A Rational Choice Analysis of an Irrational Polity: Four Israeli Cases

This article presents RCT as a way for interpreting reality. In order to demonstrate this, we present four political events from Israeli domestic and foreign politics and examine them from a rational choice approach. The first case presents an account of the variations in the ideological positions of the right-wing and the left-wing parties regarding policy in general and particularly regarding the unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip that took place in the summer of 2005. In the second case we examine the rational assumptions (defined here as "Lies") that affected the political actions of Israeli Prime Ministers since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. The third case includes a discussion on the relevance of the "democratic peace" assertion in the context of foreign policy. Finally, we analyze the centrality of the High Court of Justice in the Israeli political and social domains. We conclude this article with a discussion of the issue of 'reality acceptance' and the difficulty entailed in affecting it - from the perspective of the rational choice theory.