ABSTRACT

The increasing role of local authorities in public efforts to promote industrialisation have had a marked impact on shifts in Israel’s industrial geography since the late 1970s. Several interrelated processes have encouraged the emergence of locally initiated economic development policies. External economic and political shifts were of prime importance. The economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s and the declining power of the central government have both worked to decrease the effectiveness of the national spatial industrialisation policy, which has failed to adjust to economic restructuring processes. Increasing pressures on welfare state mechanisms have led to cuts in public budgets available for such policies, and although these policies have generally been continued, their effectiveness has diminished.