PATTERNS OF LEADERSHIP AND SOCIAL HOMOGENEITY IN ISRAEL

In: International social science bulletin, Band 8, Heft 1, S. 36-54

Abstract

The integration of any society partly depends upon its manner of selecting its elites (E) & upon their behavior. The pol'al E of the Jewish people of Palestine, the Yishuv, consisted in the leaders & officials of the various national institutions such as the Jewish Congress, the Zionest Congress, heads of the main Jewish municipalities, etc. All these were elective positions. It was assumed that those who were most active in the pursuit of the major goals of Zionism were most deserving of holding positions of responsibility & power. Only a minimal diff in living standards existed between members of the E & other groups. Authority was exercised largely in an informal manner. Though some tendency toward centralization of power existed internally with certain org's, power & prestige were widely dispersed throughout the Yishuv. Almost no specific leadership developed nor was there much soc distinction relative to the degree of recency of immigration. Hence, no deviant leadership was evolved. The establishment of the Israeli State brought new power frameworks & positions. The resulting competition & pressuregroup activity tended to weaken the cohesiveness of the groups within the Yishuv. Formalization & bureaucratization emerged on all levels of organized pol & soc activity. Some opposition to this arose. These changes had the greatest repercussions in the absorption of new immigrants. The new immigrants remained in their old groups & the absorption process was one of group-transformation. Immigrant leadership arose either through automatic selection processes operating within the society or through a formal type of selection operating through special agencies. So far, very few immigrant leaders have penetrated to any of the higher strata of the E. Out of a sample of 400 cases, the main types of leaders have been classified into the following categories: (1) the leader of purely ethnic association (usually most distinct in the Landsmannschaften organizations which provide practical help of various kinds to their countrymen); (2) the professional type (found largely in European communities & made up of lawyers, physicians, & individuals who had held positions of leadership abroad); (3) the econ leader (community & soc leaders, many from Central & E. Europe, who achieved their positions through econ success); (4) the pol'al leader (usually active within a pol'al organ or the General Federation of Labour); & (5) the bureaucrat (similar in many respects to the pol'al leader but holding an official position in one of the bureaucratic frameworks: gov, Jewish agency, etc). Factors which seem to influence the activities of leaders & of mobile persons were found to include: (1) the comparability between a mobile individual's evaluation of his mobility aspirations & that of his group of origin; (2) the extent of maintenance of solidarity relations between the mobile individual & his group of origin; (3) the extent to which mobility aspirations are recognized as legitimate by the new groups; & (4) the type of mutual evaluations made by the two groups (of origin & destination). More specific variables decisive in the case of leaders include: (1) the nature (democratic or authoritarian) of the power relations between the leader & the group, & (2) the potential power-relations of the leader with other E groups within the society. Immigrant adaptibility to the new society was found to be higher when there is a high degree of internal cohesion (as in Yemenite & Yugoslav Bulgarian groups compared to N. African & E. & Central Europeans & Iraquis). It was also learned that there is a +p between the size of a community & its degree of heterogeneity & that there is no special relation between the use of the Hebrew language & either heterogeneity or soc participation. Thus, the soc adjustment or development of immigrants is not primarily determined by the degree of ethnic heterogeneity but by the general characters of the immigrants & the conditions of absorption. B. J. Keeley.