiate policy changes and lead to unanticipated outcomes. Drawing on nationalism studies in comparative politics and principal-agent scholarship in public administration, this article outlines a theoretical framework focused on domestic factors accounting for variation in state policies toward minorities in a novel way. I apply this framework to education policy in Israel and Estonia vis-à-vis the Palestinian Arab and Russian-speaking minorities. This article illuminates an empirical puzzle of minority accommodation under nationalist governments and explains the conditions under which it occurs, offering generalizable theoretical expectations for similar contexts.

The irony of Indonesia's democracy: The rise of dynastic politics in the post-Suharto era

“…The primary actors in the political process can be identified using process tracing. Furthermore, process tracing is helpful in uncovering the political actors' strategies for achieving their goals within the institutional setting in which they operate (Spruyt, 2005in Talal, 2023. This study examines qualitative evidence gathered from the internet and archival research that demonstrates gradual institutional changes that guarantee the continuation of the formation of political dynasties.…”

Macrolevel factors encouraging bureaucratic policy entrepreneurship: The case of religion and state in Israel

“…Some studies focus specifically on Muslim entrepreneurship (Hassan, 2022). Religion and entrepreneurship were studied in Western democracies, as New Zealand (Carswell & Rolland, 2007), Britain (Anderson et al, 2000;Nwankwo et al, 2012), India (Shinde, 2010), and Israel (Golan-Nadir, 2021;Talal, 2022Talal, , 2023, and in nondemocracies as China (Du, 2017), Indonesia (Sulung et al, 2020), Korea (Choi, 2010), and Nigeria (van der Westhuizen & Adelakun, 2021). Nonetheless, within the realm of religious policies and services, only few studies have treated bureaucrats as policy entrepreneurs.…”

“…High-level bureaucrats of sorts were dealt with in the realm of religious state policies toward ethnic minorities, specifically within education. It shows that where political authority is fragmented, bureaucratic policy entrepreneurship takes place (Talal, 2022(Talal, , 2023. Other literature treated lowest level "streetlevel bureaucrats" as policy entrepreneurs while offering extended religious services in governmental hospitals (Golan-Nadir, 2021).…”