What does local self-government look like in the absence of sovereignty? From the beginning of its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel has experimented with different forms of rule. Since the 1990s, it has delegated certain governing responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority (PA), an org...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Greenwald, Diana B. (Author)
Format:	Electronic eBook
Language:	English
Published:	New York, NY Columbia University Press [2024]
Series:	Columbia Studies in Middle East Politics
Subjects:	POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / Middle Eastern Arab-Israeli conflict > 1993- Local government > West Bank
Online Access:	Volltext
Summary:	What does local self-government look like in the absence of sovereignty? From the beginning of its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel has experimented with different forms of rule. Since the 1990s, it has delegated certain governing responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority (PA), an organization that, Israel hoped, would act as a buffer between the military occupation and the Palestinian population.Through a historically informed, empirically nuanced analysis of towns and cities across the West Bank, Diana B. Greenwald offers a new theory of local government under indirect rule-a strategy that is often associated with imperial powers of the past but persists in settings of colonialism and state-building today. Grounded in fine-grained data on municipal governance under occupation as well as interviews with Palestinian mayors, council members, staff, activists, and political elites, this book traces how the Israel-PA regime has influenced the constraints and incentives of Palestinians serving in local government. Mayors in the Middle demonstrates that both the indirect rule system itself-as embodied in local policing arrangements-and the political affiliation of Palestinian mayors shape how politicians will govern. This variation, Greenwald argues, depends in part on whether local Palestinian governments are perceived as intermediaries within or opponents of the regime. Although Palestine is often treated as exceptional, Greenwald draws illustrative parallels with British colonial India and South Africa's apartheid regime. A groundbreaking study of Palestinian local politics, Mayors in the Middle illuminates the broader dilemmas of indigenous self-government under systems of exclusion and domination
Item Description:	Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Jun 2024)
Physical Description:	1 Online-Ressource
ISBN:	9780231559744
DOI:	10.7312/gree21314