My work reflects diverse and evolving interests in the fields of political economy, economic sociology and social stratification.
My early research focused on measuring and analyzing the strike waves of the late 1960s. Inspired by the late Walter Korpi, I became interested in the political underpinnings and effects of strikes. This drew me to the emerging field of comparative political economy, and the linkages it posited between the political leverage of labor movements, the intensity of class conflict and the state’s role in redistribution. My work questioned both the analytical and methodological soundness of optimistic claims made by many comparative researchers. It focused on cross-national variations in the impact of social democracy and neo-corporatism and the causes and effects of differing welfare state regimes.
Simultaneously, I sought to identify both insights and blind spots when applying theories grounded in the experience of affluent Western democracies to the case of Israel, where I made my home and career. My critical reinterpretations of Israel’s labor movement and its social and economic policy regimes were brought together in a 1992 book. More than two decades later, I coedited a volume (based mainly on my work and that of former students) probing neoliberal transformations of Israel’s political economy that took place in the interim between the two books.
My curiosity regarding how and why states shape social stratification has inspired a variety of studies on Israel (and sometimes beyond, as in work on gender and the welfare state). Three key themes have occupied my research on the politics of inequality in Israel: the role of “loyalty benefits” in social policy; backlash against neoliberalism (the mass protests of 2011); and the economic role and attainments of the structurally disadvantaged Palestinian minority of Israeli citizens. Like my other scholarship this work is based on both quantitative and qualitative research.